Vipp USA

Holger Egelund, who founded Vipp in 1937, was from the small Danish town of Randers. As the story goes, Holger won a car in a raffle at his local football stadium. Inspired by his future wife, Marie, who was a hairstylist by trade, he sold the car, and used the money to buy a metal turning lathe where he would develop the world’s first pedal bin and he named it Vipp, which means “opening and closing of a lid” in Danish. He gave the first Vipp to Marie as a love memento for her hair salon, where she could dispose of trimmings while styling the women of Denmark. Due to Marie’s customers’ response, Holger began production. The bin became a staple in the offices of Scandinavian doctors, dentists and hospitals. 

When Holger passed away, Marie was going to liquidate Vipp. Their youngest daughter, Jette, decided to purchase the company herself. Through resourceful thinking, Jette positioned Vipp as a design object – updating its image within the emerging European design industry. By 2006, with Jette’s re-founding of Vipp, she brought her children into the leadership of the company, Sophie as the Creative Director and Kasper, as Sales Director. Under the ‘new’ family, Vipp production increased 50-fold. The bins became available throughout Europe in leading design retail shops with annual revenues exceeding $10 million and became the subject of The Harvard Business Review. Having achieved recognition and ever-growing revenues in Europe, it was time for Vipp to make its mark in the most competitive global market…in the USA, but it wasn’t easy – it was 2009 and the world had entered a global economic recession.

Neta was retained by Vipp USA’s Head of Sales, Kasper Egelund, to carve out a US market entry Omnichannel Strategy that would achieve dramatic sales growth and significantly heighten Vipp’s visibility in the US. As Vipp online was not yet ready to establish its eCommerce strategy at the time of market entry we had to shift our thinking towards strategic wholesale partners, eCommerce distribution partners and key marketing events (both physical and digital). 

To get started, we conducted a deep dive to first understand Vipp’s 70+ year old brand heritage, and the ways in which to resonate its narrative most deeply within the US design community. We coupled our deep dive into the brand with gaining a comprehensive understanding of both US and Danish VIPP and Vipp USA’s operations to gauge the direction of our performance management regarding scale parameters and what could ultimately support US market growth. Our operational discovery entailed a full product assortment review factoring in margin opportunity (and all shipping logistics), US shipping logistics from a fulfillment perspective, as well as, design convictions to develop ideal distribution target materials.     

Based on price sensitivity and taking into context Vipp’s support of the arts throughout its European markets, we felt the strongest point of entry was to secure the most well recognized “good housekeeping” seal of approval in the art and design community and that was induction into The Museum of Modern Art’s Architect & Design Collection. After careful appeal to MoMA’s curatorial and retail departments, Vipp was inducted into MoMA’s permanent design collection in November 2009 and subsequently picked up and featured within MoMA’s esteemed Design Store catalog (circulation = 1M+ households throughout the United States) additionally distributed online at momastore.org, its’ NYC stores and international licensed distribution partners in Japan and South Korea (both online and in physical MoMA Design stores throughout Asia).  

Once iconic design status has been achieved and distribution touch points were proliferating, we shifted gears to target other leading wholesale distribution opportunities such as the DWR cross-designer pollinated event Can it! The Vipp Charity Auction of Artist Designed Cans in support of DIFFA and in commemoration of Vipp’s 70th anniversary that would continue to augment Vipp USA’s profile. This noteworthy event featured an exhibition and auction of VIPP trash bins that were transformed by 35 leading figures in the worlds of architecture, art, design, fashion and entertainment.

Given no Vipp online direct-to-consumer eCommerce channel yet, we then established a meaningful partnership with Design Public, which supported Vipp’s online debut through a concerted SEO and blog influencer campaign that reached 60,000+ design aficionados and 15,000+ bloggers and influencers. As Vipp USA had already established a relationship with Water Works (the bathroom), we then targeted the premium kitchen destination, synonymous with lux cooking, Williams-Sonoma, with a direct introduction to the head kitchen buyer. Within 1 year we had literally cornered every room in the house and achieved global recognition.

We partnered with Vipp USA for 6 months, as they entered the US market at one of the most devastating economic periods in US history, within the challenging home luxury sector, and proved our thesis, that when a strategy is foundational and brand, as well as product integral, significant growth results can be achieved.