꼬는 끈 vs. 플라스틱 클립 : 베이커리 사업에 대한 작은 거물들의 전투

Companies & Industries

Twist-Ties vs. Plastic Clips: Tiny Titans Battle for the Bakery Aisle

By Paul Lukas on March 13, 2013  

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-13/twist-ties-vs-dot-plastic-clips-a-10-dot-6-billion-battle-of-tiny-titans#p1

(Corrects estimated size of the market for twist-ties and plastic clips.)

If you regularly purchase Arnold bread, a popular supermarket brand, you may have noticed a slight tweak to the product’s packaging last summer. The little plastic clip at the end of the bag—colloquially known as a bread clip or bread tag—was replaced by a twist-tie.

Was this change driven by aesthetics or, perhaps, economics?

Nope. “Our research showed moving to bag ties from clips was a cost-effective way to meet consumer preferences,” says David Margulies, a spokesman for Bimbo Bakeries (GRBMF), the mass-market baker that owns the Arnold brand. “So we made the switch during an equipment upgrade last May.”

This was the latest move in a business war that’s been under way for more than half a century now. It’s a battle fought by the makers of inconspicuous little products that cost a fraction of a penny to produce—the ones that everyone knows and nobody thinks about, but which represent more than an estimated $10 million in annual sales. Insiders describe the turf as the bakery bag closure and reclosure market; this is the battle of the plastic clip vs. the twist-tie.

Even the combatants agree there’s no imminent sign of a clear winner. “We feel, based on surveys we’ve done, that the twist-tie is consumer-preferred, but of course the clip people will tell you the same thing about their product,” says Beth Radloff, marketing specialist for Bedford Industries, a Minnesota-based firm that’s the largest twist-tie manufacturer for the U.S. bakery market. “I think the two methods will always co-exist.”

The bag clip was created by a California inventor named Floyd Paxton, who whittled the first prototype from a piece of plastic while flying home from a business trip in 1952. Paxton soon founded Kwik Lok, based in Yakima, Wash., and still the dominant clip manufacturer today, with plants on four continents. The clips were originally applied by hand to bags of apples, but Kwik Lok began making automated machinery to apply the clips to bakery products in the early 1960s.

Around the same time, Oklahoma-based Burford developed similar machinery to apply twist-ties. Ever since, the two sides—more friendly rivals than sworn enemies—have been jockeying for position. Granted, it isn’t quite Coke vs. Pepsi or Macs vs. PCs, but it’s still a classic case of an entire industry defined by what feels like an eternal, unresolved tug-of-war.

There are no data documenting the two products’ relative market shares in the bakery aisle. Both sides, perhaps unsurprisingly, claim they’re winning. There seems to be general agreement that twist-ties have taken the lead with bread, while clips hold sway with buns, rolls, bagels, and English muffins. There are also pockets of regionalism: Everyone agrees, for example, that the West Coast is clip territory.

All the major players in the category are privately held and declined to disclose sales figures, so here is a bit of plausible extrapolation. U.S. unit sales for packages of bread, rolls, buns, English muffins, and bagels for a recent 52-week period totaled more than 7.2 billion (yes, we still eat a lot of carbs, Dr. Atkins notwithstanding). If we allocate half of those packages to clips, which sell for about $2.15 per thousand, and the other half to twist-ties, which cost about 80 cents per thousand, we’re talking about a $10.6 million market, not counting sales of the machinery that applies the closures. The annual market for the machines is hard to assess: Every set is customized for the client, and it lasts for years. In any case, not bad for a pair of utilitarian doohickeys, right?

The foot soldiers in the middle of all this are the salespeople who try to persuade commercial bakers to install one type of closure-application machinery or the other. One of them is Mitch Lindsey, who’s been selling twist-tie machinery for Burford, the industry leader, for 30 years—long enough to make him a full-throated evangelist for the cause.

“The twist-tie is less expensive, and it gives you a tighter closure, keeping your bread fresher,” he says, launching into a well-practiced and clearly sincere sales pitch. “And the bag is always secure inside the twist-tie. A lot of times you’ll see a bag that isn’t completely inside the plastic clip, and the clip can also damage or cut the bag.”

Lindsey’s competitors beg to differ. Kwik Lok salespeople point out that their machinery is less expensive and runs faster than twist-tie machinery. Clips also offer a printable surface, which can carry prices, sell-by dates, and even 2D bar codes that can direct a consumer to recipes or other promotions. And the clip snaps on and off relatively quickly, while the twist-tie has to be, well, twisted and tied.

