No Name

No Name (styled as no name, ) is a line of generic brand grocery and household products sold by Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest food retailer. No Name products are available in stores across Canada that include Loblaws, No Frills, Dominion, Real Canadian Superstore, Your Independent Grocer, Valu-mart, Zehrs, Fortinos, Provigo, Extra Foods, Super-Valu, Maxi, Atlantic Superstore, and Shoppers Drug Mart. Launch On March 21, 1978, Loblaw launched "No Name" with 16 generic or unbranded items in black and yellow packaging. It was initially promoted as "basic products in plain packaging at down-to-earth everyday low prices", No Name promised savings of between 10 and 40 percent over national brands. The launch beat rival supermarket chain Dominion, with its own line of generic products, by 24 hours. Available at Loblaws' 135 stores across Ontario, full-page ads claimed that No Name offered the best value for money as a combination of price and quality – the result of cost controls associated with using standard instead of custom packaging and the efforts of its own "task force" in negotiating lower priced, bulk orders from suppliers. The introduction of No Name, along with other generics, coincided with a period of rising inflation rates and consumer complaints regarding the high price of food. Two years earlier, French hypermarket Carrefour unveiled Produits Libres, a line of 50 unbranded products. Loblaws Supermarkets president Dave Nichol modelled No Name on Produits Libres. Although Nichol made no guarantee that the product line would be continued beyond the initial launch, after two and a half weeks more than a million units had been sold. With suppliers trying to keep up with demand, and some products sold out, Nichol declared No Name a "runaway success" that exceeded his own expectations: But diving headlong into No-Name products, which have had only limited success in France and the United States, was Nichol’s idea. Grocery shoppers have snapped them up at a rate that has astonished even Nichol. In nine months, Loblaws has sold 15 million of them, which Nichol says is enough to make Ontario the largest market in the world for unbranded products. And strangely enough, Loblaws shoppers seem to be developing a brand loyalty to these unbranded products.