New Myrolion Bottle

by | Jul 30, 2020 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

Dear friends, Myrolion has changed. COVID-19 has generated a series of challenges that helped our family reassess our overall course.

Need for Adaptability and Agility During the Production Process

The Myrolion bottle you likely have in your kitchen cabinet is dyed and printed by a bottling partner of Myrolion. During the past lockdown, which lasted from March until June in Greece, our bottling partner was unable to respond to our bottling needs. As a result, during this time, our family was unable to provide our exquisite olive oil to our B2B partners throughout the world. On top of that, other B2B partners were facing issues themselves, so they had to cancel their orders, too. This situation resulted in losses for our family that put us in the red for 2020. This helped us realize that it is preferable to manufacture by ourselves as much as possible, rather than increasing the complexity of the production process by adding more steps and stakeholders in the process that eventually increase the time, cost, and environmental impact of the production process. Even if the final result is not as fancy as it could be, it is important that we minimize the impact of our actions by increasing our agility and adaptability. The process of creating our own bottle from scratch further fortified our love for the products we send to our friends and customers, since Myrolion is now 100% our creation.

Need for a More Earth-Friendly Bottle

In the same time, we had to take into account some customers’ comments on the bottle’s post-use functionality. Specifically, some customers worried about the bottle’s ability to be recycled, since the glass is coated by plastic-based pigments. After receiving feedback from recycling professionals, we learned that the dyed and printed Myrolion bottle could be theoretically recycled, but the increased cost of removing pigment from the glass could lead some recycling facilities not to recycle the bottle. While it is possible to use clay-based pigments, this would increase Myrolion’s cost and would still not guarantee that recycling plants would recycle the bottle. This created the need for a new product that would use less plastic and be easier to recycle.

Is Premium-Looking the Same as Premium?

For reasons that are discussed in our article about Greek olive oil, olive oil from Greece has a market share of only 3%. Combine that with the fact that the thriving majority of Greek olive oil brands are small producers, and you will see that the need for brand differentiation is very high among Greek olive oil producers. The easy and relatively cheap way to differentiate is to create a premium-looking brand that will position the producers’ olive oil in the high quality spectrum, which in turn will hopefully provide a higher price per liter and thus higher profit margins that are necessary for producers with small olive oil yields.  This model can be sustainable in the short-term, but will definitely be challenged in the long run. Since an increasing number of brands are adopting the premium-looking mindset, differentiation becomes increasingly difficult. At this point, the thriving majority of Greek olive oil brands that claim high quality follow the same route of dyeing and printing their bottles; eventually they end up becoming indistinguishable. Additionally, and more importantly, small producers in Greece do not have a great deal of money to invest. It is much easier and cheaper to invest in branding than Quality Assurance. Unfortunately, many producers invest in premium-looking brands that end up being low-quality, since they cannot keep up with the costs of providing a high and consistent quality. Our family wants to create a new paradigm by making Myrolion value-oriented instead of marketing-oriented. We do not want people to choose our olive oil because they have been tricked to feel a certain way. We want them to read the facts and make the conscious decision to buy Myrolion to improve their well-being. This is why the content of the new Myrolion label is fact-based and interactive instead of marketing-oriented. Additionally, avoiding the “black-hole” of premium-looking branding affords us extra resources to continually invest in quality assurance. Our primary objective is not to sell Myrolion; it is to make new, worldwide friends whose well-being we consistently help to elevate.

New Features on the Myrolion Bottle

We are excited to present you with the new Myrolion bottle that will be available at least through the end of this season: New Myrolion bottle   As you can see, the new Myrolion bottle is wrapped with a paper—not plastic—label, and is not dyed. This is the difference that allows our family the capability to take complete ownership of the whole production process while reducing our activities’ environmental impact. The new bottle is not as premium-looking, but the premium olive oil is still in there. Additionally, the new label features the following.
  • The new label complies with the health claim guidelines for olive oils with increased polyphenol concentrations according to EU Regulation 432/2012. Specifically, the health claim has been added to the back of the bottle, along with intake instructions for the consumer’s reception of the beneficial effects of our olive oil’s polyphenols.
  • Right away, the new label answers some frequently asked questions to assuage your wonder without having to search online. You now have access to short usage instructions, olive oil feature explanations (i.e., cold pressed, early harvest, etc.), and know what to expect in terms of Myrolion’s sensory features.
  • Scan the bottle; talk with Athanasios. Simple as that. If you have a question that is not answered on the bottle, all you have to do is scan the QR code on the back of the bottle and Athanasios will be available to chat with you (as long as it’s not Sunday or 3 AM in Greece!). Should I place the olive oil in the fridge? How much should I cook with? What temperature is best for light cooking with Myrolion? Now, help is one scan away.
  • Do you have any questions about Myrolion’s certifications? You are now one scan away from a full database of our certifications. With one scan, you can learn Myrolion’s acidity and polyphenol concentration, verify that it has been certified organic for this year, etc.
  • Additionally, the new branding fully protects the olive oil from light particles thanks to the wrap label and the UVAG color of the bottle itself.

What Does the Future Hold?

The current branding of our family’s olive oil will go through a testing period by you, our friends and customers. After receiving your feedback, we will decide whether to hold on to the current version, proceed with additional changes, or even return to the old version. Consumers shape the world with their choices. The new version is only a step on our path toward providing fully earth-friendly olive oil. We will keep working and are, in fact, already working for another solution that will make Myrolion available through a biodegradable bottle. We are looking for three volunteers that would like to test Myrolion’s biodegradable version. If you are interested, send us an e-mail. After a short selection period, we will send one biodegradable Myrolion bottle free of charge to each of the three volunteers, who will then use it and provide us with their very valuable feedback. This will help us innovate and create new standards for the whole olive oil industry. Thank you for reading this announcement. The new Myrolion bottle has restocked our family’s e-shop. You can find it here.