Knowledge is Power:
Shorewood Packaging digs deep for information to create a product that’s finely-tuned to the customer’s expectations

By M. Grace Maselli

Among Shorewood’s Grammy winners are Miles Davis's “The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions” for Sony.

Some ideas bear repeating. Like a package recently co-conceived, designed, and produced by Shorewood Packaging, a business of International Paper’s Consumer Packaging Group, one of North America’s colossal-sized folding carton and package manufacturing operations.

The package, a freshly minted “box set” for Shorewood’s client Universal Music Enterprises, encloses three music CDs and a DVD containing demos and hard-to-find songs of the Seattle-born rock band Nirvana. Brit Davis, account executive for Shorewood’s Home Entertainment Division in Los Angeles, takes pride in the diverse elements that came together to make the box set, called “With the Lights Out,” a success. To start, the package front integrates an aluminum metal plate artfully etched with the band members’ images. The box is also coated with heat-sensitive “thermochromatic” ink—a formulation engineered to change color and move from opacity to transparency as it comes into contact with the body heat emitted by someone’s hand. (More details below.)

From Shorewood’s perspective, it’s no accident that Universal Music is more than pleased with the results of the Nirvana packaging. To date, approximately three quarters of a million units have been ordered and manufactured. “We are extremely focused on customer initiatives,” says Ron Harwell, Shorewood vice president of marketing. “Everything we do is about creating value propositions for our customers.”

The Wilson Reactor golf ball package was a cooperative effort with Sagoma Technologies, which engineered and produced the package according to exacting details from Shorewood and Wilson.

To arrive at such value propositions, Shorewood places a premium on digging deep for information. “What we do is get involved with our customers,” Harwell asserts. Involvement means thorough communication, including customer “interviews” done by way of sales personnel assigned to accounts with representation from multiple Shorewood departments, including—but not limited to —purchasing, marketing, operations, manufacturing, and quality control. “Through interviews, we get an in-depth understanding from a number of different disciplines,” says Harwell. In other words, from a cross-section of perspectives that lends itself to a comprehensive notion “of a customer’s wants and needs.” Harwell says of Shorewood’s full-service, single source packaging capabilities: “The more we know, the better we can allocate our resources.”

Briefs from a history

Founded in 1967 as a private company, Shorewood operates with multiple manufacturing locations in the U.S., Canada, Poland, China, and the U.K. Greg Chup, the company’s product development manager, recently detailed the workings of the Product Development Council, a kind of ruling body whose sole purpose is to consider viable commercial packaging concepts. The council is made up of senior-level employees from each of the Manhattan-based organization’s three primary operating businesses: General Consumer Packaging, Home Entertainment, and Tobacco products.

“It starts with a project brief that I submit and that outlines the goals, benefits, and perceived value of the idea,” Chup says. The brief likewise delves into suitable or potentially suitable manufacturing technologies and packaging innovations. And it includes the reasons why the party originating the idea believes that idea has application for any one of Shorewood’s industry segments.

“The brief also presents a cost model,” Chup explains. In other words, before Shorewood will throw time, money, and other resources at a packaging project, the council must come to a consensus, approving the idea. “The council decides collectively if a given project makes commercial sense,” Chup clarifies, “then the council decides: can we make it, can we sell it, and can we make money at it? Essentially, is there a need? If the answer is ‘yes,’ and everyone buys in, we take it through the developmental pipeline,” he says. “How a project gets taken through this pipeline includes print trials and support from the plant. In other cases, it may include direct interaction with the inventor or entrepreneur who brings the idea.”

Take the Nirvana package. The idea to use a metal alloy came from an inventor-entrepreneur who, for the past 25 years, has been custom-making car parts for Jaguar. According to Chup, “He said to me, ‘I’ve come to the awareness that aluminum could be a great add-on, a complement to a conventional paperboard package.’”

Moving outside the paperboard sphere is old hat for Shorewood. Samples of its multifold alternatives to traditional substrates include such inventions as AromaPak. The point of activation or “scentisphere” of an AromaPak happens when a consumers rubs the area on the carton or insert where an encapsulated fragrant powder-oil is located and released. (The invisible powder “caplets” are applied to the varnish coating during the printing process.) “You rub—not scratch—the scentisphere,” says Chup, to break scented ink caplets, releasing a scent from printed sheets.

