COMING TO AMERICA

Ezie Bee authentic New Zealand honey is some of the best, most functional honey on the planet. They sell a rare and sought-after honey called Manuka, as well as a wonderful, complex Bush honey. At a time when glyphosate residue is tainting the world’s honey supply, Ezie Bee boasts a refreshingly clean product.

The owners of Ezie Bee, whose primary business is sheep cattle farming, transformed a passion for beekeeping from hobby to full-fledged CPG brand, bringing a desirable New Zealand commodity to market.

The United States is the second largest importer of New Zealand honey, and Ezie Bee decided to capitalize on this demand. They hired PCS Gourmet Foods to handle warehousing, distribution, and sales in the US, and brought in Upstart Food Brands to update their branding and packaging, which was not only dated-looking, it didn’t highlight the brand’s differentiating factors, and failed to meet US regulatory standards.

FUNCTIONAL BRAND, FUNCTIONAL HONEY

Ezie Bee is functional honey; the Manuka honey in particular. The antibacterial activity of the highest grade – 20+ (830 MGO) – is commonly used to treat wounds. It’s pretty unique, impressive stuff. This is something we highlighted, even using “functional honey” as the tag line.

We modernized the logo and developed a new bee icon that could pair well with the logo, but also be used separately as an iconic brand mark when appropriate. The packaging – one jar of bush honey, 4 grades of Manuka, and two snap packs (boxes and individual 5 gram packs) – was designed to be bold with an illustration of Manuka flowers and clear differentiation between strengths. We called out 100% New Zealand and No Glyphosate Residue.

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WEB-FIRST SALES STRATEGY

One unique fact about New Zealand honey is that online sales have dominated thus far over retail sales in the US market (retail makes up only $3.9mil of the $48mil sold in the US). As a result, having a strong e-commerce web presence for the new brand was absolutely key.

We developed a responsive, search-optimized, e-commerce website with some other cool features like a custom-developed batch tracker and 360-degree spinning product images, like the one above. Chris Malacarne took some wonderful product shots for the web, which you’ll find throughout the Ezie Bee site.