On July 25th, 2010, after months and months of planning and strategizing, J.W. Oliphant & Associates saw their hard work and brand vision pay off with the celebrated launch of legendary gourmet food company, Harry & David on QVC.

Long known for their high quality gift baskets and towers, the Harry & David brand has earned their reputation as a truly aspirational, top-shelf brand for over 75 years.

Marrying Harry & David’s deep routed brand recognition in the marketplace with QVC’s capabilities as the leading multi-dimensional electronic retailer in the world was an exciting opportunity and one that required a unique “hook” in order to compliment the existing Harry & David retail product mix and not compete with it.

After several visits to Harry & David’s corporate headquarters in Medford, OR we learned that this gourmet food giant is a completely vertically integrated manufacturer. They make, bake or grow over 85% of all 4,200+ items in their product assortment. This means that Harry & David is one of the only and certainly the largest gourmet food companies in the world with significant control of their manufacturing process!

We were now on to something...

As the product opportunities were swarming in our creative heads we further realized that Harry & David has two distinctly different sales/distribution models. From their famous Fruit Of The Month Club to their historic Royal Riviera Pears and the game changing Moose Munch the Harry & David print and web based offerings are a collection of completely recognizable iconic brand offerings. But what about the items sold at the over 160 Harry & David stores nationwide? After visiting a number of these store locations we came to realize a quite different assortment of products were offered beyond the traditional products found in their catalogs and on the website. At the store level, we found, that the customer was making a self-consumption purchase more often than a gifting purchase (Now our heads were really spinning). We had discovered an underlying brand story that was laying dormant...

We had found our hook!

After careful analysis and research in the field we now knew to build the Harry & David / QVC strategy to speak to the “self-purchase” first and the “gifting” purchase second. This opened the door to significant changes in how the products are bundled and presented on QVC vs. traditional Harry & David sales venues.

Our first two items launched on July 25th, 2010 and were huge successes! Subsequently, we have built Harry & David themed shows and extended the QVC on-air and online assortments to include offerings from just about every gourmet food category… no other QVC gourmet food brand has done this!

The new Harry & David brand slogan… “Happiness Delivered” is rolling out to perfection with the perfect brand partners…  J.W. Oliphant & Associates & QVC!

- Jeff