Good health: from flour mill to top-shelf branc

Jo-Marie Brown hears how communication plays a big part in the success of Healtheries.

Healthy products have produced healthy profits for a one-time flour mill company that has grown to become one of New Zealand's most recognisable brand names.

Healtheries, based in Mt Wellington, Auckland, diversified into health-supplement products during the 1970s and now holds a 56 per cent market share of health and wellbeing products in supermarkets.

A recent AC Nielsen poll showed Healtheries as the number-one supermarket brand spot for personal products, and in a 1998 Colmar-Brunton poll the company was the fourth most-recognised brand in the country.

Managing director Sarah Kennedy said understanding and communicating with Healtheries' customers had been crucial to the company's success.

"There's a lot of confusion and clutter in the health and well-being market. It's a matter of communicating directly with consumers and understanding their needs. They want someone to talk to about what's important to them as an individual, not what's important to the mass market."

Healtheries' large product range meant that conveying information to a wide spectrum of consumers was quite difficult.

"Our customers range from zero to 90 years old and they take our products for a variety of reasons.

"It could be a lifestyle decision, it could be sports-orientated or it could be there is something wrong health-wise.

"Getting our message out there and being able to deliver simple, clear and empathetic solutions to all our customers is a real challenge across a large product range.

"We're always looking at the way we display our products and communicate them in-store so we can deconfuse things and make them simpler."

The company employed techniques that went beyond traditional product-orientated advertising to convey information to consumers.

A new marketing campaign comprising posters and print advertisements featured animal characters to give Healtheries' products a face and personality.

Healtheries repurchased its brand in Australia in July and is now driving the entire company from New Zealand.

Ms Kennedy said Healtheries' diverse product lines had allowed the company to gain a foothold in the Australian market.

"One of the points of difference for Healtheries is that we have both a supplement and a food-manufacturing plant. Our new functional food products have been the key to help leverage ourselves into the Australian market."

Herbal teas, gluten-free muesli, rice wafers and other health foods had raised the company's profile and provided it with a distinct advantage over competitors who concentrated on health supplements.

Thirty-five per cent of Healtheries' production was now exported to Australia, Asia and Europe.