After a client complained that sales of their regional juice products were lagging because of poor placement in the back coolers of retail stores, John Nottingham and his product design group at Nottingham Spirk set about creating a new way to display refrigerated products.
Alice Korngold | Fast Company
After a client complained that sales of their regional juice products were lagging because of poor placement in the back coolers of retail stores, John Nottingham and his product design group at Nottingham Spirk set about creating a new way to display refrigerated products.
What they ended up inventing was a solid-state display that needs no freon or other gases and uses less energy than conventional coolers. The juice products can now be displayed near the checkout counter and the display does not require installation but simply needs a nearby plug. There is also no barrier between the customer and the product which gives it great impulse appeal.
With this breakthrough, the designers at NS foresee new opportunities for grocery merchandising. Complementary products like cheese and crackers don’t need to be separated but could be displayed side by side on a shelf with a cooled section and non-cooled section. These modular solid state cooler displays could lessen the need for larger refrigerated chests using large compressors and freon gas.
John Nottingham attributes his group’s creativity and commitment to sustainability to the unique environment that the firm created. See my related post: “If Sustainability is the New Religion, Maybe it Belongs in Church.”
About Nottingham Spirk
Nottingham Spirk is a world-class product innovation firm with an unrivaled record of developing and commercializing disruptive consumer products, medical devices, digital IoT products and connected industrial products. We collaborate with Fortune 1,000 companies, middle market companies and funded venture companies to discover, design and execute product innovation programs and strategic business platforms that will delight customers, grow markets, and generate new revenue streams. Learn more about our innovation approach.
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