Madhouse Munchies: Why Packaging Matters

Great story by Maggie Overfelt in Fortune about how big a difference good packaging and branding can make:

Several months and four prototypes later, Madhouse Munchies new logo and bags hit the market in July 2000. (Ehlen declined to say what he paid for the makeover, but similar projects typically range from $50,000 to $100,000.) In six months, with no new advertising, Madhouse was selling about 50 more bags of chips a month in every store. By year’s end its chips were in 1,000 new retail locations, and today, with the same packaging, the company is adding more than 100 new retailers a quarter.

Their annual revenue has grown from $500,000 to $10 million since then. For some inexplicable reason, Fortune’s web site doesn’t show the pictures of the package referenced in the article itself, but you can see them at R.Bird’s web site. (Via Jason Fried.)

★ Wednesday, 27 July 2005