A Package Approach:

CareFree Faucets

After years of operating as a wholly-owned subsidiary of and primary supplier to Sears, when Universal-Rundle was spun off as an independent company, the 50 year-old manufacturer of bathroom fixtures and fittings needed to aggressively pursue new market opportunities.

To help penetrate the home center and mass retail market with their newly-created CareFree brand of faucets, U-R turned to LMG.

We reasoned that, while we lacked the name recognition and brand identity of established competitors such as Delta, Moen and Price-Pfister, because we didn’t need to worry about alienating a traditional, two-step distribution channel like these competitors, we had far greater flexibility in pricing that let us offer attractive margins to mass retailers.

We also recognized, however, that higher margins mean nothing to a retailer if the product doesn’t sell.

So our approach was to combine these higher margins with a powerful merchandising system based on solid, scientific retailing principles.

We called this approach "Margindizing", and it was designed not only to sell CareFree faucets, but to maximize the retailer's profit on every square foot by making CareFree their feature line.

Based on sophisticated retailing principles, the CareFree "Margindizing" program combined higher margins with sound merchandising

To do this, we divided the entire CareFree line into five distinct price ranges of faucets. This allowed any retailer to create a "Good-Better-Best" offering tailored to the economic scale of each particular store, from economy-minded to high end luxury faucets.

To support this strategy, we developed a bold, appealing package system that reinforced the quality levels visually, while creating a provocative, highly eye-catching display look in store.

We designed CareFree packaging to create a dominant display appearance at retail, at the same time it offered a distinct "Good-Better-Best" choice to the consumer.

Initial in-store results more than lived up to our expectations. Not only did faucet sales increase, but margins grew even faster, more than justifying making CareFree faucets the featured line…a message that we then touted in additional trade advertising.

As experience began to prove the validity of the "Margindizing" system, we touted this success in trade advertising.

As a result of this strategic approach, we were able to take a new, unknown faucet line with no consumer brand identity and not only convince home centers and mass retailers to give it the bulk of their faucet display space, but outsell the category leaders as well.