The company's raison d'être has always been commercial as well as environmental, however, and an essential aspect of this is that the garden care products it could produce could be formulated into an entirely credible range for retail, suitable for mass distribution in the UK.

To ensure that Vital Earth's range is commercially viable, the products themselves have to be consistently high performance in terms of cropping, easy to use, well-presented and competitively priced, and the range as a whole has to be comprehensive enough - and exciting enough - to be sold by garden retailers as a solus peat-free offer to the consumer. In September 2008, Vital Earth was able to launch to the retail trade ten new specialist compost products, many, like ericaceous and seed & cutting, rarely or never before seen in a peatfree format, bringing the total range to over 30. It also updated its branding and repackaged the range in a range of sizes and in user-friendly colour coded packs, as well as supplying new point of sale. Since the launch, the Vital Earth customer base has increased from just 50 garden centres to more than 500 retailers nationwide including major DIY and supermarket chains including Sainsbury's and Wilkinson's.

The range expansion, which also featured topical ‘grow your own' specialities such as vegetable compost, included the market's first ever peat-free ericaceous compost. In trials for three years, as with all Vital Earth products, to ensure absolute fitness for purpose, ericaceous was developed in direct response to consumer demand for an environmentally-friendly version of this specialised growing medium.

The new products also included a seed & cutting compost, still a comparatively rare sight in a peat-free format, as well as a range of peat-free John Innes equivalents, designed to address the consumers liking for JI, which has been compromised by the fact that the traditional recipe includes 25% peat.

Marketed under the strap line - ‘For The Greener Gardener', the range also featured newly contemporary look and added a wide variety of new pack sizes from 60 litres to ten litres, again in response to demand. Colourcoded ‘families' of product - composts, soil improvers and mulches - created easy recognition and promotion in store and the packaging also included usage tips and consumer-friendly ‘fascinating facts'. Research showed that traditional packaging did not usually include sufficient information about usage, so the backs of the new packs added a wealth of practical hints and tips along these lines, while keeping messages clear and simple.

The point of sale package includes colourful and contemporary vinyl banners for every stockist, promoting peat-free, but also the even more motivational ‘recycled from garden waste' message with its implications of reduced need for landfill. There are charts to illustrate the recycling process and consumer information on the reasons to choose peat-free products. ‘Top tips' on choosing and using peat-free, recycled composts for superior plant performance are provided for location in the stocking area, addressing the need to educate the consumer in this area of the market. Stockists are also provided with laminated information including bar codes on the whole range for positioning adjacent to the till, giving them an unrivalled speed of service advantage, which remains unique in the sector. The colour coding which runs throughout the range presentation is invaluable for both consumer education and promotion. 100% natural in its ingredients, 100% sustainable and 100% UK-sourced, the Vital Earth range is laboratory tested and extensively grower trialled to prove its high performance, its stability for storage and its easy to use nature. The new products have made it the only credible ‘one stop shop' peat-free range and unsurprisingly the 2008 / 09 launch has already yielded a 1000% increase in retail distribution, including a breakthrough into the multiples.

Vital Earth

01335 300355

info@vitalearth.tv

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---