The early bird catches the NPD worm, says Greggs manager

As well as putting the finishing touches to its Halloween range, Greggs is already thinking about new product development (NPD) for next year.

Early in November Greggs has a series of NPD meetings to decide which Halloween products will get bumped and which will stay, based on sales over the period.

Russell Gower, marketing manager at the Treforest bakery in Wales, said that on average it will bring out about eight to 10 new seasonal products for the Welsh market.

"We are developing a range of very gruesome sounding products: for example we have crispy eye cakes. Other products include ghost and pumpkin biscuits," said Gower.

He said the rate of sales over the Halloween period shoots up: "And then as soon as November comes around the innovation begins for the year ahead. By June Halloween is pretty much nailed - in terms of prices and things - but we don't start manufacturing until the week it goes on sale."

After this, marketing starts to think about Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Christmas.

Gower said Greggs' marketing managers can pick from central and local NPD.

"I have already started to challenge our central office to start thinking about what products Greggs will make when it is the London Olympics. There is no point in trying to start this process six or nine months before. We need to put our thinking caps on now otherwise we will miss out on a valuable NPD marketing opportunity."

Gower said one of his favourite new products was launched at the World Cup: "There was a lot of hype surrounding David Beckham so we produced Golden Ball Doughnuts. This is the sort of thinking that pushes sales."

He said that the best way to produce new products is to spend the day brainstorming and, for every 20 wacky products, there will usually be one very good one.