A TAD Better Than The Rest
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. But Bruce Woodlief, director of marketing for Spokane, Wash.-based Clearwater Paper Corp., Consumer Products Division, knows that his knowledge about household paper products is probably the safest way to create greater demand for premium products in this market.
"I'm knowledgeable enough about our products to be dangerous, I guess you could say," he explained. "I'm the marketing guy who deals with the technical terms and then I try to put these in layman's terms."
Clearwater offers tissue products that are made from a special paper-making process called "through air-drying" or TAD, according to Woodlief. The company's TAD products are available primarily in the bath tissue and paper towel segments.
"The air-drying process of TAD paper allows it to have the superior attributes of softness, thickness and absorbency over conventional tissue paper," he said.
Clearwater was the first dedicated private label manufacturer to introduce TAD products to retail customers in 2004, Woodlief added.
"As of 2013, Clearwater will expand its TAD offering to include ultra-premium national brand-comparable bath tissue in both soft and strong varieties," he said. "This process in bath tissue is one of the biggest launches in the last 10 years, and it's clearly a game-changer in terms of providing added quality to the bath segment."
Woodlief said that bath tissue comprises the largest segment in tissue products and is one of the largest private label categories for retailers.
"Without quality TAD bath and towel products, retailers cannot compete effectively with ultra-premium quality national brands that continue to bring innovation into the category," he said. "Ultra-premium products are the fastest-growing quality tiers in the paper towel and bath segments of paper tissue. Having TAD products as part of a retail private brand tissue portfolio provides a strong competitive edge against other retailers who offer only lower-quality-tier conventional products." — S. Malovany