Treasure awaits
When walking down the store aisle, we are often drawn to colorful, unique products in distinctive packaging. A challenge some brands face when transitioning into retail stores is successfully redesigning a product's packaging to create a fresh look for a broader audience while maintaining its relationship with existing customers and ensuring their brand essence and messaging remains consistent. For its expansion into retail, Australian family wellness brand NATPAT used research to help design new product packaging – which ended up taking the form of a reusable treasure box in its final iteration.
NATPAT offers patches and stickers that are infused with natural essential oils to boost focus, sleep, mood and more. The original packaging – small and lightweight – was a direct-to-consumer product optimized for shipping. When the opportunity to sell the product in stores like Target arrived, the team understood there were different considerations to prioritize and decided it was time for a packaging rethink. The goal for the new container was to improve its retail presence and reflect the brand’s commitment to sustainability while offering new and existing customers a fun and functional experience.
Selling a product in the digital space is, of course, different than selling in-store. Online, a brand can communicate with its customers through accompanying videos, text and graphics; the packaging is almost secondary. In a retail environment, different factors must be considered. How will the customer discover the product? Will they be looking in the market category for something similar or will they stumble upon it? “We had to address everything from what the lighting could be like in the store to whether people could read what was on the package as they pass it, to the touch and feel of it, the excitement, the sort of magic of it,” says Michael Jankie, co-founder and CEO of NATPAT.
Maintain consistency
Of utmost importance was maintaining the brand’s uniqueness and staying consistent across its different products while making an in-store experience as exciting as the already established web experience. “We wanted the new packaging visually to echo the existing versions,” says Jankie.
NATPAT Co-Founder Andrei Safonau argues that the shape of the patch is the brand's strongest differentiator. At the beginning of the brainstorming process, the team had to address how to communicate the shape from a distance in a store and ultimately decided the package would need to be in a hard case design showing the unique product configuration.
While different packaging features were considered, a key part was the brand’s ability to capture shoppers’ attention. Getting new eyes on their products was important but equally so was not alienating existing audiences. Current customers had to be able to recognize the product on the shelf and understand that it was from the same company but with a fresh look.
During brainstorming, sustainability was a leading factor. The original package was a single-use plastic sleeve which, as mentioned, worked well for shipping but a goal for the new package was the potential for use after purchase as a toy or as a storage container, etc. “We started to update the packaging to make it a bit more reusable, as a brand we really are trying to commit to practices that are more sustainable,” says Safonau.
Seeing the waste from their production lines from items like stickers and backing sheets, the company investigated to see what could be recycled and repurposed.
Provide more value
With little control over how products would be displayed in larger stores, the team decided to prioritize on-shelf differentiation. “Our idea was to create a more sustainable package and provide a bit more value. When we go into a retail environment, which is very competitive, we want to stand out on the shelves more than anyone else,” says Safonau.
The team considered various factors including lighting, how products would be grouped together or whether they would be standing alone in different sections of the store. Creating a unique product, whether it be in size, color or shape, was crucial to increasing its perceived value.
The team considered a number of different directions for the final package – tubes, rolls, cases and sleeves. To narrow down their options, they debated the pros and cons, gauged their effectiveness in a retail setting, determined any aspects needing improvement and whether products were economically viable. The team conducted research around the unboxing experience to understand how children and parents felt about the products and see which features were preferred or simply wouldn’t work.
The team gathered feedback from family members, friends and other staff. They sent people images to ask for their preferences to get a sense of what they generally liked. Designs were tested among kids of different ages to determine which features were too complex for the final product. For example, if a lid was too tight, intricate or unnatural to open, it would be discarded. Safonau recalls that different levels of force had to be applied to different product variations, including a twist-to-open lid which was ruled out. “Insights came at the beginning where people actually didn’t know how to open [the case] in the first place, so it took us time to refine that,” he says.
To avoid any interference, the product was given to participants and they were left to naturally figure out what to do. The team would “watch and see what the interaction is and then get the feedback, either visually or by speaking to them afterwards,” Jankie says. The goal was to replicate a real-life scenario instead of offering any prompts or giving any background information before testers handled the product.
First-iteration sample cases were taken to Expo West, a natural products trade show in the U.S., where the team was able to observe how attendees interacted with the product. They determined their excitement or frustration levels by watching their movements and facial expressions as they tried to open the package. Being able to get the physical product in the hands of thousands of people and seeing firsthand how they responded was beneficial. “It wasn’t structured research, but that was real life,” says Jankie.
Trust yourself
The team learned the importance of trusting yourself and your understanding of your customers and what they will enjoy, acknowledging that the numerous packaging iterations were probably not necessary when they were fairly confident at the beginning how the packaging would look. “We could have got this to market probably six months earlier had we actually just trusted what we started with,” Jankie says.
In the future, the NATPAT team will focus on making smaller adjustments when they are needed, rather than undertaking larger projects. This won’t be the last change made to the packaging but future versions will be implemented gradually using feedback from existing customers.
Something the team did not expect was that people were eager to help throughout the redesign process. Being one of the first to try a product, and offer feedback that could be implemented before an official launch, was exciting, the participants told them.
Conducting a product packaging rebrand and ensuring that the final product aligns with, and boosts, company presence is a challenge. But when clear goals are established, and when customer feedback and research is considered, a product that stands out in retail stores can be successfully created. NATPAT’s final treasure box design is a durable, airtight case that children can use long after the product runs out. It’s a keepsake that transforms packaging from waste into an integral part of the consumer’s experience.