In last Christmas’ Top Products Survey The Grocer flagged up 16 Star Product launches. Six months on, how have these lines fared? What lessons can be learnt about NPD? Karen Dempsey reports It’s a tough life for a new product. Once the launch gun has been fired it can be hard to keep up the momentum. The odds are against them from the start. Information Resources says the number of new products that succeed has fallen from one in six to one in seven (the criterion for success is that a product must achieve either sales of £1m or more in its first year or 2% share of category). Client service director Chris Morley says: “Brand extensions or products using the name of an already successful brand have twice the chance of being a success. Those promoted in the early stages have more chance than those that aren’t. And, of course, gaining distribution across retailers is key.” But even with all the right ingredients in place, success is still not guaranteed ­ as we have discovered by charting the progress of the 16 Star Products identified in our Top Products Survey (December 16 2000). While most are jogging rather than sprinting, one has gone permanently, one temporarily, and one is thinking about it. Cadbury proved Information Resources’ point about brand extensions when it rolled out white chocolate Flake variant Snowflake last autumn. It was one of the biggest successes of last year (thanks in no small part to Anthea Turner). Sales of Snowflake in October and November alone topped £4m. Total sales, in such a limited time, exceeded £5m. Tony Bilsborough, media relations manager at Cadbury, says: “It was flying off the shelves as fast as we could put it in wholesalers’ warehouses and we exhausted existing stocks. Rather than upset the trade we decided to take it off and relaunch it later this year when we’re confident we’ve got enough stock.” Lever Fabergé’s extension of its Lynx bodyspray brand has lured young men early in their shaving lives and at the same time has taken on rival products such as Gillette’s Mach3. Sales of the Lynx Shaving System have topped the £8m mark since launch last October, and buyers indicate it is adding incremental sales to the category. When Golden Wonder decided to extend its Wotsits brand the challenge was to bring in new consumers without cannibalising existing sales. The solution was to aim the new product ­ Wotsits Wafflers ­ at an older target audience. And in a category that had seen little innovation, the plan seems to have worked. Launched in May last year, Wotsits Wafflers has added a further £6.7m to the Wotsits brand and the company says it has attracted older eaters (teens as opposed to younger kids). Golden Wonder cate-gory marketing controller Kirsty Brett says: “Wotsits Wafflers has enabled children to continue snacking with the Wotsits brand well into their teens and beyond. It has generated incremental growth in the process.” Friskies’ brand extension Felix milk has persuaded overprotective owners of pampered lactose intolerant cats to shell out 59p for a 200ml bottle of milk ­ and it is now worth over £1m. Marketing controller Mark Nelson says: “Felix Milk has achieved exactly what it set out to do ­ to revive the cats’ drinks market. It has stimulated growth of the whole cat milk market adding both value and volume to a previously stagnant sector, and has built awareness of the benefits of feeding specially developed milk products to cats.” Heinz Fridge Door ­ a litre of soup for snacking from the fridge ­ had limited promotional support and as a result modest sales of £706,000. Manor Bakeries’ Cake2Go concept, snack packs of Mr Kipling and Cadbury products such as flapjacks and muffin bars, has achieved sales of just over £2m since its national rollout in July last year. For Warburtons Organic, while we do not have figures for the organic variant, the brand as a whole has grown 16.5% to £128.7m over the past year. Warburtons claims it is organic branded leader in the UK with a 13.3% share of the £23.8m organic bread market. But not all brand extensions make it beyond first base. Knorr New World Cooking Sauces (launched in August last year by Bestfoods) has since achieved sales of just over £1m ­ not enough to guarantee survival under new owner Unilever. A Unilever Bestfoods spokeswoman says: “This is something we inherited with the merger [between Van den Bergh and Bestfoods] and we are withdrawing it and putting our resources behind other brands such as Colmans Simply Sausages and our new Bertolli sauces launch. “We have always been innovative and we will continue to put money behind new ideas but we can’t guarantee they will all be successes. And some aren’t.” Being first to market with a new product has brought positive results for Bendicks’ Campino. Launched in May last year, the sugar