Organic 3 Inc. Case Study

Dan Corrigan and his partners at Organic 3 knew they needed help with their branding. They had a successful ecommerce operation selling vitamins, minerals and probiotic supplements, but they were selling their products under a hodge-podge of names, identities and packages with no clear brand strategy.

“We were all over the place,” Corrigan said. “We thought we wanted to keep the GutPro name, and introduce a new name for our other lines. So when we approached BN Branding we had a name already picked out. That was a huge mistake. The team at BN Branding pointed us in a much better direction:

“Smidge” “small batch supplements”

Corrigan believes it’s a friendly, memorable, creative name that clearly stakes out his company’s position in the market place. “BN’s strategy of owning a new category is absolutely brilliant. No one else in our industry has ever done that, and it gives us a tremendous competitive advantage.”

It was a classic case of choosing the one name that produced the most divisive feedback in early research.

“We thought we knew what we wanted for a name, Dan said. “But Smidge is so much better! People either loved it, or hated it. That’s how we knew it was going to be a winning brand.

Once the naming process was complete and the trademark law was handled, the BN Branding team designed the brand identity and the packaging for the first six SKUs.  The design team also produced posters, branded merchandise, digital advertising concepts and the entire look and feel for all Smidge stuff.

The first two years in business with the new Smidge identity produced record sales and a dramatic jump in market share for the Detroit-based company.

“My biggest mistake was not calling BN Branding a lot sooner,” Dan said.  “The false start on our re-branding cost us a lot of money. I should have deferred to the BN Branding team from the very beginning.”