Private brands are here to stay. They continue to attract new and returning consumers, with quality as the common denominator. According to a recent study by Consumer Reports magazine, private brands either meet or exceed the quality of their national brand counterparts. Perhaps even more relevant is that private brands not only share same-level shelf space with their national brand counterparts, they actually hold the deed to the entire shelf.

According to SymphonyIRI Group, in 2010, 99 percent of U.S. households bought private brands; 74 percent of private label shoppers rated the quality of private brands as good or better than name brands; and two out of three private brand shoppers decided which private brands to buy while they were shopping.

In fact, consumers in general, regardless of what they are seeking in the food, beverage and personal care aisles, make 75 to 80 percent of their purchase decisions at the shelf. So with store brands and national brands going head-to-head on the shelf, a lot is riding on the level of visual impact they can leverage within the 2.6 seconds consumers, on average, spend deciding what to grab off the shelf.

The growth of the private label sector has been fueled in part by the recent recession, as cost-conscious consumers actively looked for ways to save money. According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, annual sales of private label products have increased 40 percent in supermarkets during the past decade. Astute retailers have capitalized on recessionary market conditions by extending their private label brands.

However, as the economy begins to improve, retailers have to think more about their store brands in the context of a brand growth strategy versus mere product line expansion. This isn't merchandising. In fact, brand building is far from it. Creating a brand requires a long-term perspective and an equally long-term commitment.

From the product itself to the packaging, store brands have to be cultivated as a brand. They should receive the same attention a CPG extends toward its national brands. As such, private brands must elevate their packaging strategies. Simply having multiple SKUs on the same shelf as a competing national brand will no longer be enough to get your product into the shopping cart.

CPGs back their national brands with well-funded resources that make the packaging do everything it can to deliver shelf appeal. They also support their brand images with marketing and advertising campaigns to further drive at-shelf performance. From regional to national availability, the packaging for private label brands must be, at a minimum, on par with the national brands. It's really the price of admission.

An established brand holds a set of expectations that are consistently met or exceeded over time. And when those expectations are regularly met through product quality and positioning, as expressed via labeling and packaging, the brand remains healthy and strong. However, if those expectations are not met, the marketing strength of the brand is reduced. Therefore, the overriding goal has to be to protect, as well as grow, the store brand.

The most diverse range of packaging and labeling formats can be found among food, beverage, household and personal care products. From glass to plastic, bottle to tube, refrigerator to freezer, brand managers, packaging designers and packaging engineers continually face the ongoing challenge of trying to influence consumers by differentiating private label products.

Taking a page from the national brands playbook, consumers respond to new packaging designs when they reflect lifestyle changes and unmet needs. These factors are made even more compelling when the brand positioning is an integral part of the mix. Coupled with this is the fact that brand recognition, generated by innovative labeling and packaging, is the primary differentiator for in-store purchasing decisions.

Understanding the relationship between consumers, their needs and the products they buy is vital to developing relevant private label branding solutions that generate a profitable revenue stream. Packaging design plays a critical role in communicating product features and benefits with a brand identity that is memorable and influential to the point of capturing consumers' attention.

National brands are increasingly turning to the visual impact afforded by pressure-sensitive labels. Unique design attributes are due in large measure to the virtually unlimited choice of available substrates and adhesive combinations. There is also a wide range of associated decorating techniques, including inks, bronzing, embossing, hot and cold foiling, sub-surface printing, and re-sealable designs, among others.

Such a broad palette of capabilities allows a retailer to differentiate in novel and memorable ways, and helps the brand manager fulfill a multi-tiered strategy encompassing good, better and premium store brands.

The author, Dan Galovic, is Market Manager Private Brands, for the Label and Packaging Materials division of Avery Dennison Corporation.

©2011 Avery Dennison Corporation. All rights reserved. Avery Dennison, Fasson and all other Avery brands, product names, codes and service program terms are trademarks of Avery Dennison Corporation. Fortune 500® is a trademark of Time, Inc. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Silicon is an element that is abundant in nature, is non-metallic and gray, and has a unique characteristic that has helped transform the world we live in. This characteristic is silicon's ability to conduct electricity. Being able to conduct an electrical charge has made it the perfect material for the semiconductor industry. Without this element, it is unlikely we would have seen the revolution in digital equipment and communication systems that has taken place over the last decade. Silicon wafers must adhere to stringent specifications dependent upon the task they are going to perform.

If you are involved with a business that buys wafers for the semiconductor market, there are a number of important considerations that should always be at the forefront of your mind. The cost of the products and their inherent quality are both crucial factors. As with most commodities, the price of silicon does fluctuate depending upon external forces such as the global economy, availability of raw material, as well as political decisions. It is essential that you familiarize yourself with the issues that impact cost to ensure that your business purchases these products at a price that yields maximized profits.

