Package Design - June 2012 - 24

PACKAGING
By Darin Painter

Gets Personal
Digital printing treats a chocolate brand to new opportunities.

hornton’s was already successful at collecting customers—the U.K.-based chocolate retailer had more than 750,000 people in its database by fall 2009. Now, the company’s leaders decided it was time to connect with them on a personal level. They were hungry to make each customer’s order an engaging experience. About 15 miles south of Thornton’s headquarters, Adam Noble and his team at Irongate Digital (Derby, U.K.) had been developing Web-based marketing services and investing in new digital printing and packaging technology, including a Xerox (Norwalk, CT) iGen3 press. So when Thornton’s and Irongate met to talk about new ideas for packaging its chocolates, the opportunity for personalized packaging seemed sweet to both firms. The companies collaborated on a project called Create Your Own Chocolate Box. Irongate helped Thornton’s develop a micro-site (now the “Personalised Gifts” section of Thornton’s website, www. thorntons.co.uk) that enables individuals to order chocolates with boxes that feature their own personalized images. Today, customers upload an image to be placed

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT
Dooley Direct LLC, dooleydirect.com InfoTrends Inc., www.infotrends.com Irongate Digital, www.irongatedigital.co.uk Xerox, www.xerox.com XMPie Inc., a Xerox company, www.xmpie.com

on the box, add a customized greeting to the inside, select from among four box sizes and choose the box’s color, along with the type of chocolates to go inside. The photo image is printed on the lid of the box, and the chosen color is printed on the sides and bottom. Customers can also choose specialoccasion boxes for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays or surprises. Irongate downloads files generated by customer activity each day on the Thornton’s website. Powered by variable-data-publishing software from XMPie (New York, NY), ordering information and images are sent automatically to Irongate’s Xerox iGen3. The production team at Irongate prints the boxes and sends them back to Thornton’s by 3:30 p.m. Irongate prints a barcode on each box, which is scanned and then matched to the recipient’s individual chocolate choice. The barcode contains important information that increases fulfillment efficiency at Thornton’s. The ready-toship boxes are picked up for delivery at 5:30 p.m. Thornton’s sold about 4,500 personalized boxes in the 10 working days before Christmas 2009. On a typical day outside holiday seasons, Irongate fulfills around 50 boxes, and the personalized option accounts for 95% of all online orders. “The amount of products they have sold with personalized packaging is far greater than they would have sold with a standard box,” says Shaun Todd, Irongate’s business-development manager.

Addressing the individual
Personalized packaging is an extension of the one-to-one digital-marketing premise that a mass

JUNE 2012

Package Design - June 2012

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