Sainsbury's - Home launch

22 February 2017

The push by Sainsbury's into homewares has been well documented on this service for a couple of years now. Since they bought into Habitat with the Argos deal, it's become clear where Sainsbury's themselves see their ambitions lying too.

Whilst food remains important for them, they have transferred their credentials nicely over to non food and their new brand 'HOMe' has landed in stores relatively recently too.

It's interesting to see this landing given the Sainsbury's ambition in this area, a rebranded non food offer is noteworthy and clearly shows there is more in the tank as far as Sainsbury's are concerned.

Their signage remains in situ, noteworthy that a brand agency somewhere noted that there were only 11% negative comments about the new campaign from JS.

That's it then - don't worry about the feedback, as long as social media liked it! Anyway - their new font is appearing on more areas of the store, and this has been broadly positive to be fair, livening up some areas of the store. Like Spices.

Alongside pancake day too; again livening up the event signage with a focus on people and also their new fonts. Interesting no mention of food dancing with a boiling hot frying pan in your hand...

So to their new work in GM / non food - it's notable that the gardening range is the first assortment to carry the new branding, although I noted it on their seasonal collections last week too (themed around Harvest / Coastal etc) too.

The divider signage is in their new font which is interesting given the campaign centres around food primarily, if any area needed bespoke signage - it's events and particularly areas like gardening where there is a need for it to stand out.

The Home (HOMe) branding is extended across the majority of the new range with their entire solar light range looking very uniform in the new look.

Similarly it's notable to see it into the charging cables too, however the price points are hefty - £16 for a rose gold cable? Blimey.

As ever with JS, it always looks sharp on shelf and is presented well - shelf ready packaging carrying the new branding is good and represents a job well done here.

An effective effort from Sainsbury's for the kids holidays, which were last week and also feeding through into this week for some schools.

The event around 'make believe' is good work and allows for throughput into world book day - where kids go dressed as their favourite characters in the next couple of weeks too.

A good event; with Toys also featured which covers off any issues around what to do with the kids in half term. A display of trading nous which isn't always notable at Sainsbury's at the minute.

In terms of ongoing development, it was interesting to see that a click/collect iPad style unit had been dropped in to store. However the store still had a (well manned) click / collect desk at the back of the store too?

This unit was used for Tu, eBay and DPD collections which seemed to tie in nicely with the Argos work around eBay parcels being used for fulfilment. However the customer then had to wait at the post for a colleague to arrive with the parcel, it wasn't entirely clear how long they should wait either.

Their event also featured Toys which covered off any issues around what to do with the kids in half term. A sharp display of trading nous which isn't always notable at Sainsbury's at the minute.....

Again, it's interesting that their strengths in non food are not always equalised by ongoing development in food. Indeed, they are pushing on well with non food but food does appear to be stuttering somewhat.

Walking in to food does mean entering a bewildering gallery of colour and posters everywhere, it certainly jolts you out of 'sleep shopping' but not in a nice way.

The food dancing signage may well come down soon, but the messaging needs consideration when it goes. Getting value across is a key priority for them, particularly with inflation biting and there being a lack of multibuys across the central aisle.

The presence of two different marketing packages for the same event in the space of well, nothing (flowers underneath the banners) was astonishing really.

The 'food dancing' signage is like wallpaper given it's literally everywhere across the store, so to advertise Valentine's in the same template - despite Red being used for the event itself was bizarre.

Surely utilising red across the store for Valentine's gives a nice cue to customers. Breaking up the core messaging for the special event (as was).

The lack of a meal deal for Valentine's was very surprising too, given the market were in to £15 / £20 deals (Waitrose at £20) and Tesco landed an entire range that was Valentine's specific (heart shaped desserts etc).

For Sainsbury's not to have an over arching deal to pull it together seemed very odd indeed. Whilst I appreciate the staunch no multibuy stance and admire their work in this regard.... It does smack a bit of laying your gun down, Valentine's / events are precisely the time to be pushing on with a meal deal to stretch the spend and enable people to trade in to the ranges.

The prices of the lines may have equated £15 / £20 but where is the incentive for customers to do so? Competition elsewhere will likely have seen spending go there, customers love the bargain element and it becomes 'easy' for them to feel that they're getting something extra for their money.

Speaking of getting more for their money, Tesco continue their fight against Argos with more price cuts and comparatives in aisle.

The pace of these hasn't slowed at all post Christmas, which shows where the ambition for Tesco lies, they won't allow Sainsbury's to push ahead with Argos without a fight certainly.

Positives for JS with their non food efforts, plaudits all round for the branding, work with Habitat and the branding for Home. Very strong work, some of the pricing is strong, but this is where their ambition lies perhaps.

However food is hard work, inflation has affected value across the marketplace so far and there's more to come clearly, the lack of multibuys remains interesting and they've a strategy so fair enough - however no meal deal (Pics taken on the Saturday before Valentine's and certainly nothing popped up post then) for Fresh Foods was very surprising.

Noble for them to pull away from multibuys, but where the market are all in the mix on meal deal, with Tesco even developing a bespoke range just for Valentine's - JS need to get themselves on the pitch with this one.

Food dancing or no food dancing.........

From the Grocery Insight newsletter archive, first sent to subscribers on 22 February 2017. Steve now writes at read.groceryinsight.com. See also the blog archive and briefings.