Choosing the best packaging material is very important, as how you pack your products determines the success of your brand, its reputation, and whether or not you can reach your intended audience, especially in the luxury industry. The material you choose must protect the product and avoid contamination and damage during transportation and storage. So, what factors must you consider when selecting the best packaging material for your clients? Let’s discuss these in this article.
Luxury packaging materials: some considerations to make the right choice
Today, consumers have a wide range of materials to choose from for their products’ packaging, and producers must be able to tell them which are the best to satisfy their needs. You must evaluate certain factors when deciding what materials to include in your catalogue and recommend to your clients. Here are the five most important points to consider:
Possibility of customization
The design of the packaging is critical in influencing buyers’ purchasing decisions and to trigger impulsive shopping, especially in the luxury field, where people are often more interested in appearance than the product itself. One of the most important aspects of the packaging material is the possibility to shape and personalize it, making it elegant and prestigious. Wood, for example, besides being a precious material, can be easily and promptly machined in a very flexible way, with the possibility to obtain complicated and original shapes. This feature is very important to let brands distinguish themselves from their competitors. Many types of finishes are available on the market to enhance wooden containers and caps: you can choose to maintain wood’s natural effect (only polishing it or covering it with a protective, transparent and water based paint), responding to the needs of “green” brands, or, for example, you can cover its natural aspect, making it soft-touch, glossy, translucent, scratch-proof, etc. Your clients will appreciate the possibility of customizing their products to make them unique.
Functionality and protection
You must consider more than just design when evaluating the best luxury packaging materials. Cosmetics, perfumes, and liquor need resistant containers to protect them during transportation, storage, and delivery to avoid damage, contamination, and product leakage. For products containing alcohol, it is especially important to be protected against sunlight and oxygen, as these factors could affect product quality. It is also crucial that caps fit perfectly on the bottles and boxes, particularly if the two components are made of different materials. The best luxury caps available are made of wood—as it is elegant and prestigious—but containers are often made of different materials, such as glass, metal, or plastic. If the cap is not managed perfectly, it won’t fit, causing significant problems. 
You can solve this issue by choosing a competent manufacturer that knows the typical tolerances of wood and how to manage it to create perfect products. Many suppliers, in fact, are not specialized in wood manufacturing, and they use the same standards as for other materials. The problem is that wood, being natural, moves and changes constantly, so the manufacturer must be able to evaluate it during production and treat it appropriately.
Cost-effectiveness
The cost-effectiveness of luxury packaging materials doesn’t depend just on price. Many factors can influence overall costs. First, the need for moulds. When you create a plastic object, for example, you need a mould, and if you have to modify it, you must create a new mould, wasting time and money. Wood, on the other hand, doesn’t require moulds. It means that your initial investment will be much lower compared with other materials, and you can produce and put your wooden objects on the market faster, optimizing your expenses. You should also consider the possibility of buying products in small lots from your manufacturer and experiment with different finishing options to adjust production according to market trends and customers’ preferences. In this way, you can test the market during the launch phase and understand in advance if your products will be successful or if some modifications are necessary.
Prototypes may affect your expenses too. If your supplier can’t produce a prototype that corresponds 100% with the final product, you might have to face unforeseen problems that could have consequences on overall production costs. You must also consider the support and cooperation that the manufacturer can offer: if he helps you find solutions to respond to your clients’ requests, even the most complicated, you can use this to your advantage by selling more products and improving your reputation.
Sustainability
Choosing recyclable materials and organic water-based lacquers for your packaging options is a good idea to protect our environment, but is not the only factor to consider. Wood, for instance, is a sustainable material, but if it is collected improperly—i.e., not following the strict guidelines imposed by international organizations, such as those set by the FSC—it can cause significant damage to our planet and local communities in the harvesting areas. Sustainability concerns the whole process of collection, manufacturing, and production of packages, not just the material. You must ensure that the manufacturer’s entire supply chain follows rigorous regulations and is set up to reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
As we have seen, choosing the most suitable luxury packaging material is not just about aesthetics and design. You must consider the entire manufacturing process to make the best decisions, and the supplier you select is particularly important.
Minelli S.p.A has been operating specifically and exclusively in the timber sector for more than eighty years and can guarantee top-quality, exclusive, consistent, and durable products at a competitive price. We comply with all regulations aimed at protecting our ecosystem (we are FSC certified), and we have production plants in both Europe and the USA to reduce emissions. We firmly believe in a circular economy model and try to manage resources following the principles of recycling and reuse.
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