The printing on Hershey’s “Excellence” pouch packs match the graphics of their “Excellence Pot of Gold” chocolate boxes with special metallic gravure gold, a pattern gloss and matte varnish, embossing, and foil stamping.

In 1986 Shorewood became a public company and by 1998 company shares were being traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with the company continuing to diversify into a variety of markets. Diversification of packaging concepts and materials continues to define the company’s credo. In that process, Shorewood is experimenting with another new packaging product dubbed Sheer Veneer, a wood veneer shaved off of a log, refined, and laminated to paperboard before it is printed or embossed and stamped and ultimately formed, folded, and glued into a functional folding carton. “We’re at the preliminary stage of commercialization with Sheer Veneer,” says Chup, adding, “We’ve had some interest from liquor companies and the home entertainment segments of our business.”

A flexible process

“Business today requires so much more than just putting ink on board,” Chup points out. Flexibility of process to support original, well-imagined packaging concepts using innumerable materials—not to mention the orchestration of myriad people and resources—is all part of the mindset at Shorewood. According to Chup, “In addition to paperboard in packaging, we use a variety of plastics, electronics incorporating light and sound, and aluminum and other metals. At the end of the day, it’s what you bring to your customer that’s different and can add value to their products that matters.”

Again, the Nirvana packaging is a case in point where examples of up-to-the minute innovations are concerned, says Davis, who managed the Nirvana project’s front-end creative process. “As a company we were pushed by our client Universal Music to do ‘boutique’ work in a mass manufacturing environment,” Davis says.

The 11 “flavors” of Victoria’s Secret Beauty’s Garden fragrance line each have extremely lifelike images of a fruit or flower printed on a rotogravure press with special metallic gold and black inks.

Among other particularities, Universal Music wanted its Nirvana packaging “to have some sense of ‘reveal,’” Davis explains. “They wanted something with an almost ghostly quality, a package that ‘appears’ or changes to reveal information.” After much consideration Shorewood worked with its client to fine-tune a production process where thermochromatic ink delivered maximum reactivity to body heat. “When you pick up the Nirvana box set, it starts out as a very black, glossy-looking outer package,” she says, then turns clear as the translucency created by heat from a hand reveals printed information below,” she says.

Davis describes the timeline for completing the Nirvana package as “very aggressive.” Furthermore, she believes Universal Music came to Shorewood with this project “because in the past we’ve worked hard to build a relationship where we can work together from creation to final print. They came to us because Shorewood has the staff and the ability to help them problem solve, and the ability to meet manufacturing requirements.”

Some insight into trends helps to clarify the marketplace a company like Shorewood Packaging competes within. In particular, Davis sees herself as an effective translator for Shorewood where her music industry clients are concerned given her former work running art departments for the record label side of business.

Special editions

As a member now of Shorewood’s Home Entertainment Group, Davis says she’s seeing an increasing consumer trend toward the purchase of special packaging. “You have a pretty savvy consumer out there with an increasing sensitivity to value-added packaging,” she explains. But the market, she says, is aggressive in terms of shelf space. The question is: “How do you connect with the consumer to get them to choose your package?”

The Internet, plus phenomena including iPods and more add another layer of complexity to the notion of making a mark on the store shelf. “Younger consumers are more technically oriented and can easily manage to download music,” Davis notes. This complexity includes a particular shift, one which underlies decisions to buy physical products such as the Nirvana box set, let’s say, when a quantifiable demographic is asking questions like: “Why shouldn’t I just download my favorite songs from the Internet?” or “What am I going to get from a package?”

The point of distinction—the place where package printers and their clients can gain a foothold as this shift occurs—is to understand the power in creating an art piece. “I’ve seen a trend toward coffee table books,” Davis says. “I’ve seen consumers’ willingness to pay for a beautifully presented, archival-quality collection of music. If a box set or something similar is produced, you may not even put it on your music shelf. You might put it on your bookshelf—or out in the openæwhere you can interact with it because it’s a beautiful product with an unusual substrate. The consumer appreciates this.”

