Oh Baby!

Now that we have designed and implemented the new hang tags, I've been able to play around with them a bit.

My first attempt at something new, is for the baby pretzels that I make.

Some good friends of ours in New York had their first baby a few weeks ago, and I created a little pink tag with the baby's name, date and weight.

It's created to look like our usual tag, but if you look closely around the border, it says "100% Natural. Sugar & Spice, Everything Nice" instead of the ooey gooey hand dipped that is usually there.

This looks adorable with the pink and chocolate colors. I'm sure blue and chocolate will look good too.

I'm excited to do these for birthdays and other events. The hang tags have turned out to be an even better idea than I first thought.

Good Reviews

The new hang tags have officially begun their entrance into the retail marketplace!

We dropped several turtle pretzels with the new hang tags at a few select Hallmark stores a few weeks ago, and the reviews have been great!

Customers are commenting on the nice, upscale look, as are the mangers of the stores. What a compliment, and very encouraging. It's not much fun to go to the trouble to create something new only for it to be received poorly. So, it's nice indeed to get such a positive response.

Next I will be sending some samples of our marshmallows and pretzel bark to the owner of the 6 Hallmark stores we are in in hopes of them picking up the whole line for mothers day!

I've also been including sample marshmallows in my shipments lately, and have been getting very encouraging feedback on those as well!

Looking forward to what comes next!!!

New hang tags make their debut!

First let me say that I don't really like that photo of all the items to the left. It looks like a big crazy mess...we're still learning how to set up shots, but hopefully this will give you an idea of what our hang tags are going to accomplish.

If you click on the picture, it will take you to a larger image. You should be able to see that each item has it's own color coded hang tag. Caramel apples are a green, to indicate the green from the Granny Smith's we use.

The marshmallow color is sort of a smooth yellow, orange cream color. The pretzel bark will be a warm caramel brown, and all the pretzels (the 4", the 8", and the dippity do dahs) will be a lighter shade of our logo red.

We have switched to the brown raffia and ribbon as well, which really gives the items a higher end appeal.

You also can now see clearly what is in the package. We will be delivering a small sample of these to Dupont and Apple Glen Hallmark stores this week, to see how they do. I'm hoping they increase impulse buys, but you just never know what consumers will do.

What do you think of the new look? Is it an improvement? Make suggestions in the comment section, I'd love to hear from you.

Custom Pretzel Order in Stages

Yesterday I received a last minute custom pretzel order from my most consistent client, an upscale hotel in Indianapolis. Usually they order the Hoosier pretzel to either give to top guests, or sell in the rooms in "mini bar" fashion.

However, this order was unique, and kind of fun. They wanted a small order of pretzels that were the Hoosier flavor (which is dried cherry flavored cranberries and cornflakes, each picked for their unique traits related to Indiana). It's typically drenched in white chocolate and then drizzled with red and white chocolate stripes, but they wanted it drizzled with blue and gold.

I think it turned out really nice. They weren't very specific about actual colors, so I had to play around with colors until I got what I thought looked best together. In person it looks like a navy and goldish yellow.

The label was to be custom as well, and even less specific. They just wanted it to say Golden Eagle, utilizing the same colors. So, here is what I did with that information...

I used Photoshop to make a chunky navy blue font, and outlined it with a goldish yellow. I embossed the font and gave it a drop shadow for effect, and it really pops on the package.

However, we've been playing around with the idea of moving away from the actual label on top of the package. For many reasons, actually. First of all, it's a big pain in my rear to put two labels per package for every pretzel. Very time consuming. Time is money, for sure! (I learned that in a big way last Christmas when we did the kiosk at the mall.)

On top of the money/time issue though, is that you can't see the pretzel once the label is on the cellophane bag. I've been noticing that people have to pick the package up, turn it sideways, and then actually peer inside to see it. That's not such a big deal when you already know what you've bought, but if they're sitting in a basket at the local Hallmark store, I need to get people's attention without them having to think.

So, with a little playing around, I did a new hang tag, and used the Golden Eagle as an example of how great they could be for marketing purposes as well. Corporations could use these as mini business cards. The tags can be kept in a billfold very easily for future reference. Imagine the possibilities!

Here's the photo of the new hang tag idea, what do you think?

It's not 100% finished. I'm not sure I like the type of paper I used, and I still need to play around with design, but I think we're onto something. As long as it doesn't take even longer to do these, it should save quite a bit of money, but also increase sales with a better finished product. Seems like we're always evolving....but that's better than the alternative, right?!