BUSINESS DESCRIPTION

Since the early 1950s Le Parfait has been manufacturing its iconic jars. Today Le Parfait is seeing a growth in its market. Sales have grown about 50% since 2009, and are expected to go up even more. Our industry is directly related to the food industry, and there has been a growing trend in the organic food industry. Farming and organic food today are two of the fastest growing industries (9.8% from 2009). People who use our jars also care of where their food comes from and how it is prepared. They understand and appreciate the importance of home made meals. Cooking and preserving food is a unique experience that is directly linked with purchasing and then consuming it. Our team has done a great job in entering the social network as a blog for cooking, and has done a great deal in helping our valued customer understand the important role that our jar can provide in their kitchen. We have now understood, however, that our business has to move from offering only jars to offering a unique experience around our jars. In order to do so we are launching 3 lines of accessories that accompany our customer’s favourite jars.

• Le Parfait Preparer helps the consumer in the preparation of food directly linked with its preserving and canning experience. These accessories will fit directly on our jars and will guide the consumer through the process of cooking. The new product line and our jars will be directly correlated to one another during the purchasing time. Because of our love mark, existing customers will associate the experience of preparing food with our utensils to the ritual of preserving.

• Le Parfait Personnel allows the customer to personalize their own creations. Our customer can transform each creation into a signature one by using our labels, customizable caps and our unique jar dividers. This will help the customer clearly label and distinguish their creations, and make them more unique and personal. By using our marketing team’s help, we can expand the Le Parfait Personnel to the seasonal sales as well. Our marketing team already deals with enhancing the importance of seasons on our website, offering many options for recipes and ideas for the holidays. Today pickles and preserves are often used as gift and we can increase our sales by implementing what our marketing team does for the holidays and applying it to some of the products from our Personnel line. This would also open a potential new customer share, having the receivers of our jars become potential new clients.

• Le Parfait Promenade allows the customer to bring their jars on the go. Our jars today are not only used to make preserve and pickles but are also used as cups and containers for food. So why not try to

accommodate this need? We will be creating accessories that encourage and allow transportation of the signature creations around. Creating add-ons, such sleeves for our existing jars could potentially open a new market of transportable food containers. This can lead us into developing new product lines that could be targeted to new customers, such as commuters and people who habitually transport their food for lunch.

We will have to understand thoroughly our competition in the jar industry and in the cooking accessory industry. We understand the risk of existing competitors but we believe we have the advantage of using our love mark relationship to our advantage and cover the process of preserving and canning from the preparation, to preserving and consumption.

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT/ INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

The business industry Le Parfait is targeting the “private” preserving and canning industry. The industry has always been characterized by the use of glass jars that could be hermetically sealed in order to preserve food for a longer period of time. In the past 30/40 years the glass jar industry has been threatened by the substitution of glass with plastic and by the introduction of vacuum preserving. The glass jar industry has always been dominated by few name brands (Ball, Fido, Le Parfait, Bormioli) and has maintained its identity without introducing major innovations of new products. Private preserving is threatened by public canning that is used as food packaging. The size of private preserving has been stable for many years, but since 2005 has seen a growing trend that is directly linked to the enlargement of the organic food industry. What started as a trend has now been established as a habit in many modern families. People are beginning to understand more how important healthy food is for them and for their families, and they are starting to link their interest to organic food to the importance of serving healthy food on every occasion possible. This is a great opportunity for Le Parfait that, through its product line, can help customers enhance and deepen even more the idea of preserving and healthy living. The glass jar industry has limited itself to merely producing glass jars with different iterations of lids. The industry, even if growing after trends, does have some limitations. Many customers, who buy jars, will purchase the jars once and will keep their jars for many years, and only buy new lids to

substitute the original. The product that is being offered is not essential, and because jars can be washed and reused, they are often a one-time purchase. The industry in fact suffers of this aspect, and even if still a blooming industry, finds some limitations in expanding both the product itself and the quantities of sales.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

The exhibit below shows the existing market. From the center and out, we can see direct competitors, indirect competitors and potential new entries. Le Parfait, in the center, deals directly with other glass jar manufacturers as their main competitors. What gives us an advantage is our positioning in relation to our customer, establishing a love mark relationship. As we leave the center, we can see indirect competitors, that still work in relationship to conserving food, but do not manufacture high quality glass jars and have a broader appeal to the general public. On the outer ring instead, we can see potential new entries. These companies manufacture cookware lines and some companies (Constar Graham and Swiss) manufacture drinking bottle. The potential new entries are companies that could have easy access into our market and, because of their size, can potentially become a threat to our Le Parfait Experience. In order to seek advantage, we are erecting a barrier for maintaining our competitive advantage. The barrier will arise through using our brand identity and loyalty to our advantage, pushing on le Parfait Experience leverage. This will allow our customer to become part of our “family” and to use Le Parfait products throughout their journey of preserving, personalizing and transporting their food. Our brand will become the bridge between the acquisition and the consumption of our customer’s

signature creations.

