As the whole country was issued orders to stay-at-home in response to the pandemic, people resorted to buying their essentials like groceries and hygiene related products through popular e-commerce websites. With more and more people wary of stepping into crowded places, offline retail has seen a surge like never before. The online grocery market in India could touch $3 billion in sales by the end of 2020, a 76% increase over last year, as the demand for home delivery of fresh produce and staples is growing like never before. Of the many new trends that have mushroomed one important driver of e-commerce is the adoption of a digital first approach. While main metros continue their e-dominance as usual, there has been an interesting break through Tier 2 and 3 cities which were pre-pandemic only warming up to the idea of going digital for everyday essentials.
This massive change in consumer habits has caused monumental shifts for FMCG companies who were earlier tailoring their packaging designs and product decisions for retail sales. With no time to make informed adjustments they have found themselves swimming in the high seas of pandemic with a sudden tidal wave of demand from ecommerce sites. And interestingly, flexi-packaging has offered support and stability in this changing landscape. Here’s the top 4 reasons why brand owners consider flexi-packing as God-sent for selling through e-commerce.
Too many touch points
The number of external touch points from the first order to ultimately reaching the consumer is at least three times more in e-commerce than the traditional retail format. It is essential to package goods keeping in mind this longer chain of human intervention and possibility of adulteration and spoilage. Flexible packaging is the ideal solution for this problem. It is lightweight bags or pouches sealed using heat or pressure and helps in keeping goods in original condition, protected and free from breakage and spoilage thereby maintaining the quality of the original product across its life cycle.
Less environmental damage
Flexible packaging is comprehensive packaging that reduces the need for additional rigid packaging in the form of an additional outer-box used in shipping. For many product categories flexi-packaging is enough to handle the rigours of e-commerce logistic supply chain thereby reducing the pressure of additional packaging material costs on the brand owners and environmental impact on Mother Earth. Further, while taking the full life cycle of packaging materials into consideration, in most cases, flexible packaging needs less energy to manufacture and transport, reduces product waste, and sends less material to landfills as compared to rigid packaging.
Returns
The rate of returns is very high in certain categories of e-commerce sales like clothing and shoes. Flexible packaging offers re-closeable features that facilitate easy returns without requiring consumers or brand owners to use new packaging, thus, reducing the environmental impact.
Light-weight and Low on shipping costs
In e-commerce there is a need to ship individual units versus bulk goods. The packaging cost and design decisions need to made on packaging individual SKUs of goods. Flexible packaging is space-efficient; typically light-weighted and small in volume which makes it ideal for keeping shipping costs at bare minimum, a real winner in the e-commerce business model.
With 2020 changing the way business is done e-commerce will continue to grow. In fact, it is no longer a trend but actually the new reality and embracing flexible packaging will guarantee FMCG companies success all the way.