Overeducated Underserved Targeting

"Individualized Labels Aimed at the Overeducated Instead of having a one-size-fits-all private label like the supermarkets, we tried to individualize each label to each product. Wherever I could, therefore, I used artistic, or musical, or literary, or historical, or scientific allusions in the product names. Thus, when we got into private label baked goods, we had the Brandenberg Brownies, the Sir Isaac Newtons, The Bagel Spinoza, The Peanut Pascal, Disraeli & Gladstone’s British Muffins, etc. My favorite of all the private labels was Heisenberg’s Uncertain Blend of coffee beans. At the coffee roaster they process different batches of beans and some fall off the conveyor. Periodically they would sweep these up, roast them, and sell them to us for very little money. The blend, from batch to batch, was literally uncertain. And the label gave the Encyclopedia Britannica’s explanation of Werner Heisenberg’s Nobel Prize–winning 1927 discovery, one of the keystones of modern physics. How many customers had ever heard of Heisenberg? Not many. But the ones who understood the joke were literally bonded to us forever. And the price of the coffee was so cheap that non-initiates bought it. Some of my other favorite names are Trader Darwin’s Vitamins (for the survival of the fittest), Little Cat Feet dry cat food (pace Carl Sandburg), Habeas Crispus potato chips, Eve’s Apple Sparkled by Adam, Trader Cleopatra’s My Salad Days vinegar, Trader Gainsborough’s Blue Boy blueberry syrup, Great Expectations kibble for puppies. Oh, we did had fun!"

"Instead of national brands, focus on either Trader Joe’s label products or “no label” products like nuts and dried fruits."

"Summary As the private label program grew, its growth was given additional stimulus by a hysteresis or feedback loop among the private label products. Confidence in one product led to purchases of another. As you will find in the next chapter, From “Discrete to Indiscretions,” I wound up wishing we sold nothing else, the “Brooks Bros.” strategy. But that was with the value of hindsight in 1987, after having built the Trader Joe’s brand for twenty years."