Interestingly, that extra bit of labor may actually provide twist-ties with a subliminal advantage among consumers. A few years back, the milk jug industry designed a cap that could be sealed with just a one-quarter turn, but it flopped. “Consumers instinctively didn’t feel like it was sealed well enough, and they wanted to keep turning, so most companies went back to a half-turn,” says Lisa Pierce, executive editor of the trade magazine Packaging Digest. She thinks twist-ties may benefit from that same psychological mechanism.

Or maybe not. Anecdotal evidence from both camps suggests that many consumers are fiercely loyal to one method or the other, often for reasons they can’t explain. “And just as some consumers feel strongly about it, so do the bakery plant managers,” says Rich Zaremba, Kwik Lok’s eastern division sales manager. “In the case of Bimbo and Arnold bread, they just wanted to go in a different direction. Each plant is free to do that, whether it’s plant-indicative or perceived market-driven.” (That “perceived” is a nice little dig, no?)

One thing industry professionals on both sides agree on is the dumbfounded reaction they receive when people learn what line of work they’re in. “I’ll be sitting next to someone on an airplane, and the first comment is always, ‘You make your living out of that one little clip?’” says Hal Miller, Kwik Lok’s vice president of sales.

“Then they think for a second and say, ‘Well, I guess somebody has to make ’em.’”

요약

 지난 여름, 슈퍼마켓의 인기 빵 브랜드인 Arnold는 빵 포장지에 달린 플라스틱 클립이 꼬는 끈으로 바꼈다. 이는 고객 선호도를 만족시키기 위한 비용을 절감하는 방법이라고 한다. 이는 한 업계의 전쟁에서의 작은 움직임이다. 생산비에 아주 일부분인 것 같지만 연간 1000만 달러로 추정된다는 것을 발견한 어느 제조업체의 전투다. 설문조사에 따르면, 고객들은 끈을 더 선호한다고 응답했다고 미국 베이커리 시장의 끈 제조업체 Bedford Industries의 마케팅 전문가가 말한다. 

 플라스틱 클립은 Floyd Paxton가 발명했고, 오늘날 저명한 클립 제조업체 Kwik Lok를 운영하고 있다. 원래는 사과 봉투를 묶었으나 베이커리 제품에 사용하기 위해 자동화된 기계를 만들었다. 같은 시기에 Burford는 꼬는 끈을 제조하는 기계를 만들었고, 그 후로 이 둘은 라이벌이 되었다. 베이커리 사업에 대한 두 기업의 시장 점유율이 나온 정확한 데이터는 없다. 이 카테고리에서 주요한 업체들은 판매 수치를 공개하기를 거부하고 있기 때문에 그럴듯한 추정을 해 보겠다. 최근 52주 동안 미국의 빵 포장 당 판매량은 72억 달러로 추정할 수 있는데, 이 중 절반이 클립이라면 천 개당 $2.5로 판매했고, 꼬는 끈은 천 개당 80센트로 판매했으니 시장은 1060만 달러로 추정할 수 있다. 

 이 전쟁의 병사들은 영업사원들이다. Burford의 영업사원은 베이커리업체에 이렇게 설득한다. 클립보다 저렴하고 빵을 더 신선하게 유지하고 클립은 빵 봉지를 망가뜨리기도 한다고. 하지만 Kwik Lok의 영업사원은 끈 제조 기계보다 더 빠르게 생산하며 생산비가 저렴하다고. 또한 클립에 표면에 유통기한을 인쇄할 수 있으며, 레시피나 다른 프로모션으로 활용할 수 있는 바코드를 입력할 수 있다고 한다. 

 흥미롭게도, 꼬는 끈은 약간의 노동을 제공하는데, 이는 이점으로 작용한다. 몇 년 전, 우유 업계에서 한 번만 돌려서 닫히는 뚜껑을 만들었지만 실패했다. 그 이유는 소비자들이 제대로 닫히지 않았다고 느꼈고, 계속 더 돌려서 닫기를 원했기 때문에 우유 업체들은 다시 뚜껑을 원래대로 교체했다고 한다. 이러한 일화에서 소비자들은 어떤 방법이든지 극심하게 길들여져 있다는 것이다.