Good things come in awesome packages

Packaging is important for fashion businesses. Attracting repeat customers is about making customers feel like they have a connection with your brand, and the packaging for your products is a vital tool for doing that.

It’s one piece in the bigger picture of how you tell the story of your product. You only need to look at online unboxing videos to see the excitement that can be inspired in that first interaction with a purchase, with customers excited to share their experience of opening their new acquisitions. Here’s why product packaging is important, along with some illuminating examples of where it’s made a difference. 

First impressions count

Unwrapping a new purchase is the first impression a customer will have of your product. This is an opportunity that shouldn’t be passed up. It’s a chance to create a memorable experience, an art perfected by the likes of Apple, whose carefully minimalist presentation of their products – be it a new iPod or even just a replacement charger – makes for a luxury unwrapping moment. In other cases, it can be about including little extras, like mail order bathroom product business Dollar Shave Club, who include inserts such as a printed newsletter. Carefully curated extras like this can go a long way to deepening a customer’s relationship with your brand.

It can make a statement about your brand

Are you using sustainable packaging? More and more these days, consumers expect brands to be environmentally and ethically aware, and the choices you make with your packaging can bolster (or detract) from your brand. Packaging manufacturers like Duo are increasingly catering to this new demand from retailers, developing sugarcane bags for the likes of womenswear retailer Pink Boutique. RePack, who work with brands including Swedish label Filippa K and sustainable denim company MUD Jeans, have specialised in sustainable packaging, providing reusable and returnable packaging that come in three adjustable sizes and which are designed to last at least 20 cycles. Elsewhere, New Zealand-based eco-conscious brand Maggie Marilyn are cutting back on plastics with biodegradable cassava-root bags.

Good packaging can take on a life of its own

In some cases, packaging can take on a life of its own, customers embracing the casing it arrived in as much as the product itself. There’s Glossier, for instance, and their pink plastic envelopes, which people use as wash bags. A great example from fashion is the Hangerpak, a packaging method started as a student project where the cardboard casing can be used as a clothes hanger – a great talking point that reduces waste. It won a D&AD award and became a talking point for anyone lucky enough to receive their online order in it. 

It’s especially important for online brands

If you don’t have a bricks and mortar store or concession where customers can spend time imbibing a sense of your brand, then the packaging – and the experience of opening it for the first time – is an even more important place for you to make an impression. A 2016 survey from Dotcom Distribution found 40% of consumers are likely to make repeat purchases from an online merchant with premium packaging, demonstrating the all-important impact this aspect can have for online retailers. Outside of your online channels and the product itself, this is the place where you can really underscore the story you want to tell about your brand. You’d be foolish not to think carefully about how you can make the most of it.

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