It should be understood that there are a number of different mechanical specifications for the wafers sold today, take for example: diameter, thickness, and the variation of the thickness. For a wafer to function correctly, it should be of a uniform specification, with no room for deviation or error. Other important factors include the flatness, edge, and bow, all of which should also be uniform. Each wafer needs to be completely smooth and devoid of any markings caused during the manufacturing process and thin film deposition. Make sure you buy from a manufacturer which produces only quality silicon wafers that adhere to these specifications.

Each and every silicon wafer has to be particle-free. If there is a single particle on a polished wafer this will impact its functionality. For this reason, calibration usually involves a traceable particle standard to determine quality and cost.

There are a number of different grades used to classify wafers. Those that are larger than one hundred and fifty millimeters are usually divided into process test and mechanical test varieties. The latter are used predominantly for equipment designed for testing, and have an emphasis on structural and dimensional characteristics.

A process test wafer, often referred to as a monitor wafer, is the type utilized for semiconductor fabrication and process monitoring, there are also other wafer grades, including particle grade. Particle silicon wafers are mainly designed to be used for the measurements of actual particles. Knowing the difference in types of wafers will help your company navigate the market and make comparisons in price much easier.

The manufacturing process is one that is highly complicated and tedious. It involves a number of sequential processes that are required to create an electronic circuit. As the demand for semiconductors continues to rise, and at an incredibly fast rate, the companies involved with the manufacturing of silicon wafers are barely able to keep up with demand.

If involved with this industry, it is important to understand the complete manufacturing process. As with any goods, quality and price do vary, and will continue to do so in the future even as new production techniques are developed and implemented.

Jessica entered the Semiconductor Manufacturing field in 1998. Jessica has held positions at Integrated Micromachines and Xponent Photonics prior to founding Rogue Valley Microdevices, specializing in thin film deposition and establishing it as one of the leading suppliers of silicon wafers.

http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/

OS Commerce is an open source shopping cart product management suite. The term "open source" means the code used is available to anyone and can be modified as you see fit. This product has been under development for some time and has a robust feature set. OS Commerce is solid and can be modified extensively with plugins and themes that will allow the site to match any look and feel while maintaining a high level of functionality. This tool can also be used to communicate to customers through an email marketing system. Using OS Commerce at a higher level should also include a professional template that creates a solid impression and doesn't distract visitors.

Installing OS Commerce can be done manually, through an automated system, or by having a professional company assist. In any case, the installation requires a MySQL database that contains the details regarding customers, products, and site information. Several hosting solutions offer this OS Commerce as a package built into a CPanel or "control panel" where installation can be automated. After the default OS Commerce is installed, there is some customization that is highly recommended, including adjustment to a template.

Finding templates can be a challenge, especially the free ones. Templates are not necessarily standardized and a new free template may be as simple as a replacement set of images for the buttons and other miscellaneous graphics. This doesn't do much to change the look and feel; it usually just changes the color scheme. The other drawback of free templates is that they may not work depending on the version of OS Commerce. If the template was created some time ago and the updated versions of OS Commerce aren't compatible, the installation process could do more harm than good.

A professional theme can add a lot of value to the site and even though there may be some cost involved, the amount of time alone spent on sorting through free templates and then attempting to install and try them out will have a higher cost than making a decision on a professional template and having another company set it up for you.

Features of OS Commerce include the base system with plugins that represent contributions made by the open source community. The use of these plugins will help individual merchants and service providers cater their offerings to their customer base quite effectively. There are some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features built into the software that make the site easier to index by search engines. There are also plugins that allow the products to be exported into a format that can be imported into a product search engine or several sites that will take the import and add those products to their own listings. With appropriate configuration, this can even be automated.

Using an all-in-one tool like OS Commerce allows a merchant to not only present his products and services in a professional way, but also use other tools like an email marketing system to interact with a customer base.

http://www.exacttarget.com/

Calligraphy Art application is created for calligraphy lovers and people starting to learn the art of drawing beautiful letters in both Western and Chinese styles.

This application is not for language learning. It is divided is 3 parts:

Western alphabets exercises
Chinese words exercises
Large pages for free creativity


All writing surfaces are pre-filled with guidelines according to the hand (font) presented. Each style has both lower-case and upper-case letters (minuscules and majuscules). Except for the uncial hand, where lower-case and upper-case letters are mixed.

WRITING WESTERN ALPHABETS

PEN ANGLE.

Calligraphers use large nibs and hold their pen in a specific angle to draw letters and give their characteristic effects. The pen angle is kept constant when writing a letter. Then the thickness of the stroke will vary according to the pen direction.