Zooming in on our first exhibit, we are further analysing the area of direct competitors to understand where our brand fits into the market based on quality of product and price point. Le Parfait has always maintained a firm position in the high-end section, with expensive but life lasting jars. This positioning puts us in a delicate but advantageous area. Having a high-end product could be a risk, especially in today’s market where competition is based on reduction of cost and a lower quality product to meet larger scale targets. Based on Le Parfait customer loyalty our products can still fit in the high-end market. It will be fundamental to tie our accessory lines to our existing product, both in quality and in price point, to allow us to maintain our strategic positioning in the market.

The last Exhibit analyses in further depth the criteria that our company is trying to meet in comparison to the criteria that our closest competitors are already meeting. The criteria shown are based on characteristics that our new products are offering and on the existing fundamentals that our company is already dealing with. Considering our new lines as part of an experience, it is important to understand what criteria should be met in order to satisfy our customer’s needs. The Exhibit illustrates areas that are not being satisfied by the brands and that can be expanded upon. The area that looks most interesting to us is the area that falls between functionality and quality. Expanding with accessories lines can help us meet this area of need without changing our current position, Launching all of our different product lines at the same time will be crucial to positioning us in a strategic place on the market graph. We also seek opportunity on the area between quality and portability. Our last product line, Le Parfait Promenade, will allow us to enter this market share and open a potential door for future development in the transportation of signature dishes.

MARKET ANALYSIS

Le Parfait competes in the market of private pickling and preserving. The market has existed for over a century, and has changed from using pickling as a necessity to pickling as a passion. The market today deals with customers who are enhancing their passion and with customers who are seeking convenience. The first group of customers includes family members such as mothers and grandmothers and customers who like to take the meaning of cooking to a more sophisticated and advanced level. On the other hand, we have customers who are seeking convenience. These include mothers of larger size families who like to cook but are always ready to open one of our jars to

satisfy and feed her family, and younger generations of people, also singles, who appreciate cooking but don’t have the time to cook every, individual meal. Our market size today is well established, but is steady thanks to the love mark relationship we have built with our consumers. Today Le Parfait sells about 20 million jars every year. Considering that the average purchase of jars is of 4 pieces, this brings us to believe that our current customer base is of about 5 million customers. The market of private preserving is directly linked (based on a psychological analysis of our customer) to the market of organic food that is sold in speciality supermarkets and farmer’s markets. The target for our first two product lines Le Parfait Preparer and Le Parfait Personnel are targeted to our existing customers. As of today Le parfait is satisfying only the preserving needs of our customer. But by proposing a signature Le Parfait Experience, we are meeting our customer’s needs in areas that are directly linked to the preserving process: the preparation of food and the personalization of our dishes. Our last line, Le Parfait Promenade, will still be targeted to our existing customer, but will open our door to easily accessible customers that today use jars for a non-appropriate use, transportation. By creating interchangeable lids and sleeves we will be able to open our customer base to all of those people who use our and other brands of jars to transport drinks and food in. This will allow us to put Le Parfait brand out on the street and away from the kitchen, a place that our company has not yet experimented with. This can open a market that can target a much larger customer base such as our existing customer base, commuters and younger generations.

