Re:Supply Marketing Campaign
Who is Re:Supply?
Re:Supply is a store located in downtown Wichita Falls and they have two stores in Oklahoma City, OK and Norman, OK. They support plastic waste reduction and are focused on living an eco-friendly, zero-waste lifestyle. The best way to describe Re:Supply is they are a bulk, refill shop where you can purchase goods that are safe for you and the planet. They offer in the store a wide range of package free sustainable living products. Re:Supply’s goal is to help you reduce your waste and fight climate change. Re:Supply also allows you to bring in your own jar, on the condition that you have cleaned it out and dried your jar. There are no limits, you can bring any container like a glass jar, empty food tubs, old plastic bottles or ziplock baggies. After bringing in your jar, you can fill your container with whatever goodies you choose! Some goodies they offer are shampoo, conditioner, hand soap, dish soap and many more body care and household care items. Re:Supply also offers dried goods and baking ingredients, herbs, spices and teas, and nuts and seeds. The idea is to think about something you already have at home that you can use and avoid using extra materials for new packaging. You are only charged for the contents of the container, so when you bring in your container you will weigh whatever you decide to bring in to ensure you do not pay for any of the weight of the jar. Re:Supply encourages you to bring your own container, but in the case you forgot they do have options that you can purchase at a low cost or free if the jar has been donated. Re:Supply’s values include sustainability, transparency and community. These values mean that our daily decisions do make a difference in how we live, they are confident that the ingredients are safe for everybody and having access to nontoxic products should be easily accessible. Re:Supply strives to keep every product they offer at an affordable cost hoping this encourages new customers that want to live a waste free lifestyle. Some of Re:Supply’s competitors might include natural grocers and market street. These are considered competitors because they also offer non-toxic supplies in store. Although, what Re:Supply has to offer really sets them apart from their competitors as they offer a full in-store experience that you might not get at competitors like Natural Grocers and Market Street. Re:Supply’s business goals are to get the community involved in living a waste free life. Ways they can get the community involved would be to do more marketing and create a better layout in store. With social media being popular right now they can really grab people’s attention that way. They have social media, but they just need to promote it more. They have a website, Instagram and Facebook.
What sets Re:Supply apart from other stores in terms of customer experience?
Re:Supply’s purpose is what sets it apart from other stores because it allows customers to build a relationship with the company and the community. Re:Supply encourages their customers to transition into an eco-friendly lifestyle with their process of glass containers and refillable bottles. If you think about going to the grocery store and searching for the basic products in the aisles, pretty boring right? With Re:Supply you get an entire experience of customizing your purchases of the basic products such as laundry detergent, soaps, and baking ingredients.. Another factor that sets Re:Supply apart is its store layout. A typical grocery store is going to put their most popular and frequently bought products at the back of the store. For Re:Supply this would include their refillable products however, those products are the first thing you see as you walk in the store. Re:Supply encourages their customers to start living a small, nontoxic lifestyle by learning to reuse their containers. Re:Supply offers unique items you might not see at a regular grocery store. An example would be their spice selection, it not only has your basic spices but includes other alternatives that have several benefits for your body. They have a small selection of outside vendors who sell their artwork in the store. The artwork has been placed to showcase its use with Re:Supply products and adds a unique, refreshing touch to the store. Overall Re:Supply is an immensely valuable store to the city since it encourages the community to make a meaningful impact on climate change, daily life and community togetherness. Re:Supply has wonderful values that translate into many different products they offer to the community aligning with the ethos that is at the center of what they believe. Wichita Falls does not have any other competing stores, which makes a huge gap in the market for Re:Supply to take over. All of these factors combined show great promise for Re:Supply in the Wichita Falls community.
Consumer Research: FGI interview
Process
Within our research as a group, we asked a few of our friends to visit the Re:Supply store front and then give us some feedback on numerous details. We successfully got three of the six people we asked to visit to actually go to the store and check it out for us. From these three respondents we really hoped to gather everyone together and have an actual focus group; however, we were not able to get together due to conflicting schedules. Instead, we individually interviewed each customer with the same few questions to start off and depending on their response we asked more detailed followup questions.
Takeaway
From these interviews we concluded that Re:Supply is an overall enjoyable experience that is nothing like anything else in the Wichita Falls area. There are a few downfalls founded by customers but none of which are detrimental. These slight concerns can easily be rendered by creating a new approach to displaying their refilling process and re-positioning certain products that deserve to be highlighted. Specially for our soap idea, Re:Supply needs to add better and more visible signs in-store at the soap bar. They would be displayed in stands so it is easy to see and read them. They would also be colorful and bold. As of right now their signs blend in with the table and are hand written. Our changes would include making the signs bigger, bolding the letters in print, and displaying them so that they stand out against the table. This would ultimately make it easier for the consumers to notice the instructions and possibly jump out at customers as they walk in the door. Adding new signs will display our new idea perfectly.
