Designing ROI 27 Jul 2005

10 comments Latest by John

Madhouse Munchies generates $500,000 a year selling chips. Madhouse Munchies hires R.BIRD to redesign their packaging. “In six months, with no new advertising, Madhouse was selling about 50 more bags of chips a month in every store. By year’s end its chips were in 1,000 new retail locations, and today, with the same packaging, the company is adding more than 100 new retailers a quarter and bringing in revenues of $10,000,000/year.” Read all about it in an article entitled New Shelf Life at Fortune.com (here are the images referenced in the article).

10 comments so far (Jump to latest)

cboone 28 Jul 05

And they’re good chips too… The mesquite barbeque ones are my favorites.

They started out just down the street from where I grew up, in Wilder Vermont; for a long time they were the only product made in Wilder. Now they’ve hit it big, and they’ve moved to Colchester — but last weekend I was able to buy (and enjoy!) a bag down in West Virginia, which was a bit head-spinning.

Thanks for the link — now I know the story.

Nice Paul 28 Jul 05

Reading the article, its typical of clients to hire someone to rebrand their packaging, then think they know better than the experts; “that’s great, but our logo’s too small” - hey, maybe brand recognition isn’t the most important thing if the brand isn’t performing as well as it should!

Anyway, I’m not qualified to comment on this specifically as I’m in the UK and haven’t had first hand experience of seeing their new-look products fly off the shelves.

Dan Boland 28 Jul 05

Yes, but the Madhouse Munchies web site could use some work still.

I know, right. It looks like it was built about eight years ago. But the best is their link to the American Vegitarian Association website. Hmm… anyone else notice that it should be Vegetarian? I know it has nothing to do with Madhouse Munchies (it’s in the logo, for God’s sake!), but it made me laugh.

Christopher 28 Jul 05

And all three of their validation links at the bottom (XHTML/CSS/508) don’t validate…

Grayson Stebbins 30 Jul 05

God I love branding. What an awesome story.

Rabbit 01 Aug 05

Hehe… Looks like someone’s listening, as vegetarian is now spelled correctly. :) (Though it’s obvious it was a hack job.)

Richard Bird 02 Aug 05

cboone - Yes, they are the best tasting chips out there. We felt is was our mission to build a better brand around them. We’ve taken some of our fees in chips, too ;)

Paul - Almost every client always wants their logo bigger. And almost all the time, they get it!

Pete, Dan, Christopher - R.BIRD has nothing to do with the website, thank goodness. The company owner knows it needs “attention,” but somehow can’t justify the expense.

John 30 Dec 05

Madhouse Munchies sold out its original client base. They used to be a specialty chip but now they sell to everyone and anyone.

If they don’t sell well in the big box stores they’ve had it as they’ve lost a lot of their original customers who are fuming.

Madhouse has a decent chip, its made by Shearer’s in Ohio, but very very expensive. Try Kettle Foods or Rt 11 chips. They’re much better