- New York Bold Onion Growers
Continue to Promote Brand
- By Greg Brown
Associate Editor
- Shoppers in central and upstate New York will continue to see the branded New York Bold onions on their shelves next year. The new brand was unveiled at select markets there in 2001.
According to preliminary figures, the brand used less than 5% of the onions produced in New York last year. The branded onions are natives of the onion-producing region around Oswego County.
Their company, New York Bold LLC is a grower-owned organization that grows, packs, and ships onions from its home in Oswego, N.Y. Its 14 members grow over 11 million pounds of onions annually.
According to Jan van der Heide, Cornell Extension of Oswego County, less than 1% of New York onions were sold under the New York Bold brand in the second marketing season for this premium cooking onion.
While the 14 grower members have not had revenues exceeding their investments and operating costs, they will continue their work to create the new brand – which will take time and money.
“Onion growers in New York, as anywhere in the U.S., face a saturated onion market, where onion prices have come under a lot of pressure,” said van der Heide. “Stagnant prices and rising costs of production have resulted in declining farm profitability.”
To address this declining profitability, the growers decided to create a brand to overcome the value proposition that onions generally fill in the retail sector.
In theory, growers could have increased production, increased production efficiency, lowered production costs or increase demand. But, increasing production in a mature market would have just led to lower prices, van der Heide told onion growers at the Great Lakes Expo held in December in Grand Rapids, Mich.
“Lowering production costs and increasing production efficiency have been the standard approach to improving farm profitability,” he said. “But this strategy can only improve farm profitability if prices remain constant.”
Instead, the growers decided to work to stimulate sales of onions by introducing a novel product. This began by building the perception in the consumer’s mind of added value, and through consumer education, said van der Heide.
In general, the work of the National Onion Association and growers associations provides generic promotion of onions. This generic promotion has paid off, said van der Heide, increasing per capita annual onion consumption to total over 18 pounds per person - up from about 10 pounds 25 years ago.
According to van der Heide, all things are equal until branding occurs. “Branding adds a premium value, and this brand equity is equal to the premium that consumers are willing to pay for your product versus the competition.
The New York Bold onion growers modeled their efforts after several well-known brands that the produce industry has used successfully to increase or maintain sales, including Sunkist, DelMonte, Chiquita and Ocean Spray.
“Branding, when done well, takes a lot of time and effort and money but offers opportunities when increasing production and production efficiency have been exhausted as means of increasing farm income,” said van der Heide,
What the New York grower did was ask themselves, can this market branding that worked for Vidalia, work for New York Bold Onions.
The brand has attracted attention in the onion industry, with the onions sold under the brand being known as very pungent with high sugar content.
Vidalia growers saw a tremendous increase in prices as opposed to prices paid for their generic onions prior to brand introduction, he said. But, Vidalia onions by themselves have lost their novelty value as growers increased their acreage from 3,000 acres to over 16,000 acres and other brands of onions were introduced.
The Vidalia brand is no longer commanding the super high prices that it used too, said van der Heide. “However, new product introductions under the Vidalia brand and extension of the marketing season through the use of CA storage for instance have helped to extend the brand and continue to offer opportunities for profitability to onion growers in Georgia.”
While the New York Bold Onions are marketed through only one supermarket chain, it appears that the promise of the brand resonates with at least a portion of consumers, said van der Heide.
