How Ecommerce Is Changing The Packaging Industry

For many years packaging has played a pivotal role in selling products in retail spaces. Aside from the functional purpose of protecting goods, and a few practical issues such as ensuring that structures can be efficiently transported and shelved, packaging has always provided ‘advertising space’ for products to tell you all about what they do and why they are superior. The result has sometimes been one of sensory overwhelm upon entering a shop and seeing shelf upon shelf of imagery and messaging, competing for your attention. Not only that but there was a huge market in luxury packaging to elevate the feel of a product, using tactile materials, and complex forms and structures to make the contents feel really special.

You only have to look at an Apple box to see that attention has been paid to the materials used, the way the products sit neatly in the box (including cables and tools), and even the way the box opens and closes with a little resistance to demonstrate high quality materials.

The perfume industry with its enormous markup on products is also famed for its elaborate bottle shapes and designs, to make what you are buying feel luxurious.

In recent years the packaging industry has come under close scrutiny for its environmental impact, and the pressure is on to reduce ‘overpackaging’ and waste. Where packaging designers had been guilty of prioritising form over function (or even by starting with function but adding excessive gimmicks), there is a new joy in trying to optimise function with as few materials as possible. We are seeing designs with incredibly complex folds so that they can be made from fewer sheets of card. There are materials to replace plastic, or to make plastic its own resource. Polystyrene is being phased out in favour of sustainable alternatives and the world is a better place for these adjustments.

With the rise of ecommerce during Covid a new challenge presented itself. Someone once told me that when you design for retail you should consider the impact of your product from 10ft away, 3ft away and 30cm away. With online retail you have to perfect the impact of the thumbnail image in order to draw people in to view the close-ups, which is no easy task. Products are arranged very differently to a physical store, and you are not immersed in them in the same ways.

It is very difficult to portray the tactile nature of packaging, or any special print finishes that might entice a customer, without an effective visualisation or a really good photograph of the packaging. Coming back to the example of the Apple box, viewing a white box on a white background will not demonstrate how lovely it feels, the weight of it, or how well it fits the products.

Often the online shelf will show unboxed goods (less so with supermarkets selling packaged food), so it is worth questioning whether the ‘selling’ aspect of packaging has changed. Does it matter what is on the box once it has been purchased, beyond the essential information that needs to appear and the ability to functionally store and protect the product? What matters more is effective and environmentally sound disposal.

I have witnessed various brands develop two versions of their packaging - one for the physical retail space and one for online. One such example is a popular baby product by Nuby, which is a set of teething ‘keys’ that go in the fridge. In the shop they look like this:

When purchased online they arrive like this:

There is much less wastage with the online solution, not only in terms of inks and plastics used to produce the packaging, but also in terms of space saving for transportation and ease of recycling.

Transportation and last-mile delivery is a big issue for ecommerce. Solutions are evolving all the time such as delivery lockers and shops, but often storage is limited in terms of shape, space and size. Packaging products for effective delivery is a key consideration.

We are also seeing a rise in multi-use packaging (e.g. a box that is a postal box as well). Not only is there a great environmental benefit to posting your product in its package, but there is also a huge cost saving. A couple of examples include Smol, and Graze, where the box you receive is the box that contains your goods. We have all felt frustrated by receiving an enormous Amazon box packed with reams of paper and one tiny product inside. There is definitely a future in reducing the elements involved.

Wholesale offers further opportunities online, where people are purchasing bulk that they might not be able to carry home from a trip to the shops. This requires further pack formats for consumers to house larger quantities of a product. Many people will also use wholesale on a subscription basis, such as Who Gives A Crap toilet paper, or Oatly Oat Milk. Both of these companies use their boxes for additional advertising, but I have noticed that Oatly comes in an additional box due to the weight of the product, which is an issue faced by wholesale purchases of heavier objects.

Unboxing - does this strange trend turn things around?

Having presented the case for minimising and simplifying packaging, there is a curious trend that brands take advantage of, and that is the ‘unboxing revolution’. A number of years ago I couldn’t believe it when a friend told me that his son was spending a lot of time wanting to watch YouTube videos of people opening Kinder Surprise eggs. And yet, people were making lots of money out of simply opening eggs to show children what was inside. It turned out that this was a real trend, not only with Kinder eggs, but with ‘blind box’ toys, new technology products, and cosmetics. It started to become part of the launch strategy of brands to ask influential people to ‘unbox’ their products on video to thrill the nation. If this is a strategy, then visual enticement is essential! Carefully unwrapping the new Chanel No. 5 L’eau from a kraft cardboard box simply would not have the visual impact, intrigue and excitement of the iconic black and white box that Chanel is famous for. If the bottle were simply a refill in a utility pack, it would be extremely disappointing.

I wonder how we can achieve the balance of practicality, environmental responsibility and treating our customers to something really special? This is my prediction for one of the upcoming challenges for 2024.