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« Backlash against Deceptive and Excessive Packaging | Main | Packaging Machine Market to Grow Through Recession? »
December 9, 2008
Less Time to Open, More Time to Enjoy
A small but growing number of companies are introducing product packages that are not only easier to open, but manufactured more efficiently with sustainability in mind.
In an effort to keep products intact and safe, much of the consumer products industry has moved into a style of wrapping that involves a hard plastic clamshell container with fused seams. Molded packaging protects goods en route to and from other countries, for instance, and retailers say the heat-sealed edges keep shoppers from opening them in stores.
Due in large part to the expansion of big-box stores (particularly bulk outlets that lack display cases), demand for "clamshell" or "oyster" packaging is expected to rise by 5.3 percent each year to $2.7 billion in sales within the next two years, according to the market research firm Freedonia Group. At that pace, more than 8 billion oyster packs will be produced by 2015.
"Products are packaged a certain way for a reason and it's not to make it more difficult," Packaging Diva (and IMT contributor) JoAnn Hines aptly commented earlier.
Yet what was once hailed as an attractive, theft-resistant product container and thought of as slightly frustrating is increasingly being met with consumer hostility.
In fact, as the holiday season rapidly approaches, parents all over the world are no doubt dreading the inevitable minor cuts that pop up this time every year in a phenomenon that's come to be bitterly, if not dubiously, known as "wrap rage." (Consumer Reports got so fed up with the impenetrable packaging that it created its Oyster Awards to honor and bash the best and worst of hard-to-open packaging. For two years, the magazine published a sort-of hall of shame for hostile containers.)
To address the issue and reduce the amount of wounds and cursing triggered by clamshells, some packaging makers are creating resealable, snap-out or perforated designs.
Despite those steps (and anecdotal evidence: there weren't enough changes in packaging to warrant Oyster Awards for 2008), consumers are becoming much more sensitive — both to minor scrapes and to social concerns.
Now "a number of retailers and manufacturers have a holiday gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that will not result in lacerations and stab wounds." (Source: The New York Times)
The biggest newsmaker hoping to change things is Amazon.com, which is introducing a multi-year initiative designed to make it easier for customers to liberate products from their packages and eliminate "wrap rage."
In an open letter to customers last month, Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, announced that the online retailer will work with leading manufacturers to deliver products in "smaller, easy-to-open recyclable cardboard boxes with less packaging material" — "and no frustrating plastic clamshells or wire ties."
Image credit: Amazon.com
Frustration-Free Packaging has been launched in the United States with 19 best-selling products from manufacturers that include Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and electronics manufacturer Transcend. Amazon is looking to expand the program with hopes of wrapping its entire catalog of products sans fuss in the coming years.
For Amazon, such a campaign is relatively easy because it does not need to worry about how products look hanging on store shelves, or whether items will be pinched by shoplifters.
But, as the New York Times reports, "even companies that do have those concerns are joining the movement." For instance, "Microsoft recently unveiled a unique container for the Explorer computer mice it sells at Best Buy." The mouse container has a plastic zipper on each side — "inspired by the packaging of food items, Microsoft said — with blue arrows that guide buyers into easily unlocking their purchase."
Sony, too, has begun an ambitious internal project called "death of the clamshell." According to the Times report, "The electronics giant is developing three packaging prototypes it plans to test in the coming months at Best Buy and Wal-Mart Stores. One uses an adhesive that is easy to pry open but makes a loud, Velcro-like noise — intended to deter thieves."
In addition to making packages easier to open, a major goal of the Frustration-Free Packaging initiative is to be "more environmentally friendly by using less packaging material," Amazon said in a statement.
New, eco-iconic packaging on the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship, for example, eliminates 36 inches of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated package inserts, 36.1 square inches of printed folding carton materials, 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene and two molded plastic fasteners.
Image credit: Amazon.com
"Packaging is at the nexus of every global supply chain and customer relationship because for nearly every product sold in stores, there is both primary and secondary packaging," Wal-Mart claims in its sustainable packaging fact sheet.
Right about now, most businesses are trying to work out how their customers are likely to respond to the recession. Now more than ever, businesses that ignore the importance of packaging do so at their own jeopardy. Many are likely to be overtaken by competitors whose visually appealing, easy-to-use packaging houses lesser-quality goods.
Should manufacturers follow Amazon's lead in changing the way things are packaged?
Earlier
5 Things Every Business Needs to Know about Packaging
Unwrapping the Packaging Industry
Resources
The Oyster Awards
Consumer Reports, March 2007
Packages You Won't Need a Saw to Open
by Brad Stone and Matt Richtel
The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2008
Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging FAQs
Amazon.com
Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging Letter to Customers - Open Letter
Amazon.com
Amazon Announces Beginning of Multi-Year Frustration-Free Packaging Initiative
Amazon.com, Nov. 3, 2008
ECO-ICONIC - Eco-Embedded & Eco-Boosters
TrendWatching.com, May/June 2008
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3 Comments'Bout time. There have been so many times that I have nearly cut off a thumb or finger, I have vowed not to buy things wrapped so well that the product is nearly destroyed to release it from its captivity. It is hard not to buy if you really need it. Perhaps the sellers need a few lawsuits and large payouts for them to figure out that the extra 12-gauge, tough-as-nails and cut/tear-resistant packaging is NOT the way to go.
Then there are the DVDs and CDs that have a security tape around 1-2-3 sides that have to come off in 5-15 strips because the 'Pull Here' tab tears too easily. Both are poor design and not totally needed. Would it not be easier to put an r.f.i.d. tag on the item to prevent theft, reduce the material and strength of the tank proof outer wrap?
Another item is the grocery products like cheese that now have the "tear here" strip to reveal the inner reseal and close strip (for freshness?) that, once revealed, you end up having to rip open the package and destroy the reseal feature just to get into the package the first time. Come on, you wizards of packaging.
Then there are the famous oatmeal boxes with the tabs that you insert to close the package - but the tabs are so small and the catch so perforated that just snapping the perfs destroys the tabs.
Here is a question for you other wizards who make toilet paper perfs on the roll (applies to paper towels, also): Why is it that the perfs appear to cut through the paper on a ratio of 60/40 or 80/20 of the paper and when paper is pulled off to be torn, that it never tears at the perf line? Just thought I would ask.
Good thing these brains do not wrap eggs individually (for freshness). Perhaps every present-day package wrapped in this 'hard to open' manner should come with a government safety warning and a free package of band-aids.
December 9, 2008 2:33 PMI probably spend ten minutes on each toy my kids receive as gifts. All the while, the kids are sitting there wanting to play with it. I've learned to keep wire cutters and a box knife handy during birthdays and Christmas gift openings.
It is out of hand. There's no way that those ten wire ties can be that important in making sure the toys arrive undamaged.
And what's with the plastic sewn into the hair on Barbies and other dolls? What purpose does that serve? I've yet to figure out an easy way to remove that!
December 9, 2008 2:36 PMEnjoyed the report
December 26, 2008 4:23 AM
