Wet Ones Rebrand is a branding strategy and product design collaboration with Edward Wang, Cody Pan and Jess Han at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2018. 

“This seminar will ask architects to operate as brand strategists. However, rather than invent new products, students will instead innovate upon existing brands.”

An American Legacy
Since the 70s, Wet Ones has been the go-to wet wipe brand for American moms who want to keep their families healthy and clean in a germ-phobic culture. But in 2018, that may no longer be the case. For example, Kleenex, who this year released a line of wet wipes, is 15x bigger than Wet Ones.

Wet Ones must compete.

Crisis 1: Limited Demographic

• There is a lack of emotional relevance to a larger demographic beyond american moms.
  

Crisis 2: Emergent Competition

• Impending business crisis related to emergence of competition as other brands have entered pushing the same product.
  

Wet Ones must innovate to survive.

Wet Ones can be managed in the long-term and translated into new profitability by going premium. Introducing - Spruce.

Through broad market research and competitive analysis in the wipes market, we identified a whitespace that exists at the nexus of Beauty, Nutraceuticals, and Travel. 



What we are offering today is an opportunity at a category defining product - Spruce wipes feature premium essential oils that deliver nutraceutical benifits to meet a variety of needs, on-the-go.

Now let’s take a closer look at what Spruce has to offer and - who will be using our product to get Spruce’d.


Spruce addresses the needs of these users and delivers a brand that is:

• Sophisticated: Spruce has a discerning eye and appreciates the finer things in life.
  
• Flexible: People rely on Spruce to be there for whatever comes their way.
  
• Energizing: Spruce picks you up when you feel drained, leaving you feeling reinvigorated and refreshed.
  
• Compassionate: Spruce understands your struggles and helps you power through challenges you didn’t think you could overcome.
  

Brand Development
The name Spruce refers to the word to describe someone or something that is neat and smart in appearance. It is also an action verb - meaning that if maybe we’re not spruce - we can get spruce’d! Additionally, Spruce, also a type of tree, makes a nod to nature.

To develop the logo, we looked at the landscape of brands operating outside the nexus of our whitespace.

• Beauty tends to skew darker wordmarks
  
• Nutraceuticals favor emblems with and of color
  
• Travel shows combinations, with many logos atop holding shapes

Looking at color,

• Beauty is overwhelmingly black
  
• Nutraceuticals fall all along the colorwheel
  
• Travel favors blues

With these considerations in mind, we developed the logo for Spruce.

• Logotype: Wordmark supported with lock-up description
  
• Font: Optima + Graphik Wide Medium sub
  

This combination reflects our brand personality with cues to beauty that have a masculine undertone.

Our design considerations are two-fold:

1. The product is a Premium, which means we have to invest in its quality 💎️and it has to be beautiful 🌸️. Apart from their functionality, we took scent inspirations from beauty masks and fragrances.
   
   
2. The product is Portable, meaning that it should be ergonomic 👐️ and hand-held 🖖️. The average hand size (length) of male is 7.44” and female is 6.77”, while the average palm size (width) of male is 3.33” and female is 2.91”.

Design Development


︎︎︎ Initial design sketches

︎︎︎ Foldable design


︎︎︎ Product demonstration

︎︎︎Stippling Patterns + Color Gradients for each types of use


︎︎︎Final front + back layout

We would use Tyvek and Adhesives as the major material of the product. (Wet Ones to provide their expertise on the towel part.)

Packaging options include singles, 4-pack, and 12-pack box, which will exist in check-out, travel baskets and beauty aisles of supermarkets and convenience stores. 

In the US, the 3 markets that Spruce is tapping into are worth:

• Nutraceuticals: $64.8 billion
  
• Travel: $31.3 billion
  
• Facial wipes: $1.41 billion
  

Making some estimates of market potential, assuming we can achieve 3% of the nutraceutical market, 0.5% of the travel market, and 5% of the facial wipes market, this would translate to $21.7 million dollars, or 11.5% of Wet Ones current net worth.



Product Costs/Profits

Comparing the retail price and production costs of Wet Ones products, the profit ranges from about $1.10 to $1.80, or 73 - 75%. On the other hand, because Spruce is a premium product, each product has a higher retail price: $2.15 for the single wipe (more than Wet Ones but less than a face mask), $8 for a 4-pack, and $20 for the 12-pack box. While the product is also more expensive to manufacture, these premium retail prices lead to greater profits: ranging from $1.75 to $15, or 75 - 80%, which is 5% more than Wet Ones.

Wet Ones Rebrand

Academic Work ︎ Harvard GSD
2018 Fall

Professors
︎︎︎ Teman Evans, Teran Evans
Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape

Collaborators
︎︎︎ Edward Wang, Cody Pan, Jess Han

Responsibilities
︎︎︎Market research and analysis, new branding strategy, product design, prototype production, presentation, pitch. Everyone in the team has to engage in all parts of the project over the course of 11 weeks.