 Well, good morning everyone. We're going to give everybody a few more minutes to get on the line. You are tuned in to the Contract Packaging Association webinar on e-commerce Elevates Holistic Packaging Design. We'll be starting very shortly. Good morning, good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Contract Packaging Association webinar on e-commerce Elevates Holistic Packaging Design presented by the Packaging School. A little bit about the CPA. Since 1992, the Association promotes the growth and welfare of members through its industry exposure and networking programs. The Contract Packaging Association serves the needs of the industry through continuing education, market knowledge, and customer relationships. CPA members are comprised of the nation's leading contract packages and manufacturers will perform all types of manufacturing and packaging functions. We are pleased today to have Sarah Dunn, the managing director of the Packaging School, a global online learning platform where knowledge seekers and experts connect to present the event. An exclusive licensee of the professional packaging, the professional packaging one developed at Clemson University, the packaging school, helps individuals and companies in the packaging industry perform their best through cutting-edge online resources. Sarah leads a team of technical subject matter experts, instructional designers, and multimedia creatives to develop engaging online content. Over her emerging career she has worked with multiple consumer brands on design, research, and testing of packaging. Her expertise lies in the thinking big picture developing scalable processes and cultivating strategic relationship. Sarah's passion about packaging is on a mission to help others harness its potential. Sarah, I turn the microphone in presentation over to you. Thank you so much Ron. Hey everybody, I'm really excited today to present on e-commerce one of the most exciting trends we see right now as product manufacturers and packages. So for many companies e-commerce is like the wild west of packaging. Gone are the days of perfectly palletized shipments of your products sent to the retailer where a flashy package is unveiled to wow the consumer. In this traditional retail shopping environment consumers are the ones who shop the aisles, pick the products, scan and pay, bag, and bring home the product. It's free labor. But in e-commerce there is consolidated picking, last-mile distribution, and as we all know a lot more corrugated. By some estimates these additional costs can eat up well over 50% of the system-wide profit pull on a typical $10 online purchase. It is this very reason that we as product manufacturers and packages have to completely reinvent the way we package our goods for the new online retail standard. In this webinar we're going to discuss the key trends emerging in e-commerce. You will walk away with five tips for packaging in the e-commerce landscape. So let's dive right in. Let's set the stage for why in the world anyone even cares about e-commerce. Besides it being my go-to for stacking up on makeup, ordering the latest fashion trends, or replenishing my dog Murray's favorite food, there are statistics that support the insane growth of consumers turning to the screen for shopping. In the U.S. e-commerce continues to grow at a dramatic pace putting pressure on traditional retail. In 2015 this channel grew 14.6% while total retail sales overall grew by only 1.5% according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Even beyond these dramatic headline numbers something interesting is happening. Sales of consumer packaged goods long confined to traditional retail channels are exploding online with growth rates in many cases and excess of 50% year over year. While online sales only account for 3% of the $795 billion consumer packaged goods market currently, a projected four-year calculated annual growth rate of 18% means that nearly half the growth the industry will experience through 2020 will come through digital. In 2015 the sale of the following CPG categories grew well over 50%. As you can see beauty primer, baby diapers, mouthwash, bottled water, protein powder, adult nutrition, deodorant, health bars, toothpaste and detergent led the charge and converting consumers from purchasing in the store to purchasing online. Personally I wasn't surprised by these numbers because I have bought every single one of these items online. Well except for baby diapers and baby wipes because hey I just got married. But this leads me to a generational discussion. The optimism in e-commerce is largely attributable to a generational shift in the primary shoppers. Millennials, those born between 1979 and 1995 have surpassed baby boomers as the largest generation. We the millennials are digital natives and we're at a time in our lives where we're moving into our own homes and starting our own families, which means that in the next few years we will be spending far more on groceries and much of the spending is destined to take place online. Why? For convenience of course. In fact 41% of shoppers have already tried online grocery shopping. Online grocery shopping is becoming more and more popular. There are a few different delivery models for online shopping. So let's explore those. There's no one size fits all model for selling consumer packaged goods online. But there are a few e-commerce models which are pretty well defined. Emerging startups and industry giants are investing serious cash and developing tremendous innovation in the e-commerce retail space. The distribution requirements vary for each model that you see on the screen with especially different demands on the primary packaging. The delivered basket model is the most common type of grocery e-commerce. And as you might guess the delivered basket model also puts the most demand on the primary packaging. In the delivered basket model shoppers pick and choose their items as they might when pervading the grocery store in person. Products of varying size, weight, and temperature