1 Module7:FairytaleBrownies~CompetitorAnalysis

Group: Fairytale Brownies Module 7: Fairytale Brownies ~ Competitor’s Analysis

Hilary Moore & Sarah Hough

Summary The following is an analysis of the top 4 competitors for Fairytale Brownies. Fairytale Brownies identified these

companies as main competitors because of their success in the industry, the presence of a similar product line, the

high standards and quality products and services produced by the companies, and they are all companies that have

had success in each of the main channels that Fairytale Brownies distributes through. Each of these companies has

been around longer and all have higher revenue streams (Source: Yahoo Finance), higher marketing and production

budgets and larger PPC budgets (spyfu.com), however, they are considered models for marketing initiatives and best

business practices for Fairytale Brownies. Each of these competitors produces a high end catalog and high-end e-

commerce website that Fairytale Brownies benchmark’s periodically.

Harry & David Harry & David is one of the nation's premier direct marketing and e-commerce companies. They have a long and

distinguished company history and outlook on the future. The Harry & David gourmet fruit and food gifts brand has

been trusted by generations, not only for superior products, but for unparalleled customer service and impeccable

guarantees. They maintain operations in two locations: Medford, Oregon is their corporate headquarters, and they

also have a facility in Hebron, Ohio. They have more than 130 Harry and David Stores throughout the country. Their

vision is to be everyone's first choice for gifting, celebrations and everyday delights. Their mission is to create,

produce, and market premium foods which develop lasting relationships with their customers. Harry & David's top

competitors are 1.800.FLOWERS, FTD, Inc., and Williams Sonoma. They are a multi-channel merchant specializing

in direct marketing, B2B, retail, and wholesale distributing. Annual sales for the fiscal year of 2007 for Harry & David

was 424 Million. Harry & David's product line encompasses a wide variety of products. The following are the main

selling points on their website:

Fresh Fruit Gifts

Gift Towers

Gift Baskets

Moose Munch Treats

Chocolates & Bakery items

Floral Gifts & Home Decor

The goals of the Harry & David site are similar to the Fairytale Brownies site in that the main goal is to sell

merchandise. There is a strong brand presence on the site also. The layout is user friendly and intuitive and the

overall site is easy to navigate. The imagery and copy are polished and gives the overall impression of a high-end

luxury gift site. They go into detail on their site about company history and values, which is something Fairytale does

not do too much of. Harry & David is highly respected in the industry and is a huge corporate entity. This is a

company that Fairytale can hope to become some day. We benchmark Harry & David as a model to our own online

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marketing and website practices. I have personally purchased gifts from their site and their checkout process is

friendly and intuitive. Overall, Harry & David get 5 stars in this study.

Screen shot of the Harry & David website (homepage)

Cheryl & Co. Founded in 1981 as Cheryl's Cookies, Cheryl&Co. has grown into a multi-million dollar business with a national

distribution and retail, corporate, foodservice, and catalogue divisions. In 1981, together with her college roommate

Caryl Walker and equipped with an old-fashioned cookie recipe from her grandmother Elsie, Cheryl Krueger started

her business from scratch. What began as a single cookie store has now evolved into a multi-million dollar business.

Today, Cheryl Co. is a multi-faceted business comprised of retail stores in Ohio, a growing internet business and a

Business Gift Division all headquartered in Westerville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. In 2005 Cheryl& Co.

merged with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. In 2005, the company revenue was $25 million dollars. 1.800.FLOWERS is

looking to grow the business in to $50 million in sales revenue. The company mission statement reads: Our mission

is to be the best gourmet food and gift company, ever. Cheryl and her team believe that their customers vote with

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their dollars. Every customer service incident is carefully reviewed by the team, and a letter is immediately sent to the

customer, personally signed by Cheryl. Cheryl & Co's product line encompasses mostly cookies and brownies. They

package these baked goods in the following ways:

Holiday/Occasion Towers

Specialty/Decorative Tins

Holiday/Occasion Gift Baskets

The Cheryl & Co website is not as polished or graphics intensive as the Harry & David site. The site has the main

goal of selling merchandise. In our PPC searches, Cheryl & Co appeared many times in different iterations of

keyword searches, so they have a highly similar PPC strategy as Fairytale Brownies. The site overall looks to be

SEO optimized and is controlled by CSS. The website does not appear to be reinforcing the Cheryl & Co branding, so

it may not be a high priority goal. I have ordered from this site, and although the product is good, the packaging is

substandard at best. While Fairytale Brownies has high-end sustainable packaging (which is highly branded),

Cheryl’s packaging are low-end cardboard boxes or cheap looking tins. We consider Cheryl to be a main competitor

because even though the packaging is not as nice as Fairytale's, their price points are lower, and therefore, they

have a much higher volume. Additionally, Cheryl & Co has been around for at least 10 years longer than Fairytale, so

they are more of a 'household name’.

