OVERVIEW
Yamamotoyama is a Japanese heritage brand founded over 350 years ago. Known in the United States predominantly for green tea, and in Japan for seaweed, a little known fact is that Yamamotoyama is the oldest green tea company operating in the world. Yamamotoyama came to Odepartment because of our experience in global rebranding strategy and familiarity with both the Japanese and U.S. market.
CHALLENGE
While Yamamotoyama has been operating in the U.S. and global market for over 40 years, brand awareness among the mass has been low. This challenge has been compounded by two major factors. Fragmented brand image, and distribution that relied heavily on Asian American grocery stores. In short, Yamamotoyama was seeking a fresh, yet culturally relevant way to appeal to a progressive and health conscious customer in the Western and Global market.
REPOSITIONING A HERITAGE BRAND
As a multi-generational, family owned business, you could say Yamamotoyama has been around the block. Taking the learnings from over 300 years, and translating that for the current marketplace and consumer demands was not simple, but embracing the brand heritage within the category of global green tea market was an important part of the evolution.
Global Rollout from Retail to Wholesale
As a business that serves both retail customers and food service businesses like sushi restaurants, we tackled everything from product assortment to packaging design for over 250 SKUs that are distributed all across the world. With so many variations in product grade quality, and long-standing customers, this proved to be a long process that involved everyone of the company's partners from distributors all the way to the chefs at some of the most premium restaurants.