requirements must find their way across country to the end consumer in one piece. Think about that for a moment. How might you go about packaging cheese, toothpaste, and pet food all together for the same consumer? Well in this webinar we won't go too far into how all of those items get packaged together efficiently and we'll talk about the relationship to the end consumer. But we are going to discuss specific product categories and how we might go about optimizing the primary package to protect the product and get it effectively into the home of the consumer. So let's take a look at some of the CPG product categories and their potential for e-commerce. Not every product or category is in the same position. Fortunately there are certain categories which are already a great option for e-commerce. Those product categories, many of which you see highlighted in dark teal in the bottom right of the chart, are a natural fit for e-commerce. They work economically and do not have temperature or preservation requirements that demand a cold chain. Their primary packaging also does not really require innovation. These product categories such as diapers, razors, seasonings, and pet treats are fortunate to already be optimized for the e-commerce landscape. These categories are low-hanging fruit for e-commerce exploitation. Looking just above to the product categories highlighted in light blue, we see items which require new packaging formats to prove successful in the last mile of distribution for e-commerce. And on our left, highlighted in the purple, we see product categories which require refrigeration to survive. Cold chain appropriate packaging requires significant investment and is better suited for those product categories whose sales price makes the cut. For example, cold chain packaging is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry. And until we see these materials and logistics services come down in price, if we ever do, it will be tough to work these product categories into a model with a delivered basket model that makes sense for e-commerce. These items are instead better suited for the click and collect or fresh delivery models of e-commerce. Of course, there are a number of product categories outside of grocery that are ripe for purchase online by consumers. I simply hope that the data presented here set the stage for the immense potential for the future of online shopping, especially for those products which are repeat purchases and as many would believe, essential to survival in our modern society. With all of this opportunity, of course, comes a good many challenges. So for the remainder of this webinar, I will provide you with five tips to assist your e-commerce packaging endeavors. Let's dive right in. Tip number one, start with the end in mind. This is probably our all-time favorite motto at the packaging school that we embrace in everything we do. In retail packaging, what is your end goal? Well, it's probably to stand out on the shelf, grab the eye of the consumer and get your product in their cart for purchase and consumption. But in e-commerce packaging, now what's our goal? With the website doing most of the work for sales, what is the product's primary purpose? Well, it's back to the basics. The focus on e-commerce packaging is back to the fundamental function of packaging, which is to, I'm sure you guessed it, protect the product. This function of packaging for product protection was engineered in an entirely different way for retail. Packaging engineers for retail goods typically design their products to travel efficiently to market in cases, you know, 6, 12 or 24 counts of products that were perfectly aligned for stackability and endurance to retail. In the e-commerce world, consumers are typically purchasing one item of a kind, also referred to as an each. This each is the primary item being transported in e-commerce and its own its own, much earlier in the distribution process. Let's just consider for a moment the traditional brick-and-mortar supply chain in comparison to the new e-commerce distribution chain. In traditional retail, also known as brick-and-mortar, a product is manufactured, then packaged and shipped in palletized form to the distribution center. From the distribution center, also known as the DC, the packaged products are shipped via case to the retail store. And at retail, the products are shelf-sacked for the consumer to purchase them. Take them home and, yes, consume them. It seems like a lot of hands and you might be thinking, yeah, that's why e-commerce is awesome. It's direct to consumer. Well, not exactly. In e-commerce, products must pass through many, many more hands as evidence on the image on screen. In fact, the distribution chain of e-commerce can have almost three times as many touchpoints as traditional retail. That's a whole lot of opportunity for product damage along the way. So how have brands and e-commerce retailers been combating this potential for damage mainly to date? Well, of course, by adding more tonnage material, right? That solves everything. No, wrong, wrong, wrong. Just look at these examples posted by outraged consumers. Millennials especially are not afraid to post pictures of packaging like the one shown here. Or, better yet, dedicate an entire Buzzfeed article to the atrocity. The days of throwing an added tonnage, also known as packing material, and slapping a shipping label on the package are over. Companies must do a better job of evaluating the distribution environment and engineering packaging that meets those needs. It's time we redesigned. But where do we begin? Two key variables that you must evaluate are product package integrity and package shipping cost. Fortunately, for both of these variables, there are set formulas that you can follow and experiment with to get to your ideal end result. One of the best ways to navigate the challenges of product integrity is to test packaging for the distribution environment. The International Safe Transit Association, often referred to as ISTA or ISTA, is the