Don’t be scared of losing sales with sustainable packaging

Making a change to your existing secondary packaging for a successful product can feel risky. But if your packaging doesn’t align with your consumers’ or your brand’s environmental values, making a sustainable swap is a risk worth taking. Don’t be scared of losing sales with sustainable packaging. When FACER produces your packaging, there’s no risk and we can prove it.

Client’s internal monologue before working with FACER.

How do we create packaging that differentiates our brand from our competitors? That engages our consumers effectively? That is still environmentally responsible and sustainable? If, we alter the way we package our products, into something more sustainable, will we compromise on product presentation? Will we lose consumer engagement? Will we lose product sales? It’s OK! We’ve got you.

The consistent sustainable packaging challenge

Drum roll for the eradication of single-use plastic. That’s right our clients have challenged us more than once to remove single-use plastic from their packaging ranges, and we’ve transformed them into fully recyclable, paper-based packaging instead. But, this is not a one-size fits all approach, because your brand still needs to stand out on the shelf and you need to feel confident there will be no loss in sales.

Rainbow Dust sustainable packaging case study

Rainbow Dust, manufacturers of specialist bake and cake decorating products came with packaging that included plastic clamshells and blister-packs. The brief was as follows:

• Retain the existing product presentation
• Retain the marketing real estate of each packaging format
• Future-proof for scalability, producing formats viable for future machine automation
• Incorporate the evolved branding into the structure of the packaging design
• Be unique within the cake decorator sector

We used a 5th-panel folding carton structure to retain the product presentation and marketing real estate. We then adapted the folding cartons to fit a wide range of product types and sizes from tubes of food colouring gel to pots of food colouring powder and larger packs for full product ranges. Despite this difference within the packaging range, the branding remained consistently strong with a featured ‘heart’ aperture revealing the primary product in every pack.

Louise Wane, Managing Director of Rainbow Dust had this to say about the project: “I can only describe working with FACER as having been an innovative experience. We came to them with a problem. We needed to rebrand everything to bring our brand and our products back to life. Not only did they work with us creatively, they presented us with a full solution that structurally encapsulated our brand. They were the only supplier that approached us with an answer that took who we are as a brand and incorporated that story into the packaging. I couldn’t recommend them enough in respect of their pace, creativity, customer service and delivery. Nothing short of exceptional.”

Mitsubishi POSCA Paint Marker sustainable packaging case study

Any well established craft cupboard will have POSCA Paint Markers. They are iconic in the world of stationery. So, when long-term client Mitsubishi whispered to us (following a successful eradication of single-use plastic from blister packs for their pen brand Uni-ball) it’s time to go plastic-free for POSCA – we jumped at this opportunity. What was the brief?

• Remove clear plastic acetate cartons from the POSCA packaging range
• Retain the existing product presentation and marketing real estate of each packaging 
• Consider future-proofing scalability with formats viable for future machine automation
• The structural packaging design should incorporate the ability to stand upright and have tamper evidence
• The final product specification should be decorative and enhance consumer perceived product value

This was achieved with a conventional folding carton structure made from FSC certified, mono material pack that is fully recyclable. The structural packaging design incorporates the ability to stand as well as tamper evidence. Visually, an aperture has been included to reveal the primary products, enhancing the life-size printed versions on the pack. Printed using oil-based inks and water-based coatings.

Just two examples of the eradication of single-use plastic, swapped for sustainable and recyclable paper-based packaging. No need to be scared of losing sales with sustainable packaging.

Is it time to rethink your packaging? Let’s talk.