Sonoco

Sometimes Where You Think...
Inspires What You Think.™

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Where Ideas Are Born

Where Insights Are Gathered

Where Solutions Come To Life

Where Promise Meets Proof

We're creating a new blueprint for creativity and imagination.

We're re-imagining a place and a process for innovation to help our customers keep pace with the changing demands of the marketplace and the changing needs of consumers. And in the process, we're leveraging a space built of bricks and mortar to ignite the intellectual capital needed to build innovative packaging solutions.

How We Work With Our Customers

Sonoco has been connecting insights to opportunities for over 115 years. We combine the industry's broadest portfolio of packaging formats and services, a deep technical expertise in packaging design, testing and material science and our unique i6 Innovation Process™ to create a 360° Customized Solution tailored to your needs.

When the pace of change is constantly increasing, you need a constant flow of new ideas to remain competitive - and you need holistic solutions that anticipate the evolving needs of your customer, your product and your brand.

At our core, we think of ourselves as a solutions company that offers packaging, rather than a packaging company that happens to offer solutions. And that's how we operate. Our 360-degree customized solutions approach leverages our product and service offerings, technical capabilities, material science expertise and innovation process to allow us to take a unique, packaging-neutral approach to solve our customer's challenges.

The foundation of our approach is our i6 Innovation Process - a disciplined, step-by-step approach to develop market and customer insights into an innovative, customized solution tailored to your unique needs.

How We Gather Insights

How do consumers feel about a specific package idea? How have their shopping habits changed? How much are they willing to pay for a product? Insights like these are critical to our process; it's how we develop packaging that stands out, delivers benefits to consumers and makes them want to purchase the product inside.

Good ideas stem from solid research. In addition to reviewing the latest market research, we gather market and consumer insights using research tools like focus groups, online panels and in-home studies. This highly qualitative research helps us gain a better understanding of how consumers interact with our customers' product and packaging, while informing our thinking and guiding our innovation process.

Many of these insights are gathered in our new IPS Studio, which has facilities designed for focus group research as well as simulation areas or experiential vignettes that can be used for watching how people interact with packaging in various places in their home, or in a retail environment.

Focus group facilities

Watching consumers interact with packaging concepts is a critical to determining the right solution for our customers' products. Our focus group room allows trained facilitators to skillfully draw insights out of actual people as they use and discuss a packaging approach.

Simulation areas

Sonoco's new IPS Studio tests a variety of products and packaging in environments simulating:

Bathroom (health and beauty)
Kitchen (food and beverage)
Living room (food and beverage, pets)
Retail store (all markets)

These areas let us test how packaging performs in areas like visual appeal, storage, functionality and convenience - as well as how packaging promotes a product and brand amidst the stiff competition of a retail shelf. Ultimately, we can better discern how well a package delivers a benefit to our customer, and to their customer, the consumer.

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How We Bring Ideas To Life

Industrial designers, graphic artists, marketers and scientists come together to evolve a concept from idea to reality and rapid prototyping allows us to succeed quickly. We bring ideas to life, test them for protection and preservation performance, and evaluate them in manufacturing, retail and end-use scenarios. We're connecting the dots between the promise an idea holds and proof-of-principle in reality.

At Sonoco, the broadest portfolio of packaging substrates in the industry, combined with a process that allows the customer to conceptualize and evaluate multiple packaging options simultaneously, offers you faster product launches with fewer worries.

We simulate real-world environments, using real-world manufacturing and materials, to test real-world solutions.

We have the ability to rapidly prototype rigid and flexible package designs through several technologies, including sample and mockup capability and 3-D printing, and just as rapidly understand their potential on a retail shelf - as well as their impact on the environment.

Our pilot plant produces short runs of packaging to get an idea of how well the package performs in a manufacturing environment, including food-fill capabilities. Once the packaging is produced, our physical and analytical labs test everything from how it holds up at high altitudes, to how well it can withstand impact, to how well it protects the product inside from external environmental factors, to how the package holds up under extreme heat or cold. These tests gauge the overall performance of the package in protecting and preserving the product inside, eliminating any unpleasant surprises down the road.

Let us help you increase your speed to market AND your speed to innovation.

Where Process Meets Purpose

How We Connect Insights to Opportunities

To solve a complex problem, you have to examine it from every angle. At Sonoco, we approach our customers' business starting with their challenges, then build a packaging-neutral, 360° Customized Solution™ that fits their unique needs - guiding re-envisioning from insights to opportunity via our i6 Innovation Process™.

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Insights

We gather market and consumer insights using research tools like focus groups, online panels and in-home studies. This highly qualitative research helps us gain a better understanding of how consumers interact with our customers' product and packaging, while informing our thinking and guiding our innovation process.

Ideation

Combining the surfaced consumer and market insights with an understanding of our customer's marketing goals, we invite packaging engineers, marketing gurus and designers to participate in cross-discipline brainstorming. This leads to the development and evaluation of a suite of ideas and approaches.

Invention

Where idea meets opportunity - we use our rapid-prototyping capabilities, packaging and material science labs, consumer research capabilities and pilot plant, which conducts manufacturing test runs, to gauge the feasibility of one or more approaches.

Integration

We determine how to best incorporate solutions from an operational perspective, considering things like process development, manufacturing, designing for sustainability and graphics management.

Interaction

The moment of truth: consumer interaction. We examine ways to maximize market impact, including testing in a retail environment, evaluating in-store marketing programs or conducting eye-tracking studies to determine graphics and design appeal.

Iteration

Change is a constant. In the last step, we evaluate product, promotion and package performance, as well as supply chain integration, manufacturing performance systems and recycling, and make any necessary adjustments to ensure the best possible product.

Data-driven packaging design based on market insights and collaborative ideation.

Sonoco has been helping brands optimize packaging design, enhance merchandising appeal, improve sustainability and increase manufacturing efficiencies for years. Our collective experience and expertise are now available via The Hive℠ Design Services, where packaging specialists with diverse backgrounds, experiences and talents come together as a team to convert market insights into new opportunities.

The Hive’s award-winning, total solutions approach encompasses all aspects of the packaging development process including consumer insight collection, package ideation and innovation, prototyping, printing and real-world testing. The result is a tailor-made packaging solution designed to meet the specific needs of a customer’s entire value chain, from marketers and manufacturers to retailers and consumers.

Find out what all the buzz is about.