Costco

If you want to delight customers with high expectations, focus on the experience, not the product. A bar of soap isn’t that complicated—but consumers are.

Insight
Costco has enjoyed robust success with thousands of products under their private label Kirkland Signature brand. But for unknown reasons, their French-milled body soap was underperforming. After diving into the customer journey and analyzing current consumer trends, the Ziba team realized that the issue wasn’t the quality of the soap, but the quality of the experience.
Solution
One key insight was that buying in bulk doesn’t mean using in bulk: people often buy a dozen bars of soap, then put several in different locations throughout the house. So the first thing we did was redesign the packaging, to let customers break their purchase into smaller boxes for easy distribution. We also redesigned the outer packaging and the soap itself, to increase appeal in-store, and elevate the experience in home.
Impact
In the first three weeks after the redesign, sales of Kirkland body soap jumped by over 50%, with some Costco stores reporting increases of up to 300% over the next year. The collaboration was so positive for Costco that it marked the beginning of a long relationship, in which Ziba redesigned many products across the Kirkland Signature line.