Hannah Boulton
781 929 4759
hrwboulton@msn.com
mailing address:
56 Depot Street
#1061
Duxbury MA 02331
Better Packaging…Safer Seniors
If you’ve ever found yourself struggling furiously with plastic packaging that seems designed specifically to drive you insane…you know the meaning of “wrap rage.” And the fact is, many of the products you carry in your stores evoke exactly this same response from your customers.
But what if you could offer those same products to your customers in safe, secure…but easy to open…packages? What if you could reduce the wrap rage, and in the process increase your competitive advantage?
What if you could turn better packaging into happier customers?
If you’re interested, we should talk.
Nature makes easy-open packages.
Why can’t we?
Modern packaging is designed to resist pilferage and tampering, and those are important goals. But it still shouldn’t take a super-human grip or the frenzied use of sharp tools to get at the product inside the packaging…and the effort shouldn’t end up in a visit to the ER. The simple truth is that too much of today’s packaging is anything but consumer friendly…and for many older consumers, it can actually be dangerous.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. Innovative, cost-effective design solutions now make it possible for you to offer many more products in safe, secure, easy-to-open packaging.
At OpenEZ, we can help you take advantage of those solutions, where and how they’re most appropriate for your business. Nature figured this out a long time ago. Isn’t it time we did the same?
Forces driving the efforts to improve packaging include pressure from customers and retailers and from senior citizens who find it increasingly difficult to open packaging
“We won’t buy it if we can’t easily open it.”
The senior population is the fastest-growing demographic in the United States. THEY are your current and future customers.
The headline above is from a letter written by a 61-year-old veteran and published a few years ago in Packaging Digest. The writer, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, describes the frustration she and other seniors feel when struggling with hard-to-open packaging.
The author also notes that hard-to-open packaging is a problem for “everyone who needs to get something open,” but it’s clear that such packaging has a particularly negative effect on your older customers. And with seniors representing some 16% of the US population, a figure that is increasing rapidly, it’s also clear that they are a significant part of your customer base.
At Openez, we believe the strategic implication is clear. If you want to move toward easy-to-open packaging…and fully realize the benefits of that decision…you should start by consulting with your older customers.
What’s on your shelves?
• What products in your store are hard to open?
• How many of those are your own store brands vs national brands?
• Which ones could be switched to easy-open packaging?
• At what cost?
• Which products offer the biggest bang for your buck, in terms of packaging costs vs customer satisfaction?
At Openez, we can help you answer those questions.
We offer various services for retail stores, packaging designers, and manufacturers. These include surveying your stock to identify the products that pose the greatest threat of “wrap rage.” We also can run focus groups to enrich your understanding of how a switch to easy-open packaging would affect your customers… and their feelings about your store. Plus, we can help you make that switch by pointing you to appropriate easy-open solutions.
Easy-open packaging: we make it easy.
After decades as a nurse, my passion is keeping people out of the hospital.
After decades as a nurse, my passion is keeping people out of the hospital.
I knew I wanted to be a nurse when I was seven years old. When the neighborhood kids got hurt, it was me that treated their booboos.
Thus began 40+ years as a nurse, researcher, clinical consultant, and director of healthcare programs. I did have always been focused on how to keep people… especially seniors… out of the hospital in the first place. That led to years of work in home health care, and then a growing awareness of the problem posed by hard-to-open packaging.
Eventually I set out to research the problem, with seniors but also with package designers, leading senior-care organizations, and government agencies like the Food & Drug Administration and the Consumer Protection Agency. That work convinced me that with the right information and commitment, businesses could provide their customers with safe, secure packaging that doesn’t provoke wrap rage.
And that’s what Openez is all about.
Hannah Boulton
781 929 4759
hrwboulton@msn.com
mailing address:
56 Depot Street
#1061
Duxbury MA 02331