Soft N Dry signs definitive agreement with private brands to boost U.S. retail sales

Last month, Soft N Dry,  announced its intention to expand into the wholesale private label and sales market, by signing a letter of intent (LOI) with Private Brands Sales & Marketing. This week, Soft N Dry confirmed this commitment with the signing of a definitive five-year agency agreement marking an important step forward in its expansion strategy in the wholesale private label (WPL) marketing and sales in the United States market.

The agency will be responsible for Soft N Dry™ private label, or white label sales strategy, WPL customer engagement, regional and national U.S. sales planning and execution across a range of integrated retail channels, including in-store and online.

Matthew Keddy, CEO of Soft N Dry™, said “I am genuinely excited to partner with Jim Daly who has a fantastic track record and has been the innovator and leader in America’s private label retail marketplace. Jim had the vision in 1993 to provide highly specialized services offerings at the dawn of the retail private label industry, and over the past three decades has positioned Private Label as the best-in-class to achieve sales growth at scale nationwide.   We are now rolling out at scale in the U.S. market and offering our WPL retail customers a new, premium, ‘Tree Free’ baby diaper that will maximize their margins and growth opportunities across their own sales channels and platforms.”

According to a recent report for the New York-based Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) by market researchers Circana Inc.;

• In the first half of 2023 private label’s share of unit sales hit a new record. Overall, retail private label brands accounted for 20.5% of all unit sales, which the PLMA described as a new high, and accounted for 18.8% of sales in dollar terms, another record.
• Peggy Davies, President of PLMA went on to note U.S. retailers are doubling down on product innovation, and that “having opted for a store brand over the national brand for the first time, there’s a strong likelihood the shopper will stick with the store [private label] brand,” she said. Total store brand dollar sales for the first six months of this year were $108bn and unit sales were 26.4bn.
• In a sperate report this summer from the Hartman Group, 41% of U.S. grocery shoppers said they’ve purchased more private-label brands since 2020, with 30% citing higher grocery prices as the primary reason for doing so. And while 55% of U.S. consumers said they buy private label store brands because the products are cheaper, 63% said private-label brands offer good value, which is why they purchase them.

Jim Daly, President of Private Brands Sales & Marketing Inc., said, “Soft N Dry™ is a great addition to our agency. Consumers and the national retailers we collaborate with are both looking for increased baby diaper performance, a break in pricing, and a core sustainability commitment and new direction in private label baby care products. Soft N Dry™ will be able to leverage the relationships we have built in our nearly three-decades in the private label retail space and is a new lane that we can grow together at scale in the coming years.”

This strategic expansion in the United States adds to the recent expansion of Soft N Dry™ logistics infrastructure in Mexico, designed to accelerate and optimize the arrival of products to key Latin American markets. In this sense, the company’s presence in Mexico will allow reducing delivery times and meeting growing demand efficiently.