Forbes. Accessed 10 October 2011. http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2011/07/22/how-greek-yogurt-captured-the-american-market-the-other-half-of-the-cnbc-story/
Greek Yogurt, which was all but unheard of in the United States less than half a decade ago, now outsells traditional yogurt giants by wide margins and is an enormously popular product. This article details the rise of this product, tracing its popularity back to the first importer of FAGE brand Greek yogurt, a small retailer in New York City. Simple word of mouth from his Greek-Americna customers to others saw sales of FAGE rapidly expand, and from their the product really took off.
Kostas Mastoras first started importing the yogurt following a trip to Greece for the tasting and purchasing for feta cheese for his shop. By 2000, he was importing so much that FAGE approached him about starting a joint venture to distribute their product trhoughoutthe U.S.. Though FAGE and Mastoras could not agree on terms, FAGE did open a U.S. distribution subsidiary and Mastroas continued to sell the product at his New York locations and worked with...
The lower fat and non-fat options that were developed in part at Mastoras' insistence became FAGE's most popular sellers, and when Trader Joe's and Whole Foods began carrying the product demand increased so significantly that FAGE was no longer able to keep up.
Opening a production facility in New York helped matters somewhat, but at this point word had really gotten out about the yogurt and the Chobani brand was about to hit the market, and it hit hard. Up to this point, the growth of Greek yogurt sales had been almost entirely driven by word of mouth, and even the inclusion of the yogurt at the large-scale specialty foods retailers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's was spawned primarily due to the previous track record of yogurt sales, not the result of specific or concentrated marketing efforts. Chobani changed the game, however, and quickly became the top-selling yogurt maker in the United States -- from no sales in 2007 to over $500 million in sales in 2011. The power of marketing -- when combined with a good product -- is truly astounding.
