How to Design Packaging for Ecommerce Brands: Operators Build (E4)

Matt Bertulli (0:00)

Welcome back to Operators Build Episode 4

Today we're talking packaging. We are taking you behind the scenes as we discuss all things, product packaging and design, what makes for great packaging, what does your packaging need to say about your brand before anyone reads a bloody word on it? We are talking brand identity, yes, the word brand. What's the difference between how a package looks and how it actually needs to function in the real world? From design concept to structural design, what are you even choosing between? What are we choosing between? Is it pouch, is it box, is it stick pack, is it something else? There are so many types of packaging and you're going to listen to us real time talk about how we design the Winks packaging. And in this episode, we're going to be joined by Chris Ganz, who's the guy that was blessed and maybe cursed to help us with all of our packaging needs. You'll hear that in both segments of this episode. Let's get into it.

Mike Beckham (0:57)

All right, so we're doing it. We're launching a sleep brand. And one of the big things that we've got to get done to get this thing to market, we're recording right now is beginning of July. And what we learned with Trevi was if you're working on it in July and you're moving towards a PO, you can probably get it out the door in November or December. That's our goal. We want to be launching this in Q4.

So we're at a pretty critical path piece in packaging. We're getting close on formula. Did you say we're close on formula, Curtis?

Curtis (1:29)

Yeah, we are. So we've obviously have the formula dialed in now, which is about taste and yeah, flavor. And so once we firm that up, then we're ready to go.

Mike Beckham (1:41)

So we got the good stuff inside that makes you sleep. We need to make sure we make it taste the way we want. We're close there. We're iterating as we're taping this. But we need to start deciding on packaging so that once we do get flavor dialed in, we'll be ready to go. And one of the things that we did learn with Trevi is that the packaging piece can be sometimes the most time consuming piece. It can be a lot quicker to get the formula pieces and ingredients than it can be to get the packaging. So that's what we're going to do today. And as we were discussing like, hey, how do we want to handle this packaging?

There were several comments that between Simple Modern and Trevi, we had some really great packaging and brought in a person from our team, Chris Ganz, who is with us today on the pod. And Chris has handled a lot of packaging things for Simple Modern. We went through a rebrand recently and he headed up a lot of those efforts. But then he's actually moved full time onto the Trevi team. And Chris, why don't we start by just give us a little bit of your background. How did you get into packaging?

What all have you done over the years?

Chris Ganz (2:44)

Yeah. So my name is Chris. Like Mike said, I work now on the full-time on Trevi, but was with Simple Modern before that as one of the creative directors there. So my background has always been more in the design side, but really what drew me to design was brand, and the mythical ethereal thing that we call brand, and just trying to help develop with consideration how to develop that gut feeling that people have to want to buy your stuff. And so design was where I naturally fell into, and working with a myriad of DTC brands, some Shark Tank brands of developing their visual identity, but then really started to carve out a specialty in packaging, and moved to work for PepsiCo, and the Free to Low team for about a year, developing packaging for a subset of their brands, managing them, working for collaborations, doing brand activations, full visual redesigns as well. And when I came to Simple Modern, when I came timely, where we were doing a brand refresh there, led up the logo redesign visual identity process along with the packaging, and kind of in the middle of almost where we were starting to really get to the point with cranking all of that out, it was like, hey, we're also going to start this new brand called Trevi. So Chris, would you like to handle that as well? And always love a challenge, so worked on that as well.

And that kind of leads to now.