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Continental Shifts

New Packaging Innovation and Distribution Systems Keep Driving Continental Packaging Solutions

By Deborah Toth

The origin of the word "continental" derives from the Latin "continere," meaning "to hold together." Apropos to a packaging company to be sure, but it is the many facets of Continental Packaging Solutions offered within a dynamic, 70-year-old company that are reinventing packaging distribution.

Founded in 1936, Continental has never been afraid of change. In fact, the company rebranded itself just last year from Continental Glass and Plastic to Continental Packaging Solutions to better reflect its new operation.

"We realized we were about so much more than just glass and plastic containers," says Mark Giesen, president and CEO of Continental. "We wanted to more broadly define ourselves from a rigid supplier to a more full-service supplier. We had evolved into a packaging consultancy company to provide our customers with more packaging choices. Our goal was to be a one-stop shopping supplier for our customers."

In the past, remarks Giesen, packaging suppliers were very predictable, and offered a standard set of designs to their customers. But as the industry has evolved, change is the constant theme. The quicker a firm like Continental can adapt to its customers needs, take a variety of designs and quickly turn them into prototype bottles that a customer can see and touch, says Giesen, the faster the customer can choose the correct design, get the bottle produced, and help them stand-out on the store shelf. The evolution in the industry is to shrink the time-to-market.

A case in point is Continental's work with Coty to produce a completely unique bottle in a very short time frame. "The customer's sketches were not feasible," says Robb Zurek, business development manager for Continental, "but our design team tweaked the concept just enough to make creation of a mold possible. It didn't mean it was an easy job."

Zurek explained that the new design called for an irregular shape, convex and concave curves, and an offset neck. Two pressure-sensitive labels needed to be applied simultaneously, and another part of the bottle called for a motif with raised lettering and hot-stamped metallic silver. Continental created two sizes (200 ml and 100 ml), and the entire project from concept to completion took 10 weeks. According to Zurek, this project was "the epitome of speed-to-market."

Continental continues to find new ways to aid its clients. First came the expansion of market coverage: Continental now boasts 11 offices from New York to L.A. Then came the addition of warehouse space: 10 locations throughout the U.S. and one in Mexico to better serve customers. "Customers want their products easily accessible and strategic warehousing is the way to do it," said Giesen.

Systematic innovation

Perhaps the most unique offering from Continental however, is Continental Innovation. Years of listening to customer input suggested that many companies needed more guidance in selecting the right packaging for their product. Gone were the days of simple quote requests for an eight-ounce round bottle. The marketplace has since transformed into a battleground where everyone is looking for an edge on their competition.

Ergonomic design is always at the forefront in the "Continental Innovation" system of package design development.

"Our customers told us that innovation is critical to differentiation and stemming the tide of commoditization," says Giesen. With that in mind, they launched Continental Innovation, an "ideation consultancy" dedicated exclusively to the innovation and renovation of services, products, brands, and organizations through a focus on their packaging.

Through this approach, the company has moved away from the traditional business model for packaging distribution (a reactive approach) into a proactive ally in boosting market share for their customers. Continental Innovation uses modern research techniques that are able to offer insight into such areas as visual brand strategy, brand architecture trend identification, and consumer insight. The information gleaned through the multi-step process is then used to produce rapid prototypes to continue the package's evolution.

"Historically, we would respond to our customers' packaging needs or we would develop products that we thought they could use," says John Edelmann, Continental's director of innovation. "The new trend that we've developed is to react to the needs of the end-user through research techniques. We're now much more proactive in finding packaging solutions for the end-user."

One of these methods devised by Continental is through "ethnography," in which Continental uses first-hand research and observation of the end-user's use of the packaging, sometimes directly in their own home.

For example, Continental was working with a large food product firm on a bottle for their cooking oil. Continental's ethnography research suggested customers—and women in particular—were looking for an easier-to-hold bottle that would not slip out of their hands during cooking. That idea was immediately embraced by the customer and Continental prepared drawings which, in turn, led to four new mold sets: 48 oz., 32 oz., 24 oz., and 16 oz.

This ergonomic-based design principle is now being extrapolated into the introduction of handles on bottles that are positioned lower to make pouring easier, and the introduction of non-traditional sizes such as 200ml and 7oz, which will fit easily into a hand of a woman.

Rapid design response

None of this would be possible without another innovation from Continental—its rapid response design center that quickly produces packaging prototypes, sometimes in less than a day. "Our Design center in Columbus, OH, has the most rapid prototyping capacity in the industry," says John Koeble, vice president of sales for Continental. "Our short lead times for models are second-to-none. This efficiency means the customer is looking at rapid speed-to-market."

The Continental Innovation process contains four stages: Discover, Envision, Dimensionalize, and Integrate. This method was recently used for an unusual project—a horse hoof cleaning product. The customer asked Continental to help with ideas for an equine screw cap brush with a number of goals, such as reducing component costs, reducing labor costs, reducing inventory costs, and improving the design.

"We were able to save the customer time," says Edelmann, "by reducing the number of components ordered, reducing the production labor hours, and saving their customer time by having an easier product to use." They also saved the customer space with less inventory space needed for the product and by freeing up more room on the product line and allowing less staff to run the job. Continental was also able to save our customer money by reducing the cost of the screw cap brush, eliminating the metal cap and pick cost, eliminating the secondary packaging, and reducing the labor hours to assemble and pack the product. "All in all, the monetary reduction came to $55,000 worth of savings," Edelmann says.

Continental regularly prepares a new "Solution Box" for staff and regular clients that showcases the latest package design and production innovation capabilities within the company.

With all of these innovative packages being invented, Continental has devised a way to share new designs with its clients. The Solution Box is a monthly treasure chest of new packaging ideas that are presented to customers with a bit of flair. For the past 18 months, Continental's sales force take a small picnic cooler-style box with two new packaging solutions held within.

"A big part of presenting ideas is always finding a way to make it exciting to the customer," says Koeble. "The Solution Box is our way of showing off our latest innovations dynamically. Sometimes people can have tunnel vision to learning about new designs; the Solution Box brings new ergonomic, unique ideas that maybe they had never considered before."

Asian expansion

Many of these new unique designs are coming to Continental from the Asian market, where interesting shapes, colors, and designs are originating. Continental has tapped into this market efficiently by being the only packaging distributor with an office in China. Opened in mid-2005, Continental's Hangzhou, China, office allows constant vigilance over projects originating there. Other packaging distributors use brokerage firms or third parties, says Harald Jablonski, senior director, supply chain management for Continental.

"We have a satellite office in China with five employees who have personally met with over 120 different vendors in Asia," Jablonski says. "It's critical for our customers to know that our employees are in China watching over their jobs. We've removed the language barrier and we handle the whole solution."

The company visited China on multiple fact-finding missions, which included numerous plant visits and audits, resulting in a network of the most reputable manufacturers in Asia. "We knew pretty early on that if we were going to utilize global resources, we'd better not get caught working with unknown quantities like brokers and other third-parties. The only way to go global properly was to ensure we had our people on the ground in Asia," says Giesen.