During my first year at the agency, I had the pleasure of working with strategic mastermind, Justin Holloway, now with Dye, Holloway, Murray in London. We were working on a pitch and he was explaining the brand identity of Trader Joe’s. He summarized it as a company that sort of brings the epicurean delights of society to the common man.

Trader Joe’s specializes in being an affordable gourmet store. They eliminate the middle man by producing their own foods with vendor partners. If the food does not meet their quality standards, they have no problem with axing it or making it unavailable until they find a new partner. They carry very few brand names and will often carry a brand name until they can clone it to their standards (like Nutella). The shocking thing is that the industry average for product development is 9 months. Zara is rumored to be able to develop a product and get it to market in 2 weeks. When I first read about Zara, I thought not only is this a fantastic model, but it is a lot like Trader Joe’s.

Google introduced a new line of googlevative designs for their iGoogle personal portal. They assembled some of the best known designers, artists and musicians to build a series of trendy skins as part of Google’s global effort to allow its users a way to make their experience unique. Bonus they can also express their love for some of their favorite artists.