Each hand (font) has its own pen angle, and it's important to choose the correct angle in order to reproduce the style with accuracy and consistency. Occasionally inside a same letter pen angle can change to produce a specific effect, it's called pen manipulation. In real life calligraphers turn their hand to change angle, here you can simply and conveniently change the pen angle in 2 taps.

LETTER HEIGHT.

Each hand has its own letter height defined for the good proportion. The measuring unit is the nib width of the pen, it represents the thickness of the stroke.

In each exercise, you can find a nib ladder at the left part of the page. The nib width and the pen angle are predefined. You can start writing your first letters without any adjustment. During the lessons, only pen angle and colors can be changed. For your convenience, the writing page is larger than the screen.

CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY

You don't need to learn Chinese to practice calligraphy.

Specially CALLIGRAPHY ART is not giving Chinese language lessons. Our purpose is to provide the basis of the Chinese Art of Writing. The way of drawing a single stroke is different from every day writing method, it produces those specific strokes.

The lessons are chosen according to the essential strokes and their writing application. We have intentionally avoided the very basic Chinese style.

Especially the Kaishu and Caoshu styles are practiced years ago in China, all the models are from the ancient masters. The words were chosen for their beauty and simplicity.

SOME MORE TIPS.

Learning the art of calligraphy takes patience to develop, but the result can be highly rewarding.

Digital tablet is really helpful for keeping your pen in a constant angle. Guidelines are pre-filled for each hand. Other tools can ease your practice: zoom, clear button, erase, undo...

Finger or stylus: you'll find your preferred tool to practice calligraphy on your tablet. The most important thing is to have pleasure to calligraphy beautiful letters.

Creativity: the models are provided for your training. It's hard to reproduce exactly a letter as shown, so the models are not binding. And while progressing in your art, you'll surely have your own style. Specially, the gothic style is subject to individual interpretations.

Specially, in Western calligraphy you may draw letters according to your most usual hand direction. The models shown with direction arrows give you the author's method, you can create your own way of drawing since the beginning. Also, you can change pens and angles to give more characteristics to your letters.

For each hand, start by training specific stroke and letter one by one. Repeat them until you produce the desired effect.

Chinese calligraphy: strokes order is more binding, specially in Kaishu style. You may use 2 or 3 brush size to draw one word.

Mobile Software Designer. Independent developer for iOS and Android.

Due to some grounds, people may lose contact with past schoolmates or the ones they have worked with previously. Thus, individuals, who are utilizing much time, effort and money to locate their long-lost friends or relatives, are now all over. Nowadays, an easier and faster means of looking for certain people and learning about the most recent news on them is available through some tools like People Finder.

The United States of America has a total of 50 states and one federal district. This country is truly big with regard to both total area and population. It is this very reason that finding a particular person in this vast land could prove to be tough and irritating. Anyone, who wants to do such process, must be equipped with much tolerance and determination to obtain the anticipated results.

Back in the old days, people hired some individuals, known as private investigators, to do the task on their behalf. While this was helpful, this option was said to take too much time and expensive fees that not all can afford. In addition, posting announcements and advertisements at newspapers, TV, and other forms of media were also some of the options people tried.

The various means mentioned above are still being used today. But, more and more individuals at present chose to use a more hassle-free and quicker way of finding someone by making use of the Internet. Accessible online are different services to make your search for someone within United States become much simpler. All you need to do is supply the individual's name and receive essential results in a couple of minutes only.

Services online are advantageous since they have trusted and accurate sources. You can take benefit of them for a fee or for free. But, consider paying just a minimal amount required to make sure you'll acquire the best results in the fastest time possible. A huge number of people finds searching online a much better method today since it's cheap, accessible 24/7, discreet, secured and convenient.

It is such a huge relief to locate the person you've lost contact with and reignite past friendship with him or her. Utilizing People Search tools will let you gather vital pieces of information such as the individual's name, present address, phone number, birth date and more. Tools, like these, make public records accessible by all consumers and entities for reasons of locating and identifying people.

There are numerous feasible avenues for People Finder. Which one is the most suitable for you? Learn all about them at People Search.

http://www.peoplefinder-usa.com/usa-people-search/

Many clients seek out a cellular forensic consultant because they want to recover deleted text messages. usually due to suspicions about infidelity in a spouse lover. But they do not realize the vast amount of evidence that can be recovered from a iPhone besides just the deleted text messages. This article will show what else can be recovered to aid in your infidelity investigation.

1. Location Tracking

Older versions of the iPhone can retain up to two years of location tracking information. Basically you can get data that will detail the past whereabouts of that device.

