Smurfit Kappa develops packaging solutions in 5 days with "Design2Market Sprints"

These days, new trends in consumer goods emerge overnight. They are born in social media videos on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram and drive demand for new products within a very short time. Social commerce is the name given to this combination of social media experience and shopping. As part of a white paper published in 2021 ("From Discovery to Purchase: The Role of Community Commerce") by TikTok in cooperation with Publicies Groupe and WARC, it was surveyed that 74% of users on TikTok feel they are close to current trends. This is accompanied by data from an Accenture study that sees the share of social commerce rising to 17 per cent of all e-commerce spending by 2025. Accenture assumes that by then 18% of social media purchases will be in clothing, 13% in consumer electronics and 7% in home textiles. Food and personal care products will also catch up quickly.

Time-to-market strategies: Never more relevant than today

Time-to-market, i.e. the speed within which companies bring products from the initial idea to (online) retail, is one of the core challenges for companies. This discipline is not entirely new and has always been responsible for the success of companies, but social commerce has raised the required speed to a new level. Companies in particular do not have it easy here, as they first have to fulfil complex requirements and processes before products can be brought to market.

An indispensable component for bringing new products to market is packaging. This is responsible for protecting the products, must be sustainable and should convey a positive brand and unpacking experience. To enable customers to design and produce packaging solutions at the required speed in the future, Smurfit Kappa, manufacturer of paper-based packaging, has launched the "Design2Market Sprint".

Design2Market Sprint: 5 days to finished packaging

Smurfit Kappa's new service uses a collaborative approach to guide customers to an individual packaging solution within 5 days - from the task definition to the production of a market-ready prototype. This is realised within the framework of a project procedure in which interdisciplinary teams from both the customer and Smurfit Kappa sides formulate all the requirements for a packaging in 5 working days and packaging designers develop the new packaging in parallel. The cross-divisional composition of the teams is just as relevant here as a completely transparent, agile collaboration. In this way, packaging prototypes are developed within the shortest possible time that meet logistical requirements and processes as well as the demands of the respective brand. The close cooperation is secured and driven by the transparency factor. All work and intermediate steps are stored digitally and transparently using the project management platform and can be commented on or adjusted at any time.

Oliver Thieme, Experience Centre Manager Smurfit Kappa DACH, comments: "The Design2Market Sprints are a time of intensive collaboration during which we develop market-ready packaging at maximum speed. Processes that can otherwise take weeks and months are completed in five consecutive days at best through the two-way project approach. This is the chance for customers to react immediately to trends and accelerate innovative processes."