News Break:
SAVE-A-LOT TO CARRY A&P's
AMERICA'S CHOICE BRAND!
This is actually breaking news fto me. I had no idea Save-A-Lot had acquired the America's Choice brand. I don't think many of you knew either since the news never came in to any of the comment sections on the blog. The news barely makes the headline on a SupermarketNews.com's article on some major changes underway at Save-A-Lot. An excerpt is just below...SAVE-A-LOT TO CARRY A&P's
AMERICA'S CHOICE BRAND!
As noted above the introduction of national brand items will accompany what Claus called a "major private brand revamp" to be executed over three phases in the next 18 months. The plan calls in part for introducing a single brand to span over multiple categories — America's Choice, the former A&P private brand that he said Save-A-Lot has acquired. "It's a fabulous name," Claus said. "Our goal will be to create greater brand recognition and loyalty with a single name across much of the store as opposed to individual brand names across categories.
You can read more about the change underway at Save-A-Lot at SupermarketNews.com by clicking here.
I hope they keep using the same distributors as A&P did. They had some of the greatest store brand food I have ever eaten.
ReplyDeleteGood- they're giving those labels another chance. This might be the first good thing SuperValu's done in a while.
ReplyDeleteSo Essential Everyday is done, then?
ReplyDeleteSave-A-Lot has its own brands and Essential Everyday isn't one of them.
DeleteYeah, Sav-A-Lot had a variety of (way too many going by this: http://save-a-lot.com/products/brands) store brands that were kind of grouped by product type like Aldi does.
DeleteAlthough given Sav-A-Lot's ties to SuperValu, the products are/were likely the same as the ones branded as 'Essential Everyday'.
Now that was unexpected.
ReplyDeleteIn some way it probably shouldn't be - after all (if I'm not mistaken) the person quoted in the story was formerly employed by A&P, and so would have had some idea of the strength of their store brand items.
DeleteYes--Eric Claus, the CEO of Save-A-Lot, was the CEO of A&P for 7 years...until the board ousted him in 2009 when they realized Pathmark was unfixable.
DeleteWas Pathmark unfixable? I don't think so. When A&P first took them over, my parents started shopping there again for the first time in many years. The problem was that after that initial turnaround, they didn't do anything to sustain it and said "to hell with it, let's just focus on us."
DeletePathmark could've been fixed if they'd just found the right people but for the last three decades they were in business, they never seemed to give enough of a damn. Hell, I worked in the Paulison Avenue store for an eight-month term. Our store was lost in the 1970s, and it wasn't until after I left in 2001 that we got the remodel all the other Pathmarks got in the early 90s!
My choice is America's Choice
ReplyDeleteReal value, real savings
That's America's Choice!
I think that jingle will be stuck in my head forever. Now if SAL brings that back it would be kind of cool.
No doubt Claus' inside knowledge of the America's Choice brand led the company to purchase the brand. SAL has been struggling as of late to gain traction against the booming Aldi. The article outlines a number of new approaches that Claus is introducing, including adding more brand names, re-doing their weekly ad and including more multi-purchase items (ie 2/$3, 2/$5, etc). There is still a lot of questioning around if/when Supervalu will spin SAL off. But it does make sense that SAL bought the brand and not Supervalu, since the brand will be exclusive to SAL and not be introduced in Supervalu corporate stores or stores they distribute to. Though I can see them pulling manufacturing under a single supplier for like items to save some on overhead.
I bet they got the rights to the brand for a song. A&P is doing what they can to unload stores and intellectual property and banner names.
I agree-they probably paid very little for the name since the most valuable intellectual assets (Food Emporium, Pathmark, Green Way) were the first to go and fetched the highest prices. I also think the actual products and vendor agreements are not what SAL is interested in; probably few, if any of the products will remain what they were once they are rolled out.
DeleteAs we saw with Key Food buying the Superfresh brand, it is a LOT cheaper to acquire a generic-sounding brand name which fits your product than to partner with a branding agency and develop one from scratch.