2. Web Site Addresses

This is like obtaining the browser history on your home PC or lap top. This could be valuable evidence of a porn or gambling addiction. It could reveal membership in online dating sites, escort services etc

3 Address Book

Obviously this can reveal the name and address of the person cheating with the clients spouse. It may also list rendezvous spots like restaurants or motels.

4 Notes

The Notes section of the iPhone can contain directions, addresses, phone numbers, betting information, debts, appointments or dates. A great deal of information can be found in this overlooked feature of the iPhone.

5. Calendar

This may contain dates, the other woman's birthday, anniversaries...

6. Text, SMS

The texts or SMS may contain some damning evidence of infidelity, dug or gambling addiction, theft or other inappropriate activity. You will see the actual content of the text messages.

7. Pictures

For the cheating spouse this is usually their downfall, most cheaters cannot resist taking pictures of their lover. Many will delete the pics in an attempt to cover their tracks.

8. Voice Mails

Voice Mails can be stored and retrieved from the internal memory of the iPhone. Most phones do not store voice mails.

9. Detailed Call Logs

This will include call history that includes the phone number, duration, times and dates of calls that have been made and received.

10. Contacts

You will find names and telephone numbers of contacts. Could be a boyfriend, girlfriend, bookie or drug dealer.

Most clients that seek a forensic data recovery service are focused on reading the deleted text messages but as you can see there is much more information available. There may be other data recovered as well but this is a list of the most commonly recovered deleted information. As you can see it goes much deeper than just reading deleted text messages. Today cell phone data recovery is the best way to recover and document evidence of wrongdoing. Whether it is infidelity, drug use, theft, gambling or just confirming a persons travels and location tracking pints.

Copyright (c) 2011 Opperman Investigations Inc

Ed Opperman is President of Opperman Investigations Inc. He is considered an expert in computer and cellular phone forensics.To learn more about how to recover deleted text messages and images please click here now:===> http://www.emailrevealer.com

Just recently, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer was released, and experts believe that this might outclass the popular iPad 2 in a lot of ways. The iPad 2 is indeed a very sophisticated tablet PC which is powered by Apple's iOS 4.3 system, while the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is a versatile tablet operated with Google's new Android Honeycomb 3.0 OS, which can also be smartly transformed into a laptop with a keyboard dock.

Both tablets seem promising, but which is better? To determine which tablet has the edge, here is a face-to-face matchup between the two most amazing tablet PCs of the year:

Screen

The iPad 2 has a 9.7 multi-touchscreen display and a 1024 x 728 pixel resolution. The Asus Transformer has a 10.1 touchscreen display with a bigger 1024 x 800 pixel resolution, but it has an HDMI slot that allows users to watch HD videos on a larger TV screen.

Storage

The iPad 2 has a 16 GB, 32 GB and a 64 maximum storage capacity, and consumers can choose any of these according to their needs. The Asus Transformer comes with a similar offer of an 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB storage capacity, but it comes along with a micro SD card slot for storage expansion capabilities.

Battery Life

The iPad 2 has an expected battery life of 10 hours. The Asus Transformer also has 10 hours worth of usage, but with a keyboard dock in use, you can conserve the battery life for up to 16 hours.

Applications

There are around 300,000 applications in the Apple market for iPad 2. Asus Transformer has less than 200,000 applications available in the Android market. There are more applications available in the Apple market, but many Android developers are keeping up with the pace.

Camera

The iPad 2 has a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, along with a 720-pixel rear-facing camera. The Eee Pad Transformer, on the other hand, is equipped with two larger ones: a 1.2-megapixel camera in the front, and a 5-megapixel camera in the rear.

Software

The iOS 4.3 version powers the iPad 2, which functions amazingly fast. Safari browsing and home-sharing with iTunes allows users to stream and transfer videos, music and movies to five devices on the Apple network. The Asus Transformer runs with the Android 3.0 honeycomb platform, which boasts of a new holographic design on the user interface. The Android platform includes a customizable home screen, useful notification system, attractive widgets and great multitasking functions.

Pricing

The iPad 2 has a tag price of $499, while the Asus Transformer costs $399-which is $100 cheaper. With the keyboard dock included in the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, the price is a far cry from the costly iPad 2.

Verdict

The Apple iPad 2 and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer have shown several distinct features. However, there are still many aspects that are yet to be considered like connectivity, browser and speed but with basic features that are discussed above, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer might just be a worthy contender against the unbeatable iPad 2.

Danny's current favourite tablet is the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Tablet but he still likes to review every Android Tablet that hits the market at his blog Android Tablet Fanatic and is open to the possibility of a better tablet coming out this year!

http://www.androidtabletfanatic.com/