Mustard has delivered the results of a market research project on behalf of personal care brand, Escentially Smooth, supporting the company’s quest to be stocked by big, high street retailers.
Contrary to what you might see on BBC1’s “The Apprentice”, we believe that market research is a skill worth investing in – no matter how established the brand.
Thankfully, we do not YET live in a world where campaigns are developed and new products taken to market within the space of 36 hours. It is important that the big ‘front end’ decisions are given the necessary time, and not taken on the back of questionable samples and questionable interview techniques. Professional research should make a significant difference.
We recently delivered the results of a project on behalf of personal care brand, Escentially Smooth, to support the company’s quest to be stocked by big, high street retailers. Escentially Smooth is a new depilatory cream using breakthroughs in fragrance technology to virtually eliminate the malodour usually associated with hair removal creams.
The brand required credible market research findings to support its offering in order to be considered by supermarkets and pharmacies, such as Tesco and Boots.
Sean O’Callaghan, Managing Director at Escentially Smooth, said:
“We’re a start-up business, so deciding to allocate budget to market research was a significant decision. However, I can honestly say that entrusting Mustard with such an intensive and important piece of research has been critical to Escentially Smooth’s long-term success. Without market research behind us, big retailers would have been less inclined to stock our product.”
“The agency’s willingness to really understand us and our business was exceptional, as was the execution of its work. As a start-up aiming to innovate in a particularly dormant category of the personal care sector, the enhancement that the research results added to our business model was second-to-none.”
Richard Walker, Director at Mustard, commented:
“Many smaller brands have reservations about allocating budget to market research. However, as we’ve seen with Escentially Smooth, the activity can be vital to a brand’s development.”
“Not only has market research given the company collateral to secure meetings with major buyers, but it has also informed the product’s pricing, packaging and even influenced the choice of manufacturer.”
Online methods have made exploratory research such as this a lot more accessible and affordable for new brands such as Escentially Smooth.
Although several DIY survey tools exist, our advice would be to always entrust a quality agency to provide the design, delivery and interpretation. Not only for independence and objectivity, or for the specialist skills involved, but for the years of experience of having conducted many such projects before.
