Sanrio Days
What is the role of a Product Planner?
Sanrio is an international brand with many retail stores and Sanrio characters. In this section I’d like to take you through the process of creating a product line. The example I will show is the Spring Season 2004, the character was Hello Kitty, and our target was pre-teen girls. What should the theme of the product line be? How many items should be in the line? What would the color palette be? It was essentially a blank page waiting to be filled!
I explored ideas and trends to present to the team, and these were used to design the products in the line, working with the graphics department and factories overseas to make the it come to life.
The Process
Trends and Themes
First, I researched trends online using WGSN, magazines and shopping trips. After I gathered my ideas together, I consolidated them for the team to review.
Themes applied to the brand
Once the team agreed on the right trends, I came up with the overall look and how it applied to the brand and what kind of products we might like to include. This was loose ideation to gain a mood.
Product Suggestions
Once we chose a direction, I suggested a number of ideas that could be included in the line. This was done during a meeting with management and the design department and we voted for the most ideal products. These pages were created to keep notes and circle favorites.
In this case, I believe we chose about 5 or 6 out of 24 ideas.
New Product Forms
This contained all the details of each product. It had the breakdown of materials and components, quantity and often additional artwork and samples were included with these forms. At that time most work was shipped via mail and all details were included.
Factory Specs with Graphics
At this point we generally had factory samples of the products, and the graphics department created detailed specifications of artwork and specific pantone colors to be used.
Factory Samples
Factory samples were made from the specs, often in existing colors available. The ones on the left were given to the graphics department to create the artwork for the final products.
Completed Product Lines
Now that you have an idea about the process, you can see it applied to many characters and seasons. These were all approved for retail.
*All work given to me with permission and is for portfolio purposes only.