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Lindora Retail Crash Course: Packaging, Displays, Pricing

Along the walls of a conference room at Lindora Inc.’s Costa Mesa headquarters are 70 purple signs with motivational messages.

“The self-sabotage shuffle,” reads one, “learn to manage stress” another.

The signs aren’t for Lindora’s staff. They’re part of an e-mail support campaign started by Lindora and Irvine’s Allergan Inc. for people who’ve had Lap-Band weight loss surgery.

Look closer at the papered walls, and you’ll see the driving force behind them: Chief Executive Cynthia Stamper Graff. Her red editing marks dot the signs.

Graff, daughter of the company’s founder, is involved in every aspect of Lindora, which runs medical weight loss clinics and sells diet products.

The company runs 44 clinics, including nine inside of Rite Aid Corp. stores in Southern California.

Lindora also sells high-protein snack bars, shakes and its flagship diet kit at Rite Aid stores.

Graff’s fingerprints are all over Lindora’s “diet in a box kit.” She directed every step, including design, pricing and packaging.

The kit is one of many products from Orange County companies you’ll find on any given visit to a local drugstore, grocery or Target or Wal-Mart.

Landing a deal with a big retailer is hard enough. But that’s just the start.

Getting products to store shelves involves design, packaging, marketing, strategic pricing and features to prevent shoplifters from walking out with them.

Lindora’s diet kit, its first store product, contains all the components of Lindora’s weight loss program. It includes Graff’s “Lean for Life” book, a tape measure and a lean cooking DVD. It sells for about $40.

While Graff had a big hand in the kit, the product goes well beyond her.


Makeshift Display

Her brother, Bernie Stamper, Lindora’s facilities manager, and Marilyn Platfoot, chief operating officer, set up the first display for a store trial at a Costa Mesa Rite Aid.

When Rite Aid agreed to test the product, the drugstore chain didn’t have the right size of shelf.

So Stamper and Platfoot improvised a display using a shelf they bought at Ikea.

The kit sold well and a one store trial turned into six. Now the kit is sold in 450 Rite Aids.

In two years, the diet kit has added several million to Lindora’s yearly revenue, which the Business Journal estimates at about $50 million (see our women-owned business list, page 11).

Graff’s father, Marshall Stamper, a primary care doctor, started Lindora’s medical weight loss clinics in 1971. His premise was that if people lost weight, they could prevent ailments and cure some conditions.

Back then, he was called a quack, Graff said. Today, being overweight is accepted as a factor in diabetes, heart disease and other conditions.

Marshall Stamper now’s retired. He’s still an influence on the business, Graff said.

“He was here yesterday,” she said.

Graff is behind Lindora’s expansion into retail.

She wanted the diet kit to be Lindora’s calling card, which is why the packaging is brochure-like and includes a toll free number on the package.

The kit drives people to Lindora’s clinics, the heart of its business.

The individual parts of the kit already were sold at Lindora’s clinics, Graff said. But the products had plain, medicinal looking packaging. They weren’t “retail ready,” she said.


Consultants

So Graff hired P11 Creative Inc. in Santa Ana Heights to design graphics for the kit and its parts.

P11 also handles Lindora’s Web site and does other work for the company.

Rob Dodson, president of Vail Dunlap & Associates, a marketing company based in Irvine, worked with Lindora on the design and packaging.

Lindora and its consultants held several meetings to hash out the kit’s height, graphics, price, packaging and anti-theft features.

The most crucial part of the packaging: the 7-second test.

That’s where a customer has to be able to figure out what the product is in 7 seconds.

“With a kit, that’s even trickier because of its multiple elements,” Dodson said.

Price was another consideration. People will look at the kit and add up prices for each element in their head to see if it’s worth it, according to Dodson.

Graff originally thought the kit should sell for about $75. Rite Aid nixed that, she said. So Lindora lowered it to $39.95.

Each element doesn’t cost much to make, Graff said, so the kit’s still profitable.


Countering Theft

Shoplifting was a key consideration during design.

That’s why Lindora opted for clear plastic clamshell packaging, the kind you have to cut through to open.

The risk of theft ruled out a box, according to Dodson. People can easily steal from a box.

“If you take a single element out, the entire thing is worthless,” he said. “You get it back as a return.”

The design of the product also had to fit on Rite Aid’s shelves.

Lindora went a step further, Dodson said. It designed the kit so that it could fit on the shelf of a big retailer, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Lindora doesn’t have an exclusive arrangement with Rite Aid for the kit and eventually could sell it elsewhere.

The display for the kits is designed for an “endcap”,a shelf at the end of an aisle. Lindora’s endcap display is flanked on both sides with company brochures and a prominent Web site address. A poster atop the display reads “Weight Loss Center.”

Once the look of the kit was designed, Dodson turned it over to a freelance engineer, who developed a prototype. Dodson uses different engineers depending on the type of packaging.

From design to packaging, the process took about three months, which is relatively fast, he said.

“We knew the client well,” Dodson said.

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