Discover your next big idea at PACK EXPO Las Vegas this September
Experience a breakthrough in packaging & processing and transform your business with solutions from 2,300 suppliers spanning all industries.
REGISTER NOW & SAVE

Retail-ready best practices to be shelf-ready

Retailers have taken notice of how the economics of high-volume, fast-moving consumer goods have changed in recent years.

Led by big-box stores, these retailers have seen the wisdom of trimming one of their biggest costs of operation—store floor personnel hours spent restocking or “facing up” products on shelf.

Brand owners have scrambled to meet retailers’ requests with retail-ready solutions ranging from large corrugated boxes with loose packages to smaller, notched paperboard holders for stand-up display of carded packages—and all points in between. The specific type of retail-ready package for the job depends on the specific retail environment where the products will live, but there are many factors to consider.

1. Remember the primary market drivers. The trend toward more retail-ready packaging is driven by retailers’ desire to reduce store staff hours. The ideal retail-ready package is a shipping package that can be almost instantly shelf-ready. Understand the brief or the specific goal you need to meet completely, and ask for all marketing input up front. Get shopping data from retailers, if possible, to learn what forms have been working for the retailer, and keep those in mind throughout the package development process.

2. Engage suppliers early. Always work closely with suppliers in order to optimize the retail product SKUs and features before starting the real project. Make sure you understand the customers’ requirements—all of them. Shelf dimensions, rate of sale, automated warehouse systems, and distance travelled all can have an impact on how successful any retail-ready package is. Even if you start with a previously successful structural design, still plan for lead time in sorting out problems along the way.

3. Mind your perforations. The type of perforation will affect the ease of tearing, and the design and placement of a tear-off part will affect the strength of the package. One best practice when designing retail-ready packaging is to double-check that your new packaging design will work with the current packaging equipment. A simple thing like a perforation pattern can end up right where a suction cup is supposed to pick up and place a package, which can cause major issues for something relatively small.

4. Maximize the experience for retailer staff. Keep it simple. Perform ethnographic research and carefully watch retailer staff interact with existing retail-ready packaging. Make the packaging intuitive for the stock person to display correctly. Too many parts and wordy instructions should be avoided. Instead, develop easy-to-follow graphic instructions, as long as they don’t detract from the overall visual design. Construct a package that contains a reasonable quantity of product, that can be loaded in a single action, and that is easy to swap out and dispose of with minimal waste. When applicable, make reloading possible even with some quantity of product still in the retail-ready packaging, to avoid stock-outs.

2024 PACK EXPO Innovations Reports
Exclusive access: Packaging World editor-curated reports revealing PACK EXPO's most groundbreaking technologies across food, healthcare, and machinery sectors. Each report features truly innovative solutions selected from hundreds of exhibitors by our expert team. Transform your operations with just one click.
Access Now
2024 PACK EXPO Innovations Reports
Annual Outlook Report: Sustainability
The road ahead for CPGs in 2025 and beyond—<i>Packaging World</i> editors review key findings from a survey of 88 brand owners, CPG, and FMCG readers.
Download Now
Annual Outlook Report: Sustainability