Case Study - Design Innovation

Multi design gift pack range created for leading drinks manufacturer

Objectives:

• To develop a comprehensive range of gift packaging for a leading beer, cider and lager brand and one of the world’s largest drinks retailers to enable effective presentation to major retailers and supermarkets
• To create a common range to enable ease of packing and give similarity, but also allow changes to exterior design options for seasonal or specific events
• To ensure packs were 100% corrugated removing any single use plastics that may have been present in previous designs

Design:

Full research was undertaken with the customer over a two-day period to ascertain a full and detailed brief and to achieve the key objectives outlined above and several other secondary requirements.

The customer required a full set of designs across many of their existing brands. These would need to be approved at the design stage, transit tested and, in collaboration with the distribution house, a detailed costing document provided which could then be presented to any future clients.

The design team appointed to the project agreed a family of products for each of the brands. The family components were amended depending on whether the brand was a market dominator or a more niche brand, and the packaging designs, both constructional and visually, were amended to reflect this all whilst ensuring similarities remained across the range.

Once these outline designs were agreed high quality samples were produced to create 35 different gift packs across seven world leading brands. Consultation was undertaken between our customer’s offices in London, Berlin and Rome to ensure global appeal was achieved. Full approval was given on the range.

Each of the packs was made from E150W/150T and had crash lock bases to ensure assembly and packing was straightforward and time efficient. Most of the range was printed four colour with one exception which was seven. All were printed to ensure correct brand replication and adhered to strict brand guidelines.

Outcome:

A range of bottle only, glass only and bottle and glass combinations were included in the range.

1500 individual price points were created to give full clarity and selling potential to our customer’s team. Due to the nature of forward selling, extensive engagement also took place with the fulfilment house providing samples so individual weights, sizes and pallet quantities could be projected allowing the supermarkets to allocate future warehousing once the products were delivered.

Once this data was collated we integrated it with the samples and technical specifications to create a virtual catalogue that our customer could present to any retailer, confident that all the information was to hand.

This tool allowed them to visually present the range, discuss quantities and price points to secure orders.

The project has been a huge success resulting in many large orders for the summer period. Festive discussions for the Christmas gifting window are now well underway.

This detailed project shows our expertise within the drinks sector and our capabilities in terms of corrugated design, how corrugated integrates into the wider business and our commercial awareness of how brands, productivity, logistics and warehousing, commercial channels and consumer demands interact to deliver commercial success.

Facts and Stats:

• 40,000 packs delivered initially
• 35 different gift packs and 1500 price points were encompassed in the range
• Project blueprint is easily transferrable for other products and upscaled to incorporate higher volumes, weights and alternative products or indeed, higher volumes.