Creating a joint-venture retail brand built on traditional folklore and a pioneering business model.
Transforming private label perception through a unique threeway partnership between retail, production, and agency.
In the regional CIS market, store brands typically accounted for just 10–15% of sales, usually positioned as budget alternatives or copycats of market leaders. X5 Retail Group—operating over 11,000 stores—partnered with the Nesvizh dairy plant and Mildberry to create Sarafanovo, a proprietary brand offering premium-quality dairy at accessible prices.
Unlike conventional private labels, Sarafanovo was built as a full-fledged brand with an end-to-end management model. By managing everything simultaneously—from production and product development to brand strategy and shelf placement—the project bypassed traditional supplier-retailer boundaries to deliver a fresh, high-quality offering to store shelves.
Building a comprehensive brand platform rooted in cultural storytelling and character-driven design.
Mildberry worked as an integrated partner from early business model development through execution, creating an immersive brand environment centered on a rich Slavic folk code.
We helped structure a unique framework where manufacturer and retailer co-own the brand platform. This gave the team direct control over product quality, brand equity, and shelf presentation simultaneously, creating new growth opportunities outside traditional supplier-retailer dynamics.
We anchored the brand strategy in Slavic folk culture, responding to consumer desires for warmth, simplicity, and nostalgic comfort. The narrative presents a playful, heartfelt world where people live with feeling, honesty, and humor.
To make the brand immediately engaging in a crowded media landscape, we created a rich visual world driven by expressive, anthropomorphic animal characters. Designed like a folk comic strip, the cast features a charming Cat as the primary matron, alongside a hardworking Dog, an energetic Goat, a romantic Stork, and a wise Owl, each adding distinct personality and emotional warmth to the product line. The Cat character was deployed on the front of every launch packaging SKU to build immediate recognition, while secondary characters were introduced for new flavors, seasonal offers, and promotional campaigns across retail channels.
Rapid market adoption, top-tier sales ranking, and strong consumer loyalty.
Sarafanovo achieved its primary communications objectives within months of launch: building fast brand awareness, encouraging initial trial, and demonstrating high product quality.
Within just nine months of its release, Sarafanovo surged into the Top 5 milk brands across X5 Retail Group's extensive store network. By combining direct-to-consumer storytelling with an efficient joint-venture model, the project successfully established a new standard for collaborative retail brands in the region.
