brand and bottle
Posted by Barry Silverstein on March 2, 2010 10:27 AM
Nowadays, food brands often come out with "new and improved" versions of popular products. That's part of keeping a brand current and accommodating changing consumer tastes.
But not Tabasco. For 142 years, the world's leading hot sauce has used the same formula for its "original red sauce." The McIlhenny Company still soaks the peppers in secondhand white oak bourbon barrels, as the company has always done. While the peppers are now grown in various locations around the world, the final product is aged on Avery Island, Louisiana, where the family-owned company has been based since 1868. The packaging hasn't changed much, either. Tabasco still comes in 2-ounce bottles, each with the iconic triangular label.
According to Paul McIlhenny, the company's fourth-generation president, his great-grandfather, Edmund "E." McIlhenny, concocted the hot sauce for family and friends. Then he sold some to New Orleans restaurants and men's clubs. By the mid-1870s, McIlhenny says, the sauce was being sold in grocery stores in the US and England. No other hot pepper sauce was commercially available at the time.
Today, there are plenty of small gourmet competitors, but Tabasco holds an estimated 20 to 25 percent market share. The product sells in 165 countries, and carries labels printed in 20 languages. Forty percent of McIlhenny's sales comes from international markets. The company has plans to expand in China and Eastern Europe.
So while other products may change, Tabasco remains an original – and that's what makes this brand hotter than ever.
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