Packaging is the ultimate vehicle for design: industrial, graphic, and typographic design are all put to the test to create an impression so meaningful that it converts currency into consumerism. This ...
Dexter-Russell Inc. is the largest manufacturer of professional cutlery in the U.S., with a historic manufacturing facility situated by the Quinebaug River in Southbridge, MA. Founded in 1818, the company guards its history carefully, even though the brand had in recent years lost its prominent merchandising place in at food service distribution channels, its primary retail channel selling directly to professional chefs.
Group 4, a design firm with locations in Avon, CT, and Chicago, carefully measured Dexter-Russell’s brand equities, attributes, and end-user perceptions to discover what should and should not be changed. The firm also waded through dozens of commercial kitchens and restaurant supply outlets to talk directly with professionals and understand merchandising challenges at point-of-sale. The challenges that the brand faced were turned into opportunities because, as it turned out, there was not a great deal of downside risk involved.
Alan Peppel, president of Dexter-Russell, had a vision of change coupled with caution about abandoning the past completely. Frank von Holzhausen, president of Group 4, had the unenviable task of convincing Peppel to abandon half of their history—the Russell part—in their branding. Peppel and his staff were swayed when the research indicated the reality of how chefs viewed the brand.
“The professional chef does not have a brand focus,” explains von Holzhausen. “What that told us was there was a great opportunity to ‘shorten’ the brand.” Research showed that while the chefs could identify their favorite knives brands by the shape and color of the handles, the actual brand names escaped them.
Jim Bellerose, marketing director at Dexter-Russell, was definitely in the reluctant camp when it came to any radical change of the company’s direction. “I’m a big fan of history,” says Bellerose, “and we had a lot of history.” Bellerose had to face reality when professional chefs told researchers that they used “Dexter knives” and that the longstanding two-red-oval logo did not contain brand equities. Once the decision to shorten the name was made, that opened up great leeway in exploring the new Dexter logo.
Though the goal was to establish brand recognition in a category where little or no recognition existed, Group 4 did not take its stewardship of a heritage brand lightly. The new Dexter logo, large and simplified on the front of the package, has sharp edges with a knife edge stylistically crossing the “X.” The new blue tones glow with energy and express the modern relevance of the brand.
With over 2,000 SKUs, 1,000 packages, a dozen different sizes, and seven product lines, the package design hierarchy had to align features and characteristics meaningful to end-users while remaining true to brand heritage and strategy. The color-coded product line name, for instance, now has a more obvious and consistent position under the knife size at the top of the package.
Since Dexter-Russell could not let go of the importance of their 1818 birth date, Group 4 expanded the brand promise tagline into “The Edge Since 1818,” with a knifepoint signaling a pause in the tagline in some media applications.
The embossed logo on the handle is more pronounced, slightly bigger than the previous full logo, but the “Made in the U.S.A.” indicators were relocated and the U.S. flag logo was dropped. The former clamshell was replaced with an easier to open recyclable PETE package, and the paperboard
is FSC-certified. “It was very important to them to have a sustainability story,” von Holzhausen says. One concern was to protect from the knife “opening” the package by itself during shipping and handling. The folded plastic creates a way to “guard” the edge of the package, and the bigger overall package footprint addresses some pilfering concerns.
The front panel has benefit statements sorted under three categories, and the back has more relevant information better
organized in bullet points. “We found out what was most important to chefs,” Bellerose says. “There might be 10 things, but we couldn’t use them all. This gives them the opportunity to learn something before they buy.” Finally, Group 4 feels that the research findings gave them confidence to implement the new look across all touch points—packaging, product color and graphics, retail merchandising, collateral, website, and their trade show display, which has especially surprised and wowed loyal customers.
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