Striding into innovation

Arthur Lok Jack’s Rum and Raisen chocolate is elbowing the bigger players aside on grocery shelves these days. Its gold and brown packaging with the rum cask is impossible to miss. So too is Holiday Foods cassava chips, Busta diet soft drink and Kiss muffins. Local manufacturers seem to be ringing the bells of innovation with new packaging, bigger sizes and even changing the look of their products. Even television and print advertisements have taken on a new and innovative look, seeking to ignite public interest and generate sales in their products. All fingers point in the direction of  increased globalisation as being the main catalyst of this change. Competition is now the name of the game and it is a clear cut case of survival of the fittest.

Executive Director of the Institute of Business (IOB), Dr Rolph Balgobin, believes that innovation is the new key driver of international competitiveness. Innovation can mean many different things to many different people. It can be product innovation — the development of new products and changes in design of established products or process innovation. Either way, he said, companies need to alter their focus if they intend to be competitive a few years down the road. Rene de Gannes, Marketing Manager of Kiss Baking Company Limited, is of the view that local manufacturers are going the right way on product innovation.

TT, he noted, already had a number of world-class products on the market, both internationally and locally, which have been tried and tested and come out on top. “Our local products,” he maintained, “can compete internationally and in terms of quality and innovation, I consider us first world.” As a manufacturer, Kiss Baking Company itself has paved the way for innovation with the introduction of a range of product lines, from specialty cakes to breads. De Gannes said, “as an overall strategy, new product introduction is the lifeblood of a business. “Over the last three to four years, Kiss has been very aggressive in this regard in major categories of competition.” “Where the market for bread is concerned, Kiss has been instrumental in introducing onto the market its line of hops, butter breads, cinnamon raisin bread and for the health conscious, multi-grain bread.”

Another new category of product is the Kiss muffin. “We identified a niche,” de Gannes said, “where individuals with faster paced lifestyles wanted a healthy product, individually packaged and of excellent quality to consume as an in-between-meals snack or a meal replacement.” The Kiss cream-filled snack cakes, he continued, are aimed at children under the age of ten. “We have added a variety of flavours over time so that there is excitement in terms of new flavour combination and taste appeal. In terms of dessert cakes, Kiss has also been at the forefront of introducing character cakes and airbrushed cakes to be as current and relevant to the market as possible.” “I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag in terms of Kiss’s strategies for competition,” he said, “but I will say that we are ready to face the challenges of the global environment.”

“There are several product innovations to be introduced onto the market in the ensuing months and years ahead.” According to Dr Balgobin, firms now need to look at the quality of their branding, their capacity for innovation, as well as their capability for research and development of new products and services. It may also become necessary, he maintained, to “tweak” new processes to enable them to continuously produce an original product which will command a great percentage of market share. “Our local manufacturers,” he said, “need to ensure that they are competitive so that they can penetrate their competitors’ markets in the same way that competitors will seek to penetrate ours.”

President of the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers Association (TTMA), Anthony Aboud, says innovation will help local manufacturers prepare for competition. He believes that some local manufacturers are ready for increased competition, but others are still lagging behind. To be ready for globalisation and ultimately increased competition, companies have to start looking to where their opportunities lie, he said. “Smart businesses have been doing this,” he said. There are some local manufacturers who have already begun to access the efficiencies of other countries and expand their efficiencies into those countries where opportunities lie, he said.

“You have to pay attention to the market,” he continued, “whether it be locally or for export and you must also pay attention to what is being sold on the market.” “Market intelligence is everything. It tells you what you need to do, whether it is to change your packaging or your price.” A company’s survival though does not depend on its ability to introduce “jaw dropping” products onto the market at regular intervals, Balgobin said. “Companies make money selling water and salt, so there is always industry and market room,” he contended. “When people talk about jaw dropping products, this is really a symptom of an innovative process which is typically found in an innovative firm and that firm would very often be a competitive one,” is how he put it.

Companies like Sony and Apple, he said, will continue to perform well because they continue to shape the market, causing others to follow in their footsteps. In this way, they set the standard to which everyone else has to conform. “I suggest that we try to get to this point,” Dr Balgobin said.  “I am not saying that we can only compete at that point, but competitiveness really runs along a continuum and as long as we continue to move along that point and build our innovative capacity, we will continue to do well. “This is why I am saying that it is important for companies to strengthen not only their branding and marketing, which is also very important, but also their innovative capacity. “maufacturers need to ignite the market, not about the basic or petty things, but about the basic types of innovation in products and services that can really bring about excitement in the market place,” he said.