Mary Ruth’s packaging is clearly not built for the chaos of retail

MaryRuth’s has great shelf placement, but you’d never know it with bottles turned sideways and shipping labels slapped over the front. This is what happens when design doesn’t account for real-world execution. Would your brand survive this?

Description

Great packaging on a render means nothing if it falls apart on the shelf.

In the vitamin aisle, the gap between intention and execution becomes obvious fast. Bottles that aren’t structurally contained spin. Facings drift. Brand blocks collapse. What looked bold and cohesive in a design review becomes visual noise when store associates stock it in a hurry. That’s the operational side of retail packaging design that most teams underestimate.

Structural decisions matter. Boxing a product versus relying on a free-standing bottle changes how it behaves in the real world. The same lesson shows up in wine packaging design and even in protein bar packaging; if the format can’t control orientation, you risk losing your brand signal at the exact moment it needs to work hardest.

Then there’s distribution reality. Shipping labels slapped across the primary display panel undo months of hierarchy planning. If case pack, fulfillment, and merchandising aren’t aligned, your packaging won’t appear as intended.

Shelf execution isn’t cosmetic. It’s commercial.

Video Transcript

00:00:00 There's the beauty that you design and
00:00:01 then there's the reality of the shelf
00:00:03 and we're seeing it right here.
00:00:06 Hey everybody, it's Shopping with
00:00:08 Christie. Today I'm at Walmart and I'm
00:00:09 taking a look at the vitamin and
00:00:11 supplement aisle and I wanted to show
00:00:13 you something. It's kind of my worst
00:00:15 nightmare as a brand marketer and as a
00:00:17 brand designer. I'm talking about facing
00:00:20 your brand and what happens when your
00:00:23 packages are turned around and sort of
00:00:25 all over the place. What does that do to
00:00:27 your brand block? And I'm also talking
00:00:30 about shipping mishaps. Let's take a
00:00:33 look right here with a brand that's
00:00:35 doing very well on the marketplace right
00:00:37 now, and that would be Mary Ruth's. Here
00:00:41 is the overall multivitamin set at
00:00:44 Walmart. Mary Ruth has this wonderful
00:00:46 placement right in the middle at eye
00:00:48 level. I knew it was Mary Ruth because
00:00:51 I've been taking a look at this brand
00:00:52 and I know this set very well. But I
00:00:54 gotta tell you, if I was a consumer with
00:00:56 the way the products are showing up
00:00:57 right now, I don't know that I would
00:00:59 notice it and I don't know that I would
00:01:01 know that it's Mary Ruth's. The main
00:01:03 reason for that is because of how the
00:01:06 products are actually showing up on
00:01:08 shelf. There's the beauty that you
00:01:09 design and then there's the reality of
00:01:11 the shelf. And we're seeing it right
00:01:13 here. So specifically, you zoom in. This
00:01:15 is really what the graphic should be
00:01:17 looking like, right? Mary roofs,
00:01:19 beautiful, clear. You see the RTBs right
00:01:21 there. But then as your eye drifts, it's
00:01:24 kind of gone. So you've got one may
00:01:27 here. You've got a bunch that are
00:01:28 turned, right? And this is sort of the
00:01:30 risk you take. If you don't box your
00:01:32 items, like you see here, this is boxed.
00:01:35 These are not. The bottles spin. It can
00:01:37 be very easy for anyone who is uh just
00:01:40 stocking the shelves to just kind of not
00:01:42 care. So you can see me automatically
00:01:44 facing these products. You can't take
00:01:46 the brand marketer out of me. I got to
00:01:48 face them. So, you know, now it
00:01:49 certainly looks a lot better. But just
00:01:51 realize if you're a brand owner that
00:01:53 this could happen to you, especially if
00:01:54 you're in file format. The other thing I
00:01:57 want to point out is I don't know what's
00:01:59 going on here, but a bunch of their
00:02:00 products have this shipping label right
00:02:02 on top of the PDP. Look at that. There's
00:02:04 another one bad there. There's one right
00:02:06 here. Clearly, somebody tried to like
00:02:08 scratch off, but it didn't completely
00:02:09 come off. What happened? But I think
00:02:11 maybe these ones are such big sellers
00:02:13 that they came in a case pack, a full
00:02:15 case pack. Whereas these items were
00:02:17 maybe picked and they didn't come in a
00:02:18 full case. You can see right here, case
00:02:20 pack one. So maybe these just were
00:02:22 distributed as each and that might have
00:02:24 been the issue. But you got to realize
00:02:27 that when you're doing business like
00:02:28 that, you know, you got to find a way
00:02:30 maybe hopefully that your distributor
00:02:32 doesn't do this to you. Hopefully Mary
00:02:34 Ruths, you'll find a solution for this.
00:02:36 I would not love that if I was the brand
00:02:38 owner or brand manager, but that's the
00:02:40 thing that would keep me up at night if
00:02:42 I was this brand. Stopping that
00:02:43 swirling, keeping your facings right,
00:02:45 and tracking down this problem and
00:02:47 solving it. That's that. Talk to you
00:02:49 later.