Screen shot of the Cheryl & Co. website (homepage)

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Godiva Godiva Chocolatier is a manufacturer of premium chocolates and related products. Founded 83 years ago in

Brussels, Belgium by a master chocolatier, Godiva was named in honor of the legend of Lady Godiva. Their first

expansion was opened in Paris, in 1958. Godiva made its debut in the United States in 1966, at Wanamaker’s

department store in Philadelphia. Their first North American boutique opened in 1972, on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Today, Godiva and is sold in over 450 boutiques and shops throughout more than 80 countries world-wide and is

available via over 10,000 specialty retailers.

Godiva considers themselves to be the leader in the premium confectionary category and uses elegant packaging to

emphasize the quality feel and richness of their branded product.

Their chocolates contain high quality ingredients like premium cocoa beans and dairy butter, are usually less sweet

and feature unusual textures and natural flavors. Consequently, their taste differs greatly from less expensive

chocolates, which tend to use artificial flavors

Godiva offers a wide variety of products on their website. The primary product categories are:

Truffles

Assorted Chocolates

Gift Baskets & Towers

Biscuits, Coffee & Cocoa

G Collection

Party Favors

Spring Gifts

Birthday Gifts

Thank You Collection

Dark Chocolate Gifts

Chocoiste

Chocolate of the Month

Chocolate-Covered Pretzels

The company offers direct sales through six seasonal mail-order catalogs each year in North America, toll-free

phone, and internet orders. A large part of their business is corporate gifs, and it is a promienent link on their

homepage. By 2007, they had annual sales of approximately $500 million. In March of 2008, they were sold to

Turkish company Yıldız Holding S.A. for $850 million.

Godiva.com’s primary goal is to sell product. The site uses heavy branding in their imagery and writing to convey the

high-end quality and luxury they want to portray. It is easy to navigate their site to learn more about their product and

to purchase a wide variety of Belgian chocolate gifts.

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Screen shot of the Godiva website (homepage)

Dancing Deer Baking Co. Dancing Deer started as a small Boston bakery, hoping to tap into the market for quality baked goods in coffee

houses. The company's namesake was the antique shop in Bar Harbor, Maine run by one of the founder’s

grandmother. Dancing Deer Bakery was founded in 1994, with a simple yet unconventional business philosophy: If

bakers love what they do, it shows in the food. A decade later, that guiding principle has helped propel the award-

winning, natural, kosher, home-baked goods outfit into a fast-growing business that's consistent to its core values (all-

natural ingredients, philanthropy, environmentalism, and employee development) and highly profitable – their current

sales exceeds $37 million per year.

Their products are known for quality, innovation, tastes, artful but simple packaging, and pure, high quality

ingredients. Their philosophy is that the packaging should be as artful, honest and as good as the food.

Dancing Deer Baking Co. offers a wide variety of baked goods products on their website. The primary product

categories are:

Brownies

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Cakes

Cookies

Medleys

Monthly Munchies

Sweet Home

Towers

In 2001, the bakery launched the Sweet Home Project, where they donate 35% of the proceeds from its Sweet Home

line of cakes to help homeless families find jobs and housing.

Dancing Deer transitioned from the small café accounts they started with to the high-end wholesale market to focus

on packaged cakes and cookies and on creating a brand. Today, Dancing Deer is sold in hundreds of premier

gourmet and specialty retailers across the country such as Whole Foods (WFMI), Wild Oats (OATS), and Dean &

Deluca. They also created a custom gingerbread mix that can be found exclusively at Williams Sonoma. The

company offers direct sales through an 800 number mail-order service, and their website. The bakery also offers a

corporate-gift giving program. Its blue-chip clients include Goldman Sachs (GS) and Fidelity Investments. They have

continued to maintain an annual growth rate of 20 – 30%.

Overall, their site is friendly and easy to use – it has a very similar layout to brownies.com. Their use of organic, non-

structured images reinforce their brand, but make the site look busy and a little harder to absorb the content.

Screen shot of the Dancing Deer website (homepage)