DS Smith UK partners with Laithwaites to bring indulgent, on-trend wine and beer advent calendars to consumers this festive season.
To maximise sales around the Christmas period and continue to innovate its offer, Laithwaites – the UK’s number one destination for buying wine online – approached DS Smith UK’s packaging division to design advent calendars for its wine and new craft beer ranges.
Wine Advent Calender
The design, which won the Corrugated: Online Retail and Consumer Goods accolade at the 2017 UK Packaging Awards, needed to be robust enough to meet the demands of the e-commerce supply chain yet stand out in the competitive advent calendar marketplace. Laithwaites required a model that was easy to assemble and pack on site, presented the drinks in a way that reflected a more traditional advent calendar, and incorporated simple-to-follow instructions for the consumer. The print also had to be the highest quality to bring the pack to life and capture a real festive feel.
DS Smith embraced this challenging brief and worked closely with Laithwaites to create an innovative design that was attractive to look at, but could also protect the glass bottles in transit and support the 9kg and 13kg weight of the packs. DS Smith were able to achieve this by using its industry-leading technology DISCS™ – which replicates each part of the product journey for testing (Drop, Impact, Shock, Crush, Shake) to ensure the packaging was up to the rigours of the real-world supply chain.
Rob Carle, Head of E-commerce sales at DS Smith UK, said: “Laithwaites is always pushing the boundaries of what is possible with online shopping and is keen to give its customers a sense of theatre in the home – something our packaging can deliver. Our DISCS™ technology provided invaluable insights, which enabled us to create a pack proven to best protect the fragile cargo and deliver a beautifully-designed premium product to consumers. We’re absolutely delighted that the design was recognised at the UK Packaging Awards.”
Beer Advent Calendar
Andy Hawker from Laithwaites commented: “The final design is just what we hoped for and the award win is just the cherry on top! We knew DS Smith were the right people to design a pack that would both protect the bottles and appeal to our customers. We expect this year’s sales to exceed 2016 and that wine and beer lovers across the country will be having a very merry advent season thanks to these innovative new products!”
The Laithwaites Advent gift pack won the Corrugated: Online Retail and Consumer Goods Award at the UK Packaging Awards, which took place on 22 November 2017.
About DS Smith
DS Smith operates in over 36 countries and employs around 26,000 people. Using the combined expertise of our four divisions – Packaging, Recycling, Paper and Plastics – we work with customers to deliver solutions that reduce complexity and deliver results throughout the Supply Cycle. For more information, visit www.dssmith.com.
DS Smith is the UK’s leading supplier of corrugated packaging. Our comprehensive product range includes retail ready packaging, transit cases, consumer units, packs printed for gift and POS applications, and heavy duty packaging for industry. DS Smith’s national network of manufacturing plants service thousands of customers, from multinationals to local businesses.
Using PackRight®, our unique way of working, our highly-skilled people work closely with customers to specify packaging that achieves real results. Typically our customers achieve sales growth, or reductions in cost, waste and carbon at every stage of the Supply Cycle. For more information, visit