The rise and rise of E-commerce packaging E-commerce truly boomed in 2020. But what does the future hold and where are the opportunities? We interviewed James Harmer Planning & Innovation Strategy leader at Cambridge Design Partnership to delve into the detail of e-commerce packaging. n the last 3-5 years, what have been the biggest shifts or challenges the packaging industry has had to deal with?
The biggest macro shift has been the packaging industry’s need to find sustainable alternatives and doing so in a way that doesn’t impact their business while allowing them to supply goods customers need. There’s a massive push for this from the big FMCG companies. When I am talking to these clients, they say KPIs are as much around sustainability now as they are around the P&L, that’s going to put a huge amount of pressure on certain packaging suppliers. But it will also create a huge amount of opportunity. Then there is the shift that companies don’t just need a bricks and
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mortar presence, but they also need to be able to ship directly to the consumer (D2C). Beyond the requirements of robust packaging for D2C, are the opportunities around packaging being customizable, bespoke for different people’s needs and designed in different ways. Because of those things, there has been an increase in technologies surrounding digital printing allowing custom print. All of these have begun to converge all at once, so e-commerce but sustainable, ‘mass but custom’ are the fundamental themes that are changing the landscape.
The pandemic changed shopper habits and customer’s views on packaging. Do you think once lockdown lifts, people will go back to their pre-
Covid habits quickly or do you think some habits will remain?
I think there is going to be a desire by some consumers to get back to the high street without a shadow of a doubt. Those consumers who have always been seeking tactile shopping experiences in bricks and mortar retail and love shopping in stores. But what has happened during lockdown is that e-commerce increased in its prevalence trend analysts like Benedict Evans has said that it fast-forwarded the development of e-commerce by 5 to 10 years in terms of its maturity over the lockdown. What lockdown has done for certain people who were not interested in e-commerce is promoted the understanding that e-commerce
