Brand Packaging Chases Consumers - So Knowing How They Feel Matters

One of the best ways to sell anything is to tap into what the customer is feeling. The massive jump in visits to the Dollar Store segment over the last few years Forbes - Dollar Store Traffic up 14% is clearly an indication that consumers feel less secure.

Research provided by Mintel.

Each segment of the consumer block has its mind on its money in a very different way. Designing packaging that reflects the attitudes, fears and hopes of the target group is the key to success. Here is the latest snapshot of consumer sentiment from Mintel. 

As we design Packaging we need to think long and hard about who we are trying to attract and why. Sometime the most effective packaging is the kind that says quality at a price point. Know the customer.

Vote For Your Favorite - Brand Packaging Contest Entrants

Brand Packaging - Packaging That Sells Show is coming up and there is always a people's choice award for various brand packaging categories. At KBPC we work with an array of designers in the Flexible Packaging category. Checkout this year's entrants and help choose a winner.Vote for the People's Choice Awards 2014

KBPC Corrugated Art Show

The KBPC Corrugated Art Show is coming November 14, 2015.

This is an amazing event with some fabulous pieces produced by local artists and university art students using corrugated material as the medium.

There is music, food and drink and this year Fort Wayne Artlink has agreed to host the event.

Hope you get the chance to see this really terrific display of artistic thinking!

Important Corrugated Terms to Understand

You are only as good as the materials you use. At KBPC we work with a variety of different sheet feeders to find the best possible performance/price for the sheets we use to produce the packaging our customers rely on. 

Recent changes in the market, and the constant effort to drive the total fiber content of paper down have made our commitment to consistently review key quality requirements with our suppliers even more important. This process involves a lot of careful evaluation of a lot of characteristics.

Let’s review some of these and explore their properties.

ECT: We all know it - but do we understand it? Box compression loss will vary with supply chain elements, trucking, storage, warehouse, climate, but the deterioration rates vary by actual amounts of board crush or flute degradation and the use of semichemical or recycled mediums as well. These must factor into performance evaluations.

Caliper: This is the amount of spring back or recovered thickness after crushing. While fluting is a resilient material and recovers from much of the sever deformation that occurs during combining and/or converting, its inherent strength contribution to the corrugated may be significantly compromised by compression. We implemented end of the line caliper testing some time ago to help identify sheets that failed to recover sufficiently form the converting process.

Flat Crush: This is measure of actual combined board crush verses the potential resistance to crushing as predicted from the Concora strength of the medium. This, however, is not a good predictor of actual board crush. A more difficult real world test that we have had to work hard to simulate in the design process, but cannot really determine in production.

Pin Adhesion:Determines the strength of the bonds between the liner(s) and the medium(s) and is a good test to identify delamination failures.

Four Point Bending Stiffness: Measures the rigidity of the combined board and the sidewall wall robustness of the corrugated box. This gives you a lot of real world performance characteristics.

Torsional Stiffness:Relatively new to the US, but known elsewhere. This maybe the single best overall determinant of board strength.

Warp:Should have no more than 1/8 deviation from flatness per foot.

New Face at KBPC

We are pleased to welcome Cliff Weikel to the KBPC team. Cliff is our new Facilities/Maintenance Manager. Cliff has an extensive background in manufacturing maintenance. Welcome, Cliff!
 

KBPC Picnic

The annual KBPC Employee Picnic was a huge success again this year. Food was great, there was lots of kids games, balloon toss and corn hole tournament were wildly popular and of course the Bingo for prizes always gets people going. It was great seeing all the families together and a lot of people really enjoyed the Zoo passes as well.

• 135 Adults/ 89 Kids/ 7 Babies attended picnic.
• 115 Adults / 88 Kids / 5 Babies attended the zoo.

 

Balloon Toss!

Planes were a hit!

Using the tents this year was a good change and the kids really liked the airplanes. Mini golf and Corrugated mask drawing, the moon walk, made it an exciting event for the younger kids. 

Water Balloon Toss was a lot of fun - particularly for those who got wet on a hot day.

Many thanks to all those who worked so hard to make this event a great experience for the whole KBPC Team.

We appreciate everything you do to take care of our customers! 

See all of you at the Christmas Party!

Keep Going

Some days it seem as if all we see are the issues that need to be addressed, the problems that need to be solved, the obstacles, impediments, roadblocks and brick walls that must be removed, or maneuvered around to get where we want to go. 

Facing problems is an important part of our work, to be sure, but when we get so focused on what is in the way we can often lose sight of the larger goals that put us on the path to these obstacles. I came across this little reminder of that this morning and wanted to share it. Thoughts on Motivation

Problems are there to be solved, but sometimes its a good idea to take a moment, lift up your gaze and get a fix on the goal. Going too far is far more fun than not going far enough.