“Our approach at Shorewood is to understand customers and leverage that relationship as best we can,” Harwell concludes. “We’re very aligned with strategy. Once the strategy is established, then marketing and sales plans follow. All this provides us with an efficient process for delivering great new packages to the marketplace.”

Enticing Elements Lead to Record Sales of Nirvana Box Set

The Nirvana box set, "With the Lights Out," was an multifaceted but satisfying project for Shorewood, who were able to bring a number of their resources and capabilities to bear on the project. The first feature of the package that greets the music-lover is the darkly luminous cover plate of the Nirvana trio dressed in identical suits and similar stares. This picture is an attractively enticing piece of art that is seamlessly screen-printed on a smooth aluminum plate. The maker of this plate, known as MetalArt, is a Minneapolis company called Fenix Metals, whose processes allow for more dramatic presentation of graphic elements on aluminum. Fenix Metals supplies MetalArt plates in a variety of textures, like brushed or cross-hatched, and custom shapes are not a challenge. The rectangular Nirvana logo was also embossed for this project. Universal Home Entertainment supplied the images they had in mind for the box set, and were committed to black and white to convey the edginess appropriate to the Nirvana mystique. "Our ability to get this particular graphic on metal made this appealing to them," says Tom Riniker, president of Fenix Metals. Riniker explains that Fenix MetalArt plates increase the real and perceived value of any product, and can capture a larger margin for a product or reinvigorate a category or brand. Test marketing has confirmed this, and it reaches across all age categories. "There's an automatic perception of higher value," Riniker explains. Aluminum is also a more durable material than the usual tin that is used in packaging, because there is no chance of deterioration or rust and the ink is permanent. "The thing Fenix is able to do is take full advantage of the reflective properties of aluminum," says Angie Riniker, vice president of Fenix Metals. Angie explains that many of Fenix's other entertainment applications have been presented as collectable, displayable "take-away" pieces, to hang on the wall or stand up on their own on a shelf with the already mounted fold-out stand. Inks vanish to reveal what's underneath The box set also features two surfaces printed with dynacolor thermochromic ink developed by Chromatic Technologies, Inc. (CTI), a pioneer in thermochromic inks. The black, heat-sensitive ink disappears when touched or breathed upon, revealing various venue rosters from Nirvana's early days. "The use of thermochromic inks from Chromatic Technologies added to the Wow! impact of the new Nirvana box set," says Ron Harwell, Shorewood vice-president of marketing. "It was the right, innovative solution to meet our customer's quest for a 'reveal' effect to dramatically present some original Nirvana images." The UV ink is screen printed on the plastic surface, and disappears when the surface temperature reaches 85? F (30? C), and stays clear for 10 seconds or more - even up to a minute. The effect lasts up to 1,000 cycles of disappearing and reappearing, or vice versa, depending on how you look at it. The longevity can decrease if the surface is exposed to extreme temperatures or a good deal of sunlight. CTI account manager Dave Randall explains that there's a two-fold appeal that's fun and "revealing." With the Nirvana project, there is an "underlying" message below the dark surface. "It plays right into the message they're trying to send," Randall says. On a more practical level, the boxed set required holders for the three CDs and one DVD, and a pouch for the 60-page color booklet featuring rare photos and a detailed chronology. The packaging needed to be durable and long lasting, capable of holding its shape and decorative elements with repeated handling and use. The gatefold package, when closed, has dimensions of 10.25" x 5.75" x 1". The heavy weight of thermochromatic ink necessitates printing it on a very substantial material. Yet the material for "With The Lights Out" needed to be flexible enough to wrap around the baseboard of the exterior packaging. Shorewood turned to Fibermark to supply just the right material, its premium latex-saturated, acrylic coated Hyflex? 9 board, which is 9mm thick. "The criterion for us was a substrate durable enough to accept that heavy laydown of silk-screened thermochromatic ink. It's extremely difficult to find material that is robust yet also pliable. FiberMark's Hyflex 9 fit the bill perfectly," says Chup.