High Profile Raisin' Awareness Harry Overly
President and CEO, Sun-Maid Growers of California Features Editor Ann T. Sullivan Whitehurst Photographer Don Dizon
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f you check Instagram and Pinterest regularly, you’ve probably noticed that society is fully engaged in an era obsessed with “natural.” From beauty to food, we are passionately consumed with finding the purest solutions to meet our everyday needs— and brands are capitalizing on that desire by introducing new products claiming to be those solutions. While many brands are new to this phenomenon, Sun-Maid has been marketing “Just Grapes & Sunshine®” in the “little red box” for more than 100 years—staying true to its roots (literally) with a steadfast commitment to all-natural, clean products. Now, under the leadership of President and CEO Harry Overly, Sun-Maid Growers of California is raisin’ awareness about just how relevant this quintessentially Californian agriculture cooperative is in our modern world. Relevancy has been Sun-Maid’s biggest challenge over the last decade as the brand has watched others enter the snacking market, winning the hearts and wallets of consumers—specifically, millennial moms. With millennials less likely to consider raisins than other audience demographics, including kids and boomers, Sun-Maid realized it needed to bring excitement to the dried fruit category to get its products back into the minds of these critical consumers. Enter Harry, who acknowledged the raisin industry needed some attention because it was not growing. “Sun-Maid is such a well-respected and worldly recognized brand that has not been nurtured in a long time. The opportunity, and significant challenge, to bring such an iconic brand back to the forefront and introduce it to today’s parents and kids was hard to pass up.”
