"Anny Middon" > wrote in message
...
> "Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> >
> > Historically the Ball lid made by Jardin used white paint on the inside
of
> > the lid to prevent the food contents from rusting the lid, and the Kerr
> > lids made by Jardin use clear polyurethane to perform the same function,
> > ie: the inside of the Kerr lid is golden in color.
> >
> > As far as I can tell this is done for purely historical marketing
reasons
> > because some people feel that the coating on one lid is better than the
> > other and Jardin knows better than to bother a sleeping dog.
> >
> > But it -is- pretty clear to me that over the years Jardin's accountants
> > have been nickel-and-diming the sealing material to save money, making
> > it thinner and the strip itself narrower. They shaved probably a few
> > mils off the thickness and the strip is a couple mm narrower. I would
> > guess
> > the savings add up to .000000001 cents per lid. :-/ They also used to
> > stamp impress the Kerr and Ball name on the lid and now they just
> > print them, I guess that saved another .000000001 cents per lid. And
> > they also redesigned the graphic on the Ball lid to make it less pretty
> > and
> > more boring looking, thus making the printing simpler, saving another
> > .0000001 cents per lid.
> >
> > No doubt some executive got a million dollar bonus over those ones.
> >
> > What I can't figure out for the life of me is why in blazes that Jardin
> > has a lock on this market. There are hundreds of glass jar
manufacturers
> > out there who make commercial glass jars and commercial lids that spin
> > on with the industry standard 1/4 and 1/2 turn, all competing with each
> > other.
> > And you can take the lid off a commercially canned pickle jar and see
> > how much thicker the steel is in it and how much higher quality the
> > sealing strip is.
> >
> > It would seem to me that the time is ripe for one of the commercial
> > jar manufacturers to package their product for retail sale and make
> > their one piece lids available for retail sale for home canning, and
give
> > Jardin a run for their money. Certainly at the volumes they produce
> > they could easily undercut Jardin and still make a profit.
> >
>
> The problem is getting their products into the consumer-sales chain. It's
a
> totally different distribution, sales and marketing problem when consumers
> are your customers rather than manufacturers.
>
> For example, jars, rings and lids are often sold in grocery stores. Most
> people don't know this, but in some parts of the country the manufacturer
> (or distributor) pays the grocery store a fee for the shelf space in the
> stores. Getting products on the shelf in these stores is more expensive
> than in other parts of the country -- but getting grocers to give shelf
> space for a product such as jars can be difficult in any part of the
> country.
>

The easy solution to that is to OEM to another company that is already
in the distribution chain and has all the relationships built. The obvious
one
would be Kraft foods since they already make and sell Sure-Jell. And
you would start with lids that would fit regular Mason jars, since that is
an
obvious commodity item, and
you can advertise your name on them. Also, a bundle of a box of
powdered pectin with, say, 5 lids in it would make logical sense.

In addition, Jardin is already operating in the pectin market, with their
Ball pectin. It would make sense for Kraft to retaliate by entering the
lid/ring and possibly jar market.

What it comes down to I think is will people pay extra for the jars and
lids to say Ball or Kerr on them?

Ted