leading industry developer of testing protocols and design standards that define how packages should perform to ensure protection of their contents during the ever-changing risks of the global distribution environment. We'll identify two test protocols especially relevant for e-commerce packaging. On the other hand, the cost to ship your product must be taken into consideration when engineering packaging. The cost of shipping and handling is driven by the weight and volume of the product package combination. For example, pet food is an expensive item to ship, but not always an expensive item to purchase. To the manufacturer, a big issue is this added cost to ship those items. So we'll learn how shipping costs are calculated for parcel packages. First, let's look at distribution testing. ISTA 3A is a general simulation performance test for package products that weigh less than 150 pounds. Essentially, this is the test for e-commerce shipments which consist of multiple products, the delivered basket model which we discussed. It is critical that manufacturers interested in e-commerce understand and leverage the ISTA 3A standard as a map and a guide to design primary packaging that will survive that last mile of distribution. So if you're interested in learning more about distribution testing and what the test protocol involves, things such as atmospheric preconditioning, random vibration, shock testing, and seeing live video of all these happening, the packaging school has a distribution packaging online course that details all of these things in a certified ISTA lab. There's even an ISTA test designed uniquely for Amazon package products. We're talking specifically Amazon package products designed for the ship and own container category, SIOC, which you may have heard buzzing around the industry. We'll learn more about this soon. So this testing protocol was developed by combining data from previous studies of transportation environments, relevant testing protocols, Amazon fulfillment center, environment visual observations, and repeated customer feedback. This test is for package products shipped by vendors to Amazon.com fulfillment centers and then delivered to final customer destinations via parcel or less than truckload, LTL, outbound shipment methods. It challenges the capability of both package and product to withstand transport hazards normally encountered during handling and transportation. Amazon.com vendors with items intended to utilize the SIOC designation are encouraged to use this test to understand the protective performance of their packaging. There are also unique tests for FedEx, Sam's Club, and another of other environments. I highly encourage you to check out the ISTA website for more information or contact me because we do have courses that instruct on these different distribution test protocols as well and certified labs that you can utilize services from. So next we'll talk about shipping cost. A big challenge for those involved in e-commerce is shipping cost. Shipping costs were historically calculated on the basis of gross weight and kilograms or pounds. But by charging only by weight, lightweight, low density packages became unprofitable for freight carriers due to the amount of space that they take up in the truck, aircraft, or ship. Today freight carriers utilize the greater of the actual weight or dimensional weight to calculate shipping charges. So what is dimensional weight? Well, it's often referred to as dim weight and it's calculated as a volumetric weight for pricing by length times width times height divided by the dimensional factor. Now this dimensional factor which you see represented on the slide as DIM it varies from carrier to carrier and it can be updated at any time. Recently there was a lot in the news because a specific carrier changed that amount and it affected a lot of shipping cost. So I highly encourage you to check out websites such as shippingeasy.com that enable you to calculate your dim weight for different carriers simultaneously and all you need is the length, the width, and the height of your package that's carrying that product. So what dim weight tells us is that packages with unused volume space will eat into a company's profit margins. Unless your package is optimized to use all available space in a delivery truck, you're paying to ship air. This is a huge area of opportunity where companies can take the initiative and begin designing packaging specifically for e-commerce, which has been coined as right sizing your packaging. You can avoid dimensional weight charges by using smaller boxes, compressing your goods, and reducing the use of packing materials as long as you've used an ISGA test to make sure the product still stays safe. Learning all of this about how shipping costs are calculated means you have to re-think your packaging. You may have already predicted tip number two, which is to rethink primary packaging and I want to stress the word rethink because a lot of times the word innovation or innovate is I would say overused in our industry. Not always do we have to completely invent something new. There might already be a package so I simply want to challenge each and every one of you to rethink the way that we have been packaging goods in their primary format. We'll go through some examples of why this is essential and some solutions that perhaps you can incorporate for your own products and packaging. Outside of not being designed to optimize space for shipping in each is many conventional packaging formats designed for traditional retail fail to survive in the e-commerce distribution chain. Here are some of the common failure points. Threaded caps come loose and leak liquids due to vibration. Caps may crack and shatter. Cans, you guessed it, they didn't. Glass shatters, triggers and sprayer nozzles can compress and force out the liquid. Nobody wants leakage. Pumps can break. There can be holes caused by vibration which result in a loss of the vacuum or leakage. Paper can get punctured and again it's your product. Plastic