A Surprisingly Sweet Rebrand

When part of the research and discovery phase of a project involves eating copious amounts of mouthwatering caramels, you know you’ve hit the client jackpot. McCrea’s Candies is a small, family-owned company that specializes in all-natural, handcrafted caramels. Based in Boston, the mom and pop confectionery had an upscale product that had outgrown its original packaging. The McCrea’s brand was in dire need of a refresh, and Westwerk’s collective sweet tooth was more than happy to help.

When it comes to taste, McCrea’s caramels are in a quality class all their own. On the shelf, however, the generic packaging was making customers pass it by. Though all of McCrea’s caramels are homemade, the owners didn’t want their branding to feel the same way. Using McCrea’s commitment to flavoring its caramels with 100 percent all-natural, real ingredients as our inspiration, we created a new look that reflects the simple, upscale quality of the product.

The design places beautiful photographs of the raw ingredients front and center, and incorporates surprise pops of color and pattern into the packaging to imitate the surprising pop of flavor that comes with every bite. We also updated the product descriptions to embody the new brand’s tone and personality, and better connect with McCrea’s ideal customer.

Updating the design of the packaging also required updating the packaging structure and manufacturing process. McCrea’s caramels are sold in multiple assortments and quantities, so to cut down on costs and encourage brand consistency, we created one multi-purpose box that can be modified to accommodate four different packaging needs.

Working closely with the company founders, we were able to help take McCrea’s Candies from a “mom-and-pop” shop whose packaging looked the part, to an upscale confectionery that’s at the top of its class–and grocery store shelves. In the first six months following the redesign, McCrea’s has received a flurry of new attention at tradeshows from major national retailers and has experienced over 150 percent increase in sales. They were a finalist in the 2015 Martha Stewart American Made contest and are now carried by luxury retailer Barney’s. Now those are sweet results.