MARKETING PLAN

Le Parfait’s marketing plan will be focused on expanding its channels in the food retail business, maintaining our current price point and insuring that our product is always directly linked to our customer’s everyday life, especially when related to food. Our jars have always been directly linked to the use of food in our customer’s lives and today Le Parfait Experience is taking it a step further, positioning our jars and new lines of products as objects that are fundamental in creating and maintaining a healthy life style. By promoting and placing our products through retail food chains, Le Parfait will expand and create a deeper relationship with this channel that is being today used but not taken advantage of. By positioning our product in the retail food industry, we are giving Le Parfait

benefits. First we are placing ourselves in a position that has never been taken advantage of, stepping in front of the game with our competitors, and secondly, Le Parfait will be inspiring our customers to become, from the early stages of food shopping, part of Le Parfait’s Signature Experience. Our products will still be sold online through the existing channels in the U.S. such as Amazon, Home Naturals, Kitchen Supplier, and Kitchen by Karen. These online retailers will have the right to decide to sell our new products individually or to keep on selling only our jars. As of right now, the marketing plan will not envision an investment for our online retailers considering how spread out and not focused our online channels are today. PRODUCT/SERVICE Le Parfait is offering to their customer a new value proposition: preserving your food into a Signature Experience. This is a fundamental key in understanding the added value of our products. Our jars in fact, will no longer be focused only on preserving and canning food, but will become the bridge between the process of cooking and consuming. Through the introduction of our new product line we will be adding value to our existing jars. All of our new products are directly linked to the core of our business, the jars. This will allow Le Parfait to create a system where each product will complement one another, tying them together into a family, an experience. Our product will be constructed around the Le Parfait philosophy of long-lasting, recognizable and unique products. Creating product lines that will enhance the value to the famous glass jar, will help us obtain strategic positioning in relation to our competitors who have not yet encompassed the idea of an experience that comes together through a line of products. This will also allow us to enhance our brand recognition and expanding that to new potential customers who will understand the value and the experience of preserving and canning. PRICING The Pricing of our products will be based around our current price point that is applied to our lines of jars. Our jars today stand in the high-end price range of glass jars, and are between $ 9.99 and $ 29.99 in retail. Even if our competition is offering lower prices, our customer base is willing to pay the high price for our jars given the value and quality that they are receiving in return. It is fundamental for Le Parfait to maintain its position in its current price point in order to retain our brand image as it is. The following is a break down of our prices for each of the product lines (prices referred to retail):

• Le Parfait Preparer -Cutting board, between $ 14.00 and $ 17.00 -Grater kit, between $ 15.00 and $ 20.00 -Cutlery set, between $3.50 and $ 5.00 per individual item -Funnel, between $8 and $ 10.00

• Le Parfait Personnel -Labels, between $ 3.00 and $ 5.00 -Jar Divider, between $3.00 and $12.00

• Le Parfait Promenade -Caps, between $4.00 and $6.00 -Sleeves, between $6.00 and $8.00

PLACEMENT Our placement strategy will be focused around the food industry, our direct connection to the private preserving and canning industry. We will utilize well-known retail food stores to promote our product. As of right now, our first target will be Whole Foods. Using Whole Foods as our main channel will help us promote the idea of Le Parfait Experience, bridging it between food acquisition and consumption. Many of our current customers use Whole Foods as their main food shopping location. We can easily fit in with Whole Food’s price point of high-end food and products. Using this retail chain as our opening channel would allow us to use their value proposition “Selling the highest quality natural and organic products” to our advantage. Using this channel will also help us open the market to new customers who, because they are already spending so much money on Whole Food’s products, may be intrigued by the idea of preserving and canning. PROMOTION Promotion will be based on packaging and display of our products. Using our marketing team to our advantage, we will add value to our product through packaging. Today Le Parfait jars are sold around the world in brown cardboard boxes, but we will implement the graphic work of our marketing team (focused on the seasonality of food) to our products. We are considering selling our products to retail through a package program where a display would be included and could easily be restocked. This display will eliminate the setting up costs of our display and will force our retail channel to sell and display our products as a family. This will enhance our brand identity and will trigger the buyer to possibly purchase multiple products at once. Advertisement is also to consider in our promotional plan. We are going to target cooking magazines and cooking blogs. For the cooking magazines Le Parfait is going to appear on a full page spread ($ 6505) for 6 months of the year that will gradually decrease in our five-years projection plan. Our targeted magazines are Cook’s Illustrated, Whole Foods, Country Living and Vogue Home. We will have a primary focus on seasonal numbers in the months of February, May, August and November and the remaining two issues will be targeted between the months of September and December. For the cooking blog instead, we are going to target blogs that have at least 500000 views per month. These are niche-cooking blogs that focus on

sophisticated cuisine. We will start publishing for 8 months out of the year, to then build up to 12 months by year 3. The cooking blogs that have been taken in consideration are 101 Cookbooks, Joy the Baker, Smitten Kitchen, Dean DeLuca.