sorter ring holders can stretch, fail and cause cans to come loose and jars might lose their seals and allow air to spoil the product. That's a lot of potential for product damage. It's not good for the manufacturer nor the consumer. To better understand the performance of typical CPG packaging in the e-commerce supply chain, a leading packaging provider BMIS conducted comprehensive tests on common consumer packaged goods in line with the industry standard ISTA 3A methodology. The results present a major challenge. Of the 170 products tested across 34 product categories, only 53 items survived testing. That's a failure rate of nearly 70%. Those are far too high of stakes and as you can see on the screen the results of the different categories and how they performed. So, there's high risk in goods like cereal, shampoo, detergent, chips, wipes, condiments dressing, soda, other household cleaners, but there was some good news. There are categories that present a low risk when shipping to consumers. You know, soups in hard plastic containers seem to fare better than their metal counterparts. Soups in pouches baby food in pouches. You'll see a common pouch reoccurring theme. Paper towels, toilet paper and even plastic pet food bags. As companies pivot towards e-commerce, decision makers must keep an open mind to change. What once would have never been considered for a retail shelf now might have a better chance of surviving that distribution environment and there are other ways to make up for the consumer experience. For example, rigid or glass formats that may work well for store shelves could be prone to damage when shipped cross-country to a consumer's home. Laundry detergent and large rigid hard plastic jugs can suffer from a damaged spout, deplete the detergent and ruin the entire shipment in the process. Many forward-looking CPGs are exploring alternatives to rigid packaging. For example, flexible pouches that are easier to ship. They're lighter and weight so they offer lower total package costs and they really optimize that product to package ratio. You can see some examples of ways to rethink primary packaging on the screen. Examples for baby food, soup, pet food and detergent. Actual redesigns that were prototyped and tested and then passed the ISTA3A standard. So let's take this even further to think if what if the primary package was the shipping container? This leads me right into tip number 3 which is to eliminate excessive packaging. Environmental issues like reducing landfill waste are a huge concern for our industry, especially with millennial consumers making a full of brands who fail to consider how their packaging is impacting the future of our world. If you've been to a packaging conference in the last year, I can guarantee that sustainability came up more than once. So of course we were going to cover it in today's webinar on e-commerce because we have more of an opportunity to do something about it than ever. We have that opportunity to reinvent our packaging for this new purchasing model and with that sustainability should really take priority. Just take a look at these poor examples of e-commerce packaging. The photo on the left was a shipment of three pairs of socks. Socks people. Were that many air pillows really necessary to protect a pair of cloth socks? I don't think so. And the middle and right hand photos are products whose corrugated containers were clearly oversized. The box of the cards against humanity game is and is a crime against humanity. Fortunately e-commerce has the unique potential to reduce waste in the environment by eliminating excessive packaging. Because product not packaging is displayed to customers at purchase. Product reviews and star ratings guide customers more so than the flashy package on the retail shelf. No visual size comparison or perception goes on across products. The prevention packaging features aren't really required anymore. Socks, silver, sexy packaging aren't required to showcase that product. So let's look at some ways that we can embrace sustainability while packaging for e-commerce. Fortunately, industry leader Amazon has set standards that enhance the sustainability and efficiency of shipping containers for vendors shipping through Amazon. Amazon has taken a three-tiered approach in creating a packaging certification pyramid. At the top, there's frustration free packaging also referred to as FFP, which is the gold standard of Amazon's packaging certification program. FFP certified packaging is capable of shipping in its own container and minimized, fully recyclable and easy to open packaging. This ensures the most optimal experience for consumers. Next, there's ships in own container or SIOC as I mentioned earlier. This is Amazon's second tier of certification and it minimizes waste through ensuring that packaging is designed to ship without the need for an Amazon overbox. Some products may require additional protection using non-recyclable packaging materials such as foams to ensure minimal damage during shipment. Lastly, there's prep-free packaging, PFP. This is Amazon's third tier of certification. PFP packaging is designed for items that are not capable of shipping in their own container. For example, liquid products that are not six-sided, these items require an Amazon-applied overbox. What differentiates certified prep-free packaging from the rest is that Amazon is not required to apply additional packaging to prevent damage like additional dunnage. And then of course there is the not-certified packaging which an Amazon overbox must be applied to. And Amazon realized that there was a lot of excess waste coming from this. Not only that, the experience of opening the package and trying to unpack what was once intended for retail didn't fit this new consumer model of shopping online and then opening up your goods in the home. So when Amazon implemented this, they realized that they were changing the industry and they've produced some pretty fantastic results. So I'll show you just a few examples of that here. So this is a Norelco