Is it all about the packaging?

Like many of you I expect, I spent too much time in too many shops in the run up to Christmas, hunting down "one last present" that I needed to buy. What struck me this year was the massive diversity of shops selling nicely packaged sweets and chocolates for gifts, even if they had never sold confectionery before in their lives! Even Next piled up retro sweets alongside men's socks - the perfect stocking filler (excuse the pun!)?

Whilst some might think that this is dreadful competition for more traditional confectionery stores, I personally think that it highlights an ever growing opportunity. You see if you studied a few of these delicious packages, and did a mental calculation of the cost of the product, the margins are pretty damn good here! Simply by taking a handful of sweets and placing them into some form of attractive packaging, they become something else in the consumer's eye and something worth paying a bit more for.

John Lewis has been good at this for many years and it always amazes me some of the prices it seems to achieve on sweet treats. Its profits over Christmas I understand have been equally amazing.

My point? Well if the bigger players can do it, why not the smaller ones too? "But you need the volume!" I hear you cry. Not always true. I can think of two ways that the same objective can be achieved and indeed value can be added to your products.

1. Take a surf on Google. I did and quickly found:
www.shcweb.co.uk/ have some simple little acetate cartons
www.ebottles.co.uk/ have some lovely glass hexagon jars
And www.hastings-crystal.co.uk/ are selling packs of 50 heart shaped tins for 77p each - perfect to pop some sweets in - they even have clear tops!



That surf took me 10 minutes and I am quite sure that there are many more packaging options out there should you choose to research it further.

2. Talk to a few specialist confectionery wholesalers. Some are starting to offer different and very interesting gifting items that can help you to serve this opportunity, with little effort from yourself and yet more margin to reward your business with.

So there you are, food for thought perhaps? We would love to hear what you think!