Plastic packs let Jobe's grow outdoors

Easy Gardener introduces a stand-up pouch and overwrapped "cookie pack" for its outdoor plant, tree and garden fertilizers. Replacing paperboard cartons, the plastic packs withstand moisture in flourishing outdoor lawn-and-garden centers.

New for the Jobe?s line of outdoor fertilizer spikes this year are stand-up plastic pouches (below) that resist water when dis
New for the Jobe?s line of outdoor fertilizer spikes this year are stand-up plastic pouches (below) that resist water when dis

This spring, Waco, TX-based Easy Gardener began "fertilizing" sales of its popular Jobe's® brand of outdoor products through new packaging. These fertilizer spikes are used to grow plants, flowers and trees. (The company also sells Jobe's products for indoor gardening applications, though in other package configurations.) Stunning graphics make the new outdoor plastic flexible packs stand out from the competition. The new packs include stand-up, resealable pouches and overwrapped "cookie bag" packs. Jobe's new packaging was introduced to the trade at the National Hardware Show held in August in Chicago.

"The Jobe's brand has existed since the early seventies," explains Clemente Conde, the company's national marketing manager. "Until this year, these products have always been sold in a paperboard folding carton, sometimes shrink-wrapped in film. But a couple of things have happened that drove our decision to change to the new packaging structures."

The primary driving factor in the change, he says, had to do with the way retailers sell Jobe's outdoor products. "In the past, the cartons were marketed mainly indoors," Conde contends. "We sell to many of the top one hundred lawn-and-garden retailers in the country. And a lot of them have increased their presence outdoors. The new packages resist water, making them suitable for outdoor displays beside the plants, flowers and trees that they're intended to be used for. We could see that it made sense for us to offer packaging for Jobe's that could be sold both indoors and outdoors."

Humidity was another concern for Easy Gardener, particularly with the former paperboard cartons. "The package was not equipped to seal out moisture," notes Conde. Battling moisture wasn't the only challenge the carton faced. "Fertilizer is hygroscopic," he says. "And even though the carton was varnished and sometimes shrink-wrapped, moisture permeation caused some deterioration to both the carton and the product."

Selecting package and converter

Besides needing to be weather-resistant for outdoor selling environments, Easy Gardener realized a replacement structure had to be tough. "Some of our large tree spikes are about six inches long and nearly two inches wide, and they're made much like charcoal briquettes so they have sharp, jagged edges. That created another packaging challenge," says Conde.

In the search for an alternative package, several structures were evaluated. "We looked at coated and plastic-laminated board, but that left the edges of the material exposed to potential moisture," recalls Thomas Bensberg, plant manager at the company's Paris, KY, facility that fills the Jobe's line. "We also looked into plastic cartons, but they were prohibitively expensive. We then examined different wrap [flexible material] structures to try to find the best combination of water barrier, durability, abrasion-resistance and appearance."

Bensberg says that once the company became convinced that flexible packaging could do the job, it began to talk with different material converters. In the end, Easy Gardener selected Duralam (Appleton, WI). "We paid a visit to their facility and were impressed not only by the quality of their printing and eight-color capability, but they also seemed more flexible [than other converters] in terms of order sizes.

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