Premium Beauty News - The DieterBakic Group is well known for its innovative and unconventional designs.
Dominic Bakic - Historically we are a design agency and a strategically oriented packaging supplier, specializing in high-end stock packaging, but we grow to become much more! We see design as a primary component in brand development. The brand’s positioning and strategy is the keystone of our creative process. We explore the nature of brands we are working with, in order to define unique identities and strengthen the relationship with important target groups. Our aim is that packaging fully contributes to the brand personality. Our diversified services range from stock packaging to custom design, and from concepts to all-inclusive solutions.
Since we also work on the brand’s image and positioning, what we offer goes far beyond full-service and usual turnkey products. Now, many of the projects we are working on are based on branding.
For our customers the main benefits are that they get access to a fully integrated process and not only get concepts to market but also and immediately the partner that can execute those concepts. In addition, when we start working on a brand concept, we start very early to think about what is needed to promote and advertise the new products successfully; hence looking at all touchpoints and initiating successful campaigns.
Premium Beauty News - Can you provide us with an illustration of such a project?
Dominic Bakic - Of course! One of our most recent projects consisted in the development of the brand identity of Wunderbar, a line of professional hair care products launched by Pro Duo, a subsidiary of Sally Beauty Holdings. The group wanted to strengthen their footprint in the professional hair care market in European.
We helped them to develop the entire brand concept, starting from scratch. The only thing that existed was the name of the brand and a short description of its target positioning. Our services included the creation of the brand story, packaging design, logo optimization, colour code, as well as the art direction of the communication campaign (concept and realization of the photoshooting, brochures, sales-folder, POS advertisements, etc.)
Premium Beauty News - Innovation is the key factor of success in such a business. How do you handle this task?
Dominic Bakic - Actually, we handle the first stages of innovation through a quite unstructured approach. We collect ideas and packaging worldwide, we visit many tradeshows and retail shops, not only those related to the cosmetics business but also in sectors such as foods or leather goods. I’m convinced that cross-fertilization is key to true innovation.
Premium Beauty News - What are your main challenges and forecasts for the current year?
Dominic Bakic - Today, we work on projects that go beyond the mere packaging aspect and that contain higher levels of complexity compared to what we have dealt with in the past. This required setting-up new internal procedures and ways of working!
So far, we have been quite successful in selling this complexity to the market and we achieved a good growth over the last two years and are expected to continue that growth in 2014.
Our ability to create and strengthen the brand’s image, from the design of its packaging to the point of sale is our strongest asset. A product must be successful at every step: at the point of sale, it must attract and convince the consumer, and during its usage at home, it must produce enough consumer satisfaction to induce repurchases.