one-blade case study. What was once put out for standard retail was originally shipped in an Amazon overbox. You can see that packaging on the left-hand side of the image here. There's lots of airbags. There's too much plastic. There's a lot of excess that made sense for retail again. You've got to sell the consumer. But when it came to already having sold the consumer via the landing page online, was all that packaging really necessary? No. So the package was redesigned for the Norelco one-blade for frustration-free packaging certification. And look at the results. What was once 13 packaging components was taken down to nine. What was once a volume of 709 is now down to 144. That's an 80% change. And what was once a lot of air being shipped has now been reduced significantly. So here we have the Philips Hue case study and for this packaging, standard retail on the left-hand side you'll see that there actually wasn't a change in packaging components. There are still six. However, package volume was significantly reduced by 74%. And lastly, the air shipped 81% less. They saved a lot of packaging. So let's look at the results. What impacts has Amazon made by implementing their packaging certification tiers? Well, over 1.1 million products have been certified, which saved over 164 million overboxes, resulting in more than 10 trees being saved. That's pretty fantastic. Well, so far we've been highly focused on package engineering for product safety and sustainable and efficient delivery. But what about the consumer? The person that we're all in it for, of course we need someone to buy the goods that we're manufacturing. So let's talk about e-commerce in light of the consumer. This brings me to tip number four, delight the consumer. Usually half the battle in a retail store is getting the consumer to even notice you and the packaging does that job for you. But this isn't the case anymore. With purchasing online, your package is guaranteed to be seen. So it's more about creating an impactful experience that lives up to the anticipation which has been building in the mind of your consumer since they hit the buy button. The widespread adoption of social media has influenced brands to make their packaging shareable. A quick search of the hashtag unboxing will reveal over a half million posts. And the number of videos on YouTube with unboxing simply in their title have increased by 871% since 2010. That's a lot of unboxing videos. And it makes sense that brands would do this because it's free advertising. So you really want to be able to hone in on the unboxing experience and we'll look at some ways that you can do that. But first, before we dive into a few cool examples of consumer delight in e-commerce packaging, let me talk to you about an example of what not to do. So I registered for this flatware set during my wedding and I did a completely online registry which all of my friends loved and most of my family loved because they were able to conveniently purchase and send a gift to me with a personalized congratulations message and did very little work themselves. So it came as no surprise that this flatware set would come in the mail to me. But how it came in the mail to me was a completely different story. So this is the box that arrived in the mail. First of all, I had no idea that it was going to be my very nice flatware set but when I opened it up, I still was unsure because there was so much bubble wrap encompassing the silverware. And finally I realized what it was and was like, wow, I cannot believe that they fit all this silverware into this little box. It makes sense for right sizing, yes, but for the experience, not so much. I'm sure that the person who purchased my husband and I this gift would not have appreciated the presentation format which it arrived. Not to mention that every single one of these were protected in their own plastic bag. So yay, no scratches but unfortunate for the amount of time it took to actually unbox all of this flatware and get it into our drawer. So let's talk about what you should do on the converse of this. Really let your brand personality show. Personalized notes which can be executed at scale thanks to digital printing. Custom designs on the insides of the box. Colorful, done-age, colorful printing different patterns and more can all contribute to a memorable unboxing experience. And companies hope this will result in repeat customers. Some videos of unboxing receive over a million views so it's easy to see the advertising value of a really great unboxing experience. And it's not just what's inside the box that counts. It's also the exterior. Perhaps you have seen Amazon boxes which double as billboards like the one of the Minions shown here. The box is pointed to a special Amazon URL which sold all things Minion hats, socks, games, you name it, they made it and they sold it. So this example further proves that packaging can be the physical touch point which connects consumers back to the digital world. Same thing for Zappos. This is another example that I received myself. You can actually measure your children's feet and then by all means of course next time please buy shoes for your children on Zappos too. I thought that that was a clever approach to making functional, created packaging that really drove purchase intent. So I'd like to note that the benefits of exterior box printing must be weighed into consideration with the cost of pilferage or the boxes getting stolen or broken into. That's definitely something that you want to consider. So last but not least, tip number 5 which is to optimize packaging for the screen, not the store. By this I mean how will your product packaging be represented in the digital landscape and how can it be utilized to encourage more purchase intent. The old roles HCPG company owns the most shelf space at retail and has the bigger package billboard wins. Those days are over. As we just learned that same air for a taller package and more billboard space works completely against your bottom line when it comes to