BOSTON — The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. plans to focus on its top 11 brands and top 500 stock-keeping units. Among those brands, marketing campaigns are on deck for Spectrum, MaraNatha and Greek Gods, said Gary W. Tickle, chief executive officer of Hain Celestial North America.
Gary W. Tickle, c.e.o. of Hain Celestial North America |
“We want to focus on our top-selling brands and products, drive cost and complexity out of our business so that we can reinvest into our business and increase the strategic investments we make around consumer engagement, principally around these top-selling brands and products,” Mr. Tickle said Sept. 7 at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference in Boston.
The Spectrum brand features a premium line of natural and organic culinary oils, vinegars, condiments and supplements.
“You all have seen coconut oil has become a very commoditized and very fragmented market, and we see that there’s tremendous opportunities to grow our brand awareness and tell our story about what’s authentic about the Spectrum range and improve our culinary positioning,” Mr. Tickle said. “So as a result of that, you’ll shortly see in the market a complete reface of the packaging, our positioning around this culinary range and, ultimately, making sure that our innovation is very much culinary inspired.”
The MaraNatha brand features seed and nut butters that do not contain trans fats, hydrogenated oils or preservatives.
“We adjusted prices early in 2017,” Mr. Tickle said. “We spent a lot of time and attention on our distribution of in-store execution, and we’ve introduced some very successful innovation into the range.”
A dedicated media campaign for MaraNatha will launch “shortly” across omnichannels, he said. It will be targeted to the digital and on-line consumer.
A Seriously Indulgent range of yogurts launched under the Greek Gods brand earlier this year.
“We’ve seen already with very, very early results great trial, and we’re about to invest quite heavily in terms of the in-store activation against this product,” Mr. Tickle said.
The millennial generation and e-commerce are two areas expected to drive future growth for Hain Celestial, Lake Success, N.Y. Forty per cent of Hain Celestial products are certified organic, said Irwin D. Simon, founder, president and chief executive officer of the company, at the Barclays event.
Irwin D. Simon, founder, president and c.e.o. of Hain Celestial |
“Millennials are the biggest users of organic,” Mr. Simon said. “Millennials are the biggest buyers of organic.”
In keeping with the natural theme, 99% of Hain Celestial products are non-bioengineered/ non-G.M.O., he said.
Natural products share of the overall food market is three times greater on-line versus brick-and-mortar, Mr. Simon said. He added 29% of all food products bought on-line are natural or organic products compared to 9% in brick-and-mortar.
Hain Celestial recently cleared up its financial reporting. The company on Aug. 15, 2016, said it had to delay the release of fourth-quarter and fiscal-year 2016 financial results and would conduct an internal review. Hain Celestial on Nov. 16, 2016, reported an audit committee found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing in connection with the financial statements.
Hain Celestial was current with all reporting obligations with the Securities and Exchange Commission after it reported third-quarter 2017 results on June 22, 2017. Fourth-quarter and fiscal-year 2017 results were given Aug. 29, 2017.
“So fiscal 2017 as I said was a hell of a year, and I’m glad it’s behind us, and we went through a self-exhausted financial review that ended up with no material change to our financial statements,” Mr. Simon said at the Barclays event. “We went through a complete overhaul in our finance group with the new c.f.o. (James M. Langrock). Our financial highlights were $2.9 billion in sales, up 3% on a constant currency.”