This is the stuff we'd like to do the most here at Tenzing: create an entirely new product range, under a new brand, from nothing.
Until bbqcanvas came on the market, all grill covers looked quite boring. No prints, no colours, just a beige-ness in colour and design. Then bbqcanvas stormed onto the market and magazines wrote it was "the best thing since sliced bread". Well, we don't know about that, but the designer bbq cover sure made your deck or backyard look more friendly.
Accidentally we stumbled on another gap in the market: a decent gift for men. Apparently women had a hard time finding a nice gift for dad when Father's Day or Christmas came around. They were looking for something else than the Repco gift card or another pair of socks. Good to know for all you entrepreneurs out there.
Tenzing did all of the design: from naming to product design, from brochure design to Google ads, and from sourcing the product in China to marketing in New Zealand and Australia. Great fun. And a great product. It injected a dose of style over the barbecue and created a whole new category in the market: the designer bbq cover. It all started here, at Tenzing :)
A simple and straightforward logo. The name references 'art' by using the word canvas — not only the material that the product is made of, but also of course the fabric for paintings.
The red tab of the logo works as a sort of a 'flag' that can be attached to different media and along edges. Much like Levi's red tab sits proudly on its jeans.
The designs of the bbqcanvas prints are very much made with a New Zealand sensitivity. The sheep and the red snapper didn't prove the most popular though. It turned out that the floral design and the dotted tree were the best-sellers.
We made sure the screen printing was done at the highest level. In the end, we decided on triple passes to ensure the best colour richness and durability.
The entire execution was done to a super high standard, with beautiful piped seams all around the edges of the fronts and backs.
Even though the product pretty much sold itself, we had beautiful little booklets printed to be handed out at retailers and trade fairs.
An all-in-one box was the most practical way of solving the issue of several different available sizes of product. A table on the packaging allowed us to indicate the size of the cover with a simple tick.
The introduction of the product received a lot of attention in the media. Focussed PR activities on mostly interior design magazines in Australia and New Zealand resulted in free publicity north of $100,000 for the brand. By Christmas, bbqcanvas had sold out of its initial stock of 5,000 units. The smoke of a grill never smelled more like success to us.
