Case Study 1

Wiltshire® BAR-B-MATE™

The Brief
Way back in 1986, Wiltshire had a ‘market saturation’ problem with their Australian invention the Wiltshire® Staysharp™ Knife.  Problem was, the Staysharp knife had been too successful and across the various knives in the range, the Wiltshire Staysharp brand had built a national in-home penetration of 85% - thus leaving only 15% of homes not having some form of Staysharp™ knife. With common knife varieties now covered, sales were on a steady down trend, seriously dipping below budget despite a hefty media investment.

Promoshop® was briefed to come up with a strategy to restore national sales for the brand.

The Execution
As the problem was basically one of market saturation, no promotional strategy aimed at boosting short term sales was really going to fix it.  Wiltshire needed a new product that met their ‘Homewares cutting technology’ mission statement that could impact the full Australian market, not just 15% of homes.  We invented one that not only met that brief, but expanded the Wiltshire brand into the as yet untapped BBQ category – the Wiltshire® BAR-B-MATE™

The Result

The Wiltshire® BAR-B-MATE™ gained a huge 41% national in home penetration in year one and has remained Australia’s largest selling barbeque tool every year for the past 24 years, with  over 3.5 million BAR-B-MATEs sold.  The product has now been launched in both the UK and Germany; and ‘barbeque’ remains an important group within the Wiltshire brand.