e-commerce. The roles are flipped. The rules in e-commerce packaging really don't even exist yet for how they should be viewed on a screen but there are some pretty innovative companies who are researching this very area right now. So let's talk about that. One strong hypothesis is that online shopping for groceries is being held back by the design of the shopping interface. The pervasive electronic catalog which was of course popularized by Amazon and now replicated by most e-retailers, it was developed for purchasing books. We all know that's how Jeff Bezos got started and so not much about it has really been innovated. It relies heavily on rational information intensive factors such as consumer reviews, ratings, algorithm driven recommendations. But this approach isn't optimal for grocery and consumer packaged goods purchases which to date are largely habitual and made for auto pilot in a store. They're really driven by the visibility and recognition of familiar products, the ones you grew up with, the ones that you know your wife wants you to buy when you get to the store in the yellow box. In e-commerce the small thumbnail visuals make it difficult to instantly recognize and read packaging. Therefore it's simply not as easy to quickly identify, select and compare these products online as it is when you're in the physical store at the point of purchase. That new shopping experience appears to be a barrier for e-commerce adoption for many consumer packaged goods items. And it may lead more people towards list shopping and automated replenishment and discourage the spontaneous purchasing that we as product manufacturers really love. Therefore e-retailers and grocery manufacturers have a shared interest in developing new interfaces for shopping that can really bridge that gap between shopping in the store and shopping online. Research companies are utilizing eye tracking and other innovative technologies to study how product package presentation on the e-commerce website correlates with purchase intent. I highly encourage you to stay tuned on this front. But as you will see on this screen there are a few key takeaways that we do know which is when using a desktop shoppers focus almost entirely on the top third of the page. Are we surprised? I think that most of us click the first link we see on Google. It rains true for the e-commerce shopping environment as well. You want your products to be as high up as you can get. There is a new rule coined the five scroll rule by Terry Goldstein and she says that you're not going to get past five scrolls. That's even more true on mobile devices. But I would love to hear any insights you have here and I'll certainly be sharing more insights that we uncover as we continue to research this emerging front of optimization for e-commerce packaging. So in conclusion, I'll just review the key takeaways for optimizing your e-commerce packaging and hopefully as you've noticed approaching e-commerce packaging design from a truly holistic perspective which begins first and foremost with starting with the end in mind. Then rethinking primary packaging in the process hopefully eliminating excessive packaging, delighting the consumer and making sure to optimize packaging for the screen and not the store. So that's about all I have for today in an effort to ensure that everyone is up to date and well educated on the innovations, materials and processes happening in the industry. The contract packaging association is a fantastic resource for this. Highly encourage you to join if you're not a member already and also we are very fortunate to be a partner with CPA. The packaging school is a provider of online education and training for companies and individuals in the industry. We have a great partnership with CPA so I highly encourage you to check out more information on the website and also please do contact me for more information. Link in with me. I'm sharing updates every single day about what's happening in the packaging space especially following very closely e-commerce packaging, one of my very favorite topics to discuss as you've learned today. You can contact me at Sarah at PackagingSchool.com or give me a call at 864-986-3033 and with this I am going to turn it over for questions, comments. I have not looked at the chat since we've been on so I'm going to do that right now. Look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. Thank you Sarah. Appreciate it and those of you who are looking to ask questions there is a question forum please put your questions in there. We'll try to get them answered. Sarah we do have a few questions to go with so should we expect higher costs to achieve online packaging success? You know you showed some examples of customized boxing and things like that. That typically is higher costs. Should we expect higher costs to be successful in the online marketplace? There's two sides to that question so you can see higher costs definitely. Some of those examples of really fantastically designed packaging with bright colors and personalization are going to cost you more. That's a given but you don't have to invest in all of that to optimize your packaging for e-commerce. Going back to tip number one which is to really optimize for the distribution environment and right sizing your packaging by using some of those test methods. That's a way that you can be successful in e-commerce because brands are looking for any sort of help that they can get in saving money and shipping costs and getting on the good side with Amazon and right sizing packaging using those formulas is the best way to do that. So that's step one and then if you want to get into really designing and personalizing packaging, yes it may cost more for the initial investment but what you've got away is how much is that going to increase your sales? So I definitely recommend doing testing on all of those levels. Did that answer your question? I think that answers the question. A couple other ones here. Are there other certification programs with other online retailers or is it only