Industry:
Cleanroom supplies

Geographies:
Global

Challenges:
  • Small company
  • Higher prices than larger competitors
  • Low market awareness
  • Small budget

Solutions:
  • Branding strategy to differentiate and raise awareness
  • Customer Service program that's above and beyond
  • Thought leadership and encouragement of "green" philosophy

Results:
  • 300% increase in brand awareness
  • 250% increase in average order size
  • 90% increase in revenue
  • 31% increase in gross profit
  • 10x increase in customer confidence

We were at a point where we needed to change the way we were talking to our customers. Aximum showed us the way.

Success Stories > Keeping it lean, green, and clean

Keeping it lean, green, and clean: an Aximum success story

Our Client

Our client is a privately-owned organization focused on producing and selling cleanroom supplies for the microprocessor, aerospace, medical device, electronics, and industrial manufacturing markets. They are a small company with a small market share and, because they can't take advantage of economies of scale, usually have higher costs than their larger, more efficient multinational competitors.

The Client’s Needs

After consultation, we determined the best courses of action:

  1. Demonstrate industry leadership as the client faces relentless competition from the main players
  2. Add value to the customer experience, thereby justifying the slightly higher costs
  3. Communicate and live by a "green" philosophy without losing market share or business efficiencies

Above all, these actions needed to drive more revenue-generating opportunities, and couldn't cost a lot of money.

Develop branding strategy to establish our client as an innovation leader

The client's old approach to product communication was "one size fits all," where all products were presented to customers in the hopes this would maximize potential revenue. The problem was that many products were not easily interchangeable across different cleanroom environments. For example, glove liners, which are fabric-based, work great in industrial applications, but are unsuitable for super-clean applications because they shed fibers as they're being used.

The new approach was to segment customers by industry-standard cleanroom class definitions and develop three product lines that aligned with this segmentation. We helped the company capitalize on its previously existing "master brand" by developing three complementary "sub brands" using terminology that successfully resonates with customers (we knew this by conducting customer focus groups).

Differentiate with customer service that's above and beyond the competition

The majority of the client’s customer complaints dealt with product delivery delays, so we worked with them to implement a same-day shipment pledge to its customers. While most cleanroom supply companies ship directly from their overseas manufacturing facilities and carry little to no warehouse stock, our client has a large warehouse in the U.S. and subsequently greater control over its inventory, a competitive advantage they weren’t capitalizing on. We developed a new message and philosophy for our client: orders received by 5:00pm Eastern are guaranteed to ship on the same day. With the exception of some slight operational tweaking, all of the pieces for this very valuable differentiator were already in place; it was just a matter of committing to the guarantee and communicating it to customers.

Create value-added information to customers regarding green technologies

The cleanroom supply industry is notoriously wasteful, given the throwaway nature of most products. Some super-clean cleanroom environments do not allow the use of reusable or washable products. However, many others, such as industrial manufacturing facilities, are prime candidates for green practices. Our client was one of the first companies in the industry to develop green messaging, and to follow a philosophy of "reduce, reuse, and recycle." Examples include:

  • Reduce - using glove liners under gloves, thereby reducing the number of glove changes; attending company-sponsored webinars that demonstrate proper techniques for using products; developing new adhesive mats that are water-based, rather than using toxic, solvent-based materials
  • Reuse - encouraging the use of washable apparel, masks, and wipers for appropriate cleanroom environments
  • Recycle - educating customers to move away from the “throw it all out” mentality and recommending that non-hazardous materials be recycled; creating an affiliate network with recycling organizations and featuring these companies as "service partners"

In addition, we worked with The Climate Conservancy at Stanford University on getting a "Climate Conscious" rating for our client, which is essentially a Good Housekeeping Seal for green products.

Results

  • New branding strategy resulted in a 300% increase in brand awareness among non-customers, and a tenfold increase in customer confidence that the client had a solution to fit their unique needs
  • New differentiation and solution-based messaging created a 250% increase in average order size
  • 90% increase in revenue within 12 months of implementation
  • 31% increase in Gross Profit
  • 88% of new customers ranked same-day shipment as “extremely influential” regarding their decision to purchase from our client
  • 91% of new customers said the green philosophy and educational outreach was “extremely important,” so much so that they'd be willing to pay up to 25% more in order to support the client’s efforts to change the industry

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