Easy Gardener changes its packaging landscape

Improved graphics and a tighter wrap provide stronger shelf presence for rolls of Easy Gardener's landscaping products that are packaged on new wrappers and shrink tunnels.

New wrappers and shrink tunnels produce a variety of ?premium? landscaping products (right) sold in a shrink-wrapped pack. Eas
New wrappers and shrink tunnels produce a variety of ?premium? landscaping products (right) sold in a shrink-wrapped pack. Eas

Now that spring has sprung, many outdoor enthusiasts will be looking to spruce up their yards and gardens. Consumers are sure to notice more colorful, informative packaging on rolls of landscape fabric products sold by Easy Gardener. These fabrics aim to prevent weed growth in gardens, patios, sidewalks and decks.

The Waco, TX-based company has made packaging an integral part of its effort to market its lawn-and-garden products. Last year, for example, Easy Gardener introduced attractive, water-resistant flexible pouches for its Jobe's® brand of plant foods sold outdoors (see Packaging World, Nov. '98, p. 42, or packworld.com/go/jobes). Last month, those packs won the President's Award as the top package of the year in the 1998 Flexible Packaging Assn. awards competition.

This January, Easy Gardener began shipping the fabrics in a new shrink-wrap package to its top 100 lawn-and-garden retailers in the country. For the launch, the company purchased new machinery: two Model F-5 FloWrap machines from Shanklin (Ayer, MA) and two Model ETTH-20 shrink tunnels from Eastey Enterprises (Rogers, MN). Easy Gardener purchased the machines through distributor Unisource Packaging Systems (Dallas, TX). The equipment began running at Easy Gardener's Waco plant last November.

The shrink package is used for three premium Weed Block® products. "We felt that the shrink package gave these products a more premium look," says Clemente Conde, the company's national marketing manager. These packs have replaced bags for two landscape fabric products; the pack is also used for another product introduced this year. Each of these three products is wound onto an inner paperboard core.

The 45-ga film structure for these packs is made by Syfan (Saad, Israel), but purchased through Packaging Options (Alamo, CA). The cross-linked polyolefin film includes polyethylene and polypropylene, though Packaging Options wouldn't provide more specific details other than to say it's a food-grade material that gains strength due to the cross-linking of molecules during manufacturing. This also makes the film more machinable, according to Packaging Options.

In addition to strength, the film provides clarity, which allows consumers to see the paper insert that's manually added along with each premium product roll as it's placed on the infeed section of the Shanklin machine. Also supplied by Packaging Options, the 80# glossy paper is offset-printed in five colors plus an aqueous coating. The insert includes installation instructions augmented by colorful images.

Easy Gardener has also redesigned graphics and reduced the amount of film used for six other landscape fabric varieties. As is true with the three premium products, each of these six bagged packages contains different roll sizes. Unlike the premium offerings packed on the Shanklin machines, these six are manually packed in a plastic bag that's closed with pressure-sensitive tape. For these products, Easy Gardener uses wicketed, gusseted bags made from 1.5-mil low-density PE that's flexo-printed in six colors by Zim's Bagging (Prichard, WV). Zim's prefers not to identify film vendors.

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