confectionery brand pipped Polo Smoothies to the launch post and achieved 67% distribution by October. Its ongoing success is due in part to Bendicks’ £6m launch advertising, a £4m spend between April and July this year, plus bogof activity to drive trial. Sales of £12.2m will slip it into the top 20 sugar confectionery brands this year. So what about new products which are second to market? Britvic launched Juice Up to take on Sunny Delight in the chilled juice drinks category at a time when the Procter & Gamble brand was losing sales and favour. Juice Up’s sales have been respectable ­ £7.3m since it launched in June last year. Britvic’s director of marketing Cathryn Sleight says: “Juice Up differentiates itself within the category with its superior quality. Its launch into the multiple sector had a huge impact on the category. We are now aiming to replicate that success within the key impulse channel.” Some buyers are impatient for quicker results, however. Len Hooper, senior buyer at Budgens, says: “Juice Up suffered from being the second into a market. Its attempt to present itself as the healthy alternative to Sunny Delight was brave but needed a bigger marketing spend. Initial sales have been slow outside promotional offers. It has potential as a slow burner but whether the majors will be prepared to wait for the flames is in question.” The irony, continues Hooper, is that Robinsons Fruit Shoot, also launched by Britvic last year, “is proving to be a real winner”. However, being second to market with a big brand offering has proved to be Flora pro.activ’s strength. Building on the Flora brand heritage and grasping the functional food’ advantage, pro.activ claims to be outselling its nearest competitor (Benecol) by nearly three to one. A £10m marketing budget got the product off the ground and endorsement by Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave has helped sales reach £19.5m. Further proof that publicity and promotion help make brands soar comes from P&G’s Charmin. Launching into an already saturated toilet tissue market, Charmin’s big budgets (£28m at launch) and hefty promotions (an estimated 60% of Charmin is sold on promotion) helped guarantee its Star Product status in the paper category. Even after its rivals forced P&G to reduce the thickness of the paper, Charmin’s sales of £53m in the year to May 20 have it breathing down the neck of market leader Andrex and it is on course to oust Velvet from second place in the category rankings. Not all new products have the benefit of such swollen advertising coffers and have to rely on the strength of their product offering and the slow build of repeat purchase. This was the case with the Cadbury Flake 99 cone from Frederick’s Dairies. Launching at a time when competition opened up in the freezers, the brand has doubled its sales to £6.5m in the year to May 20 and it is putting pressure on its rivals such as Wall’s Cornetto. Frederick’s Dairies sales and marketing director Peter Elvin says: “The filled ice cream cone sector had been neglected for many years and was falling into decline. “We brought an ice cream icon to the take home market and current UK distribution stands at 65%. Strong repeat purchases have grown sales.” The challenge for completely new products is to educate consumers and bring them on board. In Clipper’s case timing and trends were on its side and its Organic Roast & Ground Papua New Guinea Coffee has helped increase distribution of its organic coffee range. It also led the way for conventional brands to follow in the organic hot beverages category. But other Star Products have had more of an uphill struggle. RVP Foods ­ best known for its Oriental Express Chinese ready meals ­ is unlikely to be pleased with the results of its foray into Italian frozen snacks. Its Pasta Fasta range has notched up sales of just £433,000 since its launch in April last year. The trial of a frozen snacks cabinet in retailers was not successful and it is understood RVP is now reviewing the future of the Pasta Fasta line. The ultimate challenge is creating a new market for something that consumers never even knew they wanted. This is Lever Fabergé’s task with home dry cleaning kit Persil Revive. Since its arrival on shelves last September its value sales are £2.5m, but still some way off its target £30m. Sainsbury’s buyer Helen Burch said she noticed little pick up on Persil Revive at the time of its initial launch. “As it is the first home dry cleaning product it has not really had an impact on the sales of anything else,” she says. A Lever Fabergé spokeswoman says: “Revive has 75% market share in this new category despite an energetic launch campaign by Svit. “We are on a learning curve with Revive and are still in the first stage of a long-term project.” {{FOCUS SPECIALS }}