Christy Lebor Partner & Head of Brand Development, SmashBrand

20 Articles

Christy Lebor is a Partner and Head of Brand Development at SmashBrand, a premier brand development agency championing the FMCG space. With two decades of Fortune 500 CPG experience, Christy harnesses her background from industry titans to infuse brands with a growth trajectory that transitions them from category disruptors to legacy brands.

Her portfolio includes:

Brand management roles at global giants: Kraft, PepsiCo, and Unilever.
Launching pivotal products: Axe Body Wash in the US and the original Dove Campaign for Real Beauty at Unilever.
Steering innovative product lines at PepsiCo: Gatorade chews, protein bars, Mio Fit, and Amino Energy.
Pioneering breakfast innovations at KraftHeinz: Just Crack an Egg
Leading the branded business segment and global innovation at JBS, the world's largest meat company in the world.

Prior to her tenure at SmashBrand, Christy's track record spans various senior management and development roles. Each role has honed her expertise in the intricacies of FMCG, enabling her to cultivate category advantages for brands. From SKU rationalization to directing pivotal innovation stage gates, Christy's acute expertise in FMCG has consistently placed her at the forefront of the industry. Her ability to make incisive, strategically sound decisions has been key in propelling brands to market leadership.

Her philosophy pivots on the principle that timely, relevant data, integrated with brand strategy, is the linchpin for brands aspiring to scale and establish market dominance. At SmashBrand, Christy intricately weaves this philosophy, ensuring brands are not just strategically poised but holistically developed.

Educationally, Christy is equipped with a BBA from The University of Michigan Business School, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, and additional prowess in Private Equity and Venture Capital from Harvard Business School.

Learn more

Subscribe to
Nice Package.

SmashBrand’s Nice Package: Stay current with our latest insights

Free Resource.

CPG product repositioning guide.

Explore the five undeniable signs your CPG product needs repositioning along with strategies for leveraging consumer insights for a guaranteed market lift.

Download Whitepaper About CPG product repositioning guide.

Changing consumer behavior is brutally hard.

We’ve officially been outpaced by goldfish

The average human attention span is now 8 seconds. If your packaging doesn’t hit in that window, you’re invisible on shelf. Want velocity? You’ve got to earn it—fast.

Front-of-pack messaging isn’t guesswork. It’s a formula.

Clarity wins at shelf. In this clip, we dive into the hierarchy of communication—what needs to be seen first, what can wait, and how we test to find the sequence that drives purchase.⁠

If Shoppers Can’t Place Your Product In A Second, They’ll Walk.

When your product is a true innovation, the hardest job isn’t design—it’s giving consumers the right frame of reference. This clip breaks down how we create instant understanding, even for products the market’s never seen before.

View More Category Insights

Follow Christy

Follow Christy for real-world shopper insights, brand wins, and weekly takes on what’s working in retail.

Follow Christy on

Subscribe on YouTube

Subscribe on YouTube for daily brand insights, shelf-winning strategies, and weekly retail breakdowns.

Don’t miss our Newsletter