The packaging market is booming. But what distinguishes a successful folding box from others? Steffen Schnizer, Head of Marketing at CD Cartondruck AG, provides answers. The Southern German business specializes in high-quality folding boxes and has won several packaging awards for them.You have won a lot of international awards with your folding boxes. What determines packaging worthy of an award?
Steffen Schnizer: - We have to offer something really new and not just produce things that already exist more elaborately. This can be an innovative packaging material, for example an environmentally friendly cardboard to replace plastic. Or, it could be a new coating technique, like partial flock coating, which we used on a perfume packaging for the first time worldwide in order to create a velvet effect.
What are the customer advantages of such elaborate effects?
Even though some innovations are more expensive to implement, the fundamental question has to be asked: what does our customer want to accomplish with the packaging? Particularly with products like perfume, with multitudes of brands that cannot all be sampled by the consumer, unique packaging is essential for a perfume to be distinguishable and to sell well. The customer achieved this goal with innovative packaging. The design caused a sensation. For ideas like this, we win an award now and then.
What about the consumer? Is functionality neglected in the process?
Successful packaging has to fascinate and to work. Nothing is more annoying than packaging which cannot be opened and closed easily by the consumer, regardless of whether it is used for cosmetics, food or medicine.
That is why functionality is growing increasingly important, especially when considering the demographic development. Here I mean primarily age-appropriate packaging, for example for older people who cannot see or move their hands and fingers so well anymore. Our hinge packaging proves that innovative design and user friendliness are not mutually exclusive: here the content, in this case a bottle, is simply pulled out from the side.
Matt-gloss effects, Iriodin, lamination - everywhere you look things are shining and glittering. Does that not lead to an overkill of sensory impressions?
No, on the contrary. The multiple sensory properties are an instrument of differentiation which is nowhere near exhausted. We are therefore developing this area very strongly. For example, we laminated a folding box with original book binding linen for the surface feel.
The customer wanted a very special natural effect for their perfume packaging. And not just from the look alone - the material is blue - but also through a surface with an original fabric structure. The challenge was to laminate the linen without bubbles and then to print the text precisely in a small-dot size using offset.
