However, he had a sweet tooth and missed eating ice cream. A fitness buff who was keen to optimise his diet, he experimented with fasting and often cut out sugar to help control his hypoglycaemia. So how did Halo Top go from being a creation in a home kitchen to filling supermarket freezers? It began with Woolverton, who in 2011 was working as a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles but was bored with his job. Halo Top’s prominent display of calorie counts on its packaging has been imitated by rivals “But there are now too many brands for the space, so retailers will cull the brands and keep the best ones.” “It validates the market for healthier ice cream, which we pioneered,” says Bouton. The company’s US retail sales in 2018 fell 6.4 per cent year on year to $329m, while units sold rose 4 per cent to 77.5m, according to IRi, a Chicago-based market research firm. Launched in mid-2017, Unilever’s Breyers Delight mimicked Halo Top by placing the calorie count in large figures on the tub label.īouton says the new rival brands were not totally unwelcome, although their arrival slowed Halo Top’s growth last year. Unilever and Nestlé have scrambled to catch up both have introduced copy-cat “healthier for you” ice creams in the US. Graeme Pitkethly, Unilever’s chief financial officer, admits the consumer goods giant “had missed the trend in the US” for healthier ice cream and that Halo Top is taking share “very, very quickly”. The two Californians, who knew little about ice cream or retail when they started out, surprised many industry executives who scoffed at the idea that a newcomer could break into a category that has long been dominated by multinationals Unilever and Nestlé. But now we’ve gotten to a level of stability so we can actually enjoy it, innovate and build the business.” “It was so hard to build the company in the first few years - we almost went bankrupt. We outsell Häagen-Dazs in Tesco ,” says Bouton with a hint of disbelief. “So far in the UK, we’ve seen the same meteoric growth as in the US. The looming challenge will be to encourage international consumers to develop a taste for Halo Top by adapting its sales pitch to countries with differing food cultures and dietary habits. When Justin Woolverton, above, turned to outsourced manufacturing, it proved a key factor in scaling up the business To build on its success in the US, Halo Top has embarked on an international expansion drive, launching last year in the UK and Canada with flavours such as Peanut Butter Cup, Mint Chip and Birthday Cake. Woolverton and Bouton have retained majority control after declining several takeover offers and raising $1.5m from a combination of friends and family, angel investors and crowdfunding. The private company does not disclose financial information, but its co-founders say it has about 120 employees, and is profitable and growing rapidly. In barely six years, Halo Top has become North America’s sixth-biggest ice cream brand, with a 3.7 per cent market share in 2018, according to Euromonitor data. Halo Top’s simple proposition, paired with the online marketing savvy of Woolverton, 39, and his business partner Douglas Bouton, 33, has won over calorie-counting consumers.
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