Bloomsberry & Co.

Chocolate and savvy graphic designs featuring a big dollop of humour are proving a potent recipe for Bloomsberry & Co, a Christchurch company that is exporting wittily packaged chocolate bars to Australasia, North America and Europe.

Bloomsberry & Co began in 2001, the brainchild of graphic designer Giles Barker and wife Vanessa Kettelwell, a trained cook. The couple wanted to develop a niche graphics focused product targeting the upper end of the market in developed consumer markets around the world.

 A combination of sophisticated humour and graphics was adopted as a key point of difference, and chocolate was chosen as the carrier, an almost universally liked food product but one that had never been presented to consumers in this way.

“There are some big players in the chocolate category, but by creating a unique gift item with a story behind our brand, Bloomsberry transcends that,” says Mr Barker. “Chocolate packaging is typically a very traditional and serious business – we are coming at it from a very different position.”

Bloomsberry is targeting the middle to upper end of the market. Its core target is “foodies”, particularly educated females 30 plus who are prepared to read the label to get the humour. Research also shows females far outstrip males when it comes to gift giving.

The firm launched its chocolate bars - with names like Bochox, Chocoscopes, Oral Pleasure and Emergency Chocolate - successfully in New Zealand, and then started exporting into Australia and Singapore.

It chose the United States as its first major market outside of Australasia as it contains a very large number of Bloomsberry’s core consumers and is a leader in global design/media, explains Mr Barker.

From the start, Bloomsberry has focused on building its distribution channels and future proofing its intellectual property, using business partners and advisers to supplement the skills of the small New Zealand team.

“IP protection is paramount,” says Mr Barker. “Registration of our trademarks and some of our designs began almost at inception in the key English language markets of New Zealand, Australia, United States and the UK.

“We always wanted to be in control of our own distribution because it keeps us closer to our customers and ensures we are actually building a larger business over the longer term. Owning our distribution also allows us to add products and bring new types of products into the distribution channels we have entered.”

That strategic thinking helped Bloomsberry secure Paul Pruett as its US CEO. Mr Pruett was looking for a new challenge after taking health-snack company ZonePerfect Nutrition from annual revenue of $1 million to more than $100 million.

“We jumped at the chance to bring him on board as our US CEO,” says Mr Barker. “He’s pulled over some of his key people to run our distribution and used the skill set and team that had built his business to help build ours.

“Partnering with a highly experienced US partner has been a critical ingredient in our rapid success in the United States, ensuring speed to market and in-depth channel knowledge that has resulted in rapid and sustainable growth.”

Bloomsberry is now sold in the United States by small stores and also large retail chains Barnes & Noble, Borders book shops, Macys, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom. It has also established a relationship with leading upmarket organic supermarket chain Whole Foods.

The chocolate itself is manufactured locally in the United States, reducing costs and eliminating the challenge of shipping perishable goods. Just in time manufacturing means that the bars are only “built” (the combination of the chocolate with the box) once an order has been received.

Next year Bloomsberry is planning to replicate the key parts of the US business model in Germany, where it has already prepared designs for this market. After that it plans to roll out in the UK, where it is already selling small quantities through Harvey Nichols. It has also signed a distribution agreement with a Canadian partner.

“The business model we have developed for the United States means we have no real major plant and equipment requirements,” says Mr Barker. “We can enter a new market quickly and without major capital requirement, apart from stock.”

He says localising the product design and humour for each market while retaining a New Zealand identity is another key ingredient in Bloomsberry’s success, and it is using in-market designers particularly in non-English speaking countries like Germany and The Netherlands to ensure it gets the design and humour just right.

Chocolate taste preferences also vary from market to market, and it is localising the chocolate for each market, following extensive consumer research.

Bloomsberry’s unique combination of chocolate, design and humour is proving a hit with international consumers. The business is growing quickly, faster than anticipated, says Mr Barker, with very strong year on year growth expected to continue as it expands into new export markets. 

Contact: Vanessa Kettelwell, CEO, Bloomsberry & Co Limited, phone 03 348 5044,
 Vanessa@bloomsberry.com, www.bloomsberry.com