Warehouse stores are exerting their marketing muscle on manufacturers. And it’s having a major impact on the way products are being packaged, especially on the use of corrugated.
This was the conclusion from comments by participants in a roundtable discussion held last year by Boxboard Containers Intl. with the assistance of Packaging World. The members talking about corrugated paper and club stores included Paula Record, packaging development manager with Unilever in Chicago; Janette Kirksey and Debbie Putnam, packaging buyers with Ross Products, Columbus, OH; Andrew Kerr, an Eastman Kodak packaging technician in Rochester, NY; and Leo Mankovich, senior packaging engineer at Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis.
“Two things are driving changes in our packaging design: warehouse clubs and consumers,” Kirksey said. “Especially the children’s market. Children are driving package design with cereals and vitamins. I think they play a major role in our packaging.”
Warehouse outlets are changing the way packages are designed, added Kerr. “The clubs work on high-volume sales, so they count the numbers of turns for each product [how often an empty pallet is replaced by a full one]. If your product doesn’t generate the number of turns the club feels it should, your product won’t be there anymore.
“The design of a package and the graphics on it play a major role in gaining the customers’ attention and making the sale. This attention-grabbing is what one designer I know calls the ‘10-foot, five-second rule’: The customer has to be able to figure out what a product is from 10 to 12 feet away in three to five seconds. If the shopper can’t, you’ve lost the sale.
“Black ink on tan kraft just doesn’t cut it anymore. The clubs,” Kerr continued, “don’t want to have to cut open your case to display your product to its members. These outlets know what type of packaging they want, and they’re not bashful about telling you how to design your packaging to remain in their stores.”
In the health & beauty aids market, all types of outlets are affecting the packaging, said Record of Unilever’s Home and Personal Care division. “Our customers want selling units that are convenient for them,” she pointed out. “We used to simply ship product in a case. Then we got into two inner packs of six containers, so our customers could split it apart, put the six in a tote and send them to one store. Now, they’re saying, ‘Well, maybe we want everything in sixes.’”
These demands affect the corrugated industry, because now companies are ordering much smaller shipping cases. “Companies are moving to more just-in-time, more convenience, more custom designs for each customer’s system,” Record said. “They are telling us, ‘We want the process of putting the product [on the shelf] to go as smoothly as possible.’”
Innovations in corrugated
“I think the corrugated industry hasn’t been given enough credit in what it has done in the six years that I’ve been closely associated with it,” noted Putnam. “The big international company that we do business with is not just a brown-box company anymore. It produces preprinted liner, and it also has facilities that produce high-quality offset-label product. Plus it does high-end graphic retail displays.
“Corrugated suppliers have better-quality flexo presses that can give you direct print so you don’t need preprint. You get better bar-code printing. In the last five years, I’ve seen some big gains on the graphics side,” Putnam stated. “I think the corrugated business has also been working on improvements that are not always visible to the customer’s eye.”
Unilever’s Record agreed. “I think the corrugated industry is a lot better than it used to be. In the last five years or so, they have really worked hard to tell us what they can do for us, and what they are working on.”
Mankovich of Anheuser-Busch felt that folding-carton suppliers have been more innovative in recent years, but he admitted that the addition of micro-fluting in corrugated paper has been a benefit. “The advent of small flutes has helped as far as direct consumer packaging,” Mankovich said.
“I think all the packaging sectors are better than they were,” Kirksey of Ross Products added. “And I think the marketplace and the consumer are driving that.”
Record brought up economics: “Cost is a big issue. Our customers are requiring us to be very cost-conscious. When a 15-ounce bottle of Suave can be featured for 88 cents, obviously we need to watch what we spend on our packaging.
“We have always been open to alternative ways of shipping,” Record noted. “Maybe a 200-pound test, C-flute RSC is not the best or cheapest way. So while we are always looking at different types of paper, we are very much open to looking at trays or other cost-conscious ways to ship our products.
“The best technology is not necessarily the most expensive technology,” Record stated. “There is a balance there.”