Product
The product we selected was their homemade soaps. The bars of soap they currently offer are limited therefore, we want to expand their variety of scents and purposes of each soap. When our group visited the store, we really enjoyed the process of purchasing a bar of soap made by the store. The process was set up on a table with six different sized bars of soap. Most of the soaps are in a large block and customers take a cutting tool and take a piece of their choice. While each consumer might have a different viewpoint on cutting their own bar, we hope the consumer would find the process exhilarating. Each bar had a different scent and purpose. For example, the “super herb” is rosemary scented that helps accelerate blood circulation, treats muscle ache, and cuts oil in hair. We love the idea that each soap has a different purpose but we wanted customers to have the ability to customize their choice of soap. The customers have complete control over what ingredients they choose for their personalized bar of soap. Since Re:Supply already carries the spices they are already on hand for our idea. While they already have a slight customization built-in, our group feels there may not be enough choice for the consumer. One of the biggest reasons for why we chose this product is because it is surprisingly one of the few products that are made in house. This was an important factor to us because we felt that since this stands to be one of the easiest products to obtain, it wasn’t getting the spotlight it deserves. Since this product is made in house we thought it would be much more accessible to alter. For example, the customization process is extremely valued in this generation. Therefore, we implanted it into the marketing plans.
Target market for the product.
Our primary target market for our handmade soap idea is mainly women that are 30-55 years old. Our target market that includes women 30-55 years of age would also include mothers more specifically stay at home moms. Our group feels that stay at home mothers will have the freedom to shop Re:Supply during their regular hours. Mothers which fall into the target market are also more likely to have the appropriate expenditures for the buying process of refillable products. While zero-waste should be for everyone, our group understands certain socioeconomic levels will commit to the zero-waste lifestyle. Our group feels that though there are bonuses to the process that is zero waste, the mothers will have the necessary patients to refill and reuse the containers. We also believe that mothers are the typical role to buy all of the groceries and necessities for the household. The reason we decided on this demographic is because this age group is motivated to transition to a clean, toxic-free, zero-waste lifestyle, and they also have the time to invest into researching products they are using which are better for them and their families.
Marketing Campaigns
Our first marketing idea to promote our new soap is having a soapbar highlight during the monthly Wichita falls art walk. On the first Thursday of every month downtown Wichita Falls has an art walk that includes mostly local businesses. Some of those businesses might include food, drinks, clothes, art, home decor and many more. This could be a great opportunity for Re:Supply to capture many new customers since they are already located downtown. It would be a very convenient way to get those new customers in and around Re:Supply’s store front. During this night the Re:Supply employees will inform new customers about the soapbar. The customers can potentially sign up to come back and make a bar of soap at the next workshop. Creating your own soap bar is also a fun activity for you to do with a friend, your mom or your sister. Since the art walk is usually an event to enjoy with friends and family we think more people will be interested to learn about the soap bar events. We hope to promote this on their website, social media and on the art walks social media accounts. We are also going to print out our ad mockup and ask customers to post their purchases and tag us on social media to create more awareness. Within our content created for this promotion, we wanted to include an incentive for the customers to join us at the art walk and make a purchase. The only caveat, this would only be available to those who have bought at the art walk on specific that day. We intend for this to make the consumer want to attend the art walk. Not only would this hopefully boost Re:Supply sales, but it would boost community attendance for the art walk. We hope to reach a new crowd by being promoted on more profiles.
Our second marketing idea is to host a soap workshop day where customers can come and test out different essential oils and herbs. We loved the ideas of the “cut your own bar soap,” but we wanted to go beyond that. We've seen many TikToks of people making their own soap and we have always wanted to make our own. So we came with the idea of “make your own soap day.” People can come in and choose their own scents/essential oils, they can choose their own herbs to add in their soap and even choose their own base. It will be a $10-15 charge per person to participate. Re:Supply will supply personal appropriately sized reusable mold that is only for that day only, or they can bring their own mold and maybe get a percentage off. They can ask employees what problems they want to fix with their skin and they can help them guide them on the right things to add to their soap, or even give them a chart/guide. They can host these make your own soap days during their workshop days that they have, that are visible on their website. We think it's a fun and personal thing that customers will enjoy. We plan to promote this idea within the website on the page with the workshop day. Along with the addition of the website we will make frequent posts on the instagram and facebook page using our ad mockup. Along with these posts, we would create reels to post on social media to explain the process and intrigue more customers. We would use the first workshop as our inspiration for the reels and make it as real as possible.
Bubbles & Bubbly, for this idea we thought of our target market. What do mothers aged 30-55 love more than great smelling soap? Some amazing prosecco, so we decided to combine the two things together. In this event, the main goal is to educate the mothers on the harmful ingredients in the soaps that they and their families use. We want to make sure that mothers can identify what ingredients are harmful to them and their children, which the competitor's soap contains, and then identify the lack of those ingredients in Re:Supply’s soap offerings. Within this education, we hope to steer the mothers to using a much healthier alternative ready for purchase at Re:Supply. For this event, Re:Supply would have samples available for the mothers to use and test out on their hands and arms. Hopefully, they would be able to try all of the scents and ingredients offered in the different soaps and pick the one that best fits their needs. While they are looking through all of these things, they also will have an amazing glass of prosecco which will not only help them relax, but maybe loosen the locks on their pocketbooks. We decided to do this event on May 11th which is the day before Mother’s Day. It is a fun way to celebrate moms and an event they can come to with their daughters to spend time together. We hope to reach both of our target markets with this promotion since it is targeting mothers directly. Simultaneously, it targets daughters who are of the drinking age that want to do something fun for their mothers. This would work really well for each demographic while they are different; this is an experience meant to be enjoyed by each target market. Again, we plan to promote this on the website along with instagram and facebook.