Converting Case Study
Boxed in for retail and online By RK Print Coat Instruments managing director, Tom Kerchiss
C
onventional retailing – high street shops, the out-of-town stores, the malls and even the long-established department stores – are trying to hang in there and find ways to deal with the fallout from the Covid pandemic. The realities associated with an interconnected world suggest that some sort of retail normality will return, once shopping ceases to seem like a military exercise necessitating the need for face masks, social distancing and not being allowed to pick up or handle items. However, during lockdown and periods spent isolating, people have been buying items online that they would previously never have thought about purchasing. Brand owners and marketers looking to support retail operations with online or e-commerce sales would be mistaken if they thought that they could just ‘brown box’ it. This may once have been okay but not now, as consumers have higher expectations. The anticipation, the excitement of un-boxing to reveal a gift or a treat contributes to an enjoyable experience. More so, perhaps, given the vogue for sharing the unboxing or big-reveal with others via a smartphone, YouTube and/or on social media. Compared with products sold in a bricks- and-mortar retail environment, there are fewer touch points or product cues with e-commerce purchased items. Shopping online, in itself, may not provide for a sense of occasion. The purchaser cannot physically pick up and handle the packaged item or decide with a friend over coffee whether the item being considered is worthwhile but, of course, there are those who would rather forgo going out to the shops. For them there is that sense of anticipation and expectation when an online order arrives, unboxing and uploading begins.
Brand owners and the packaging supply chain partners need to work smarter, not necessarily harder, to ensure that the package complements and enhances the consumers purchasing experience. Online retailers and/ or brand owners can create excitement and encourage social media sharing by providing interesting and colourful packaging, with an added element of personalisation. This personalised ‘thank you’ may take the form of a sticker, an enclosed note or some other
form of memorable personalisation that creates a positive and lasting impression about the brand.
Paperboard is widely used for many packaging applications and is ideal, not only for personalised or unboxing scenarios, but also for premium products, like branded cosmetics, fragrances, skin care and grooming items that are sold in department stores and specialist retail environments where colour, graphics, informational content (or marketing message), shape and various added-value embellishments determine whether the consumer notices and is attracted to the product and makes a purchase.
Paperboard is also an important packaging component of many IT, electronic and electrical consumer goods that are both marketed in store and online. These goods are always well packaged and well promoted and are ideally suited for unboxing and the sharing of the experience on social media and for retailing in specialist stores, etc. Paperboard can be cut, creased, folded, interlocked, glued and shaped to meet an almost unending range of structurally sound formats. Depending upon grade and quality a variety of value-added processes enhances appearances including printing using conventional, speciality and UV inks using flexo and gravure print processes, etc. The surface can be subjected to various coatings; it may also be embossed, de-embossed and can be converted so that the finished box incorporates windows for product viewing. Everyone looks to brand presentation, poor printability and colour that just doesn’t sit right affects sales. Colour can define the brand so must be consistent, free from blemishes at all time. In a conventional retail environment if colour, printed text and graphics don’t meet expectations the customer may simply move on to another item that may well be one that’s manufactured by a competitor. For unboxing e-commerce products and for sharing online, it’s essential, if the brand owner really wants the consumer to be a brand ambassador, that colour is appropriate to the product and design and print are of the highest quality. Brand owners and marketers must never forget that the image
that their brand ambassador uploads may be viewed by hundreds or thousands of potential customers.
Print producers and suppliers endeavour to bring process variables under control in the shortest possible time, equally all parties seek to achieve standardisation so that processes are consistent. Even with lean manufacturing techniques and quality control initiatives the control of colour can be difficult. Colour matching, determining and resolving printability issues surrounding inks and substrate interaction off-press is obviously desirable in that it minimises on- press waste and speeds production. Designed and developed by RK Print Coat Instruments, the FlexiProof 100 is a colour communication proofing device that can be used by the users and producers of flexo inks, as well as by coating, substrate producers and by others with a connection to flexo or an interest in the process: for example, universities and educational research centres. The FlexiProof UV and FlexiProof LED UV incorporates the same scaled-down flexo press application critical components, doctor blade and banded anilox rolls that the original and award-winning FlexiProof 100 includes. These variants also incorporate an integral miniaturised UV system, so that printing and curing can be undertaken seamlessly and with greater accuracy than can be obtained using traditional UV conveyor methods.
u
rkprint.com
convertermag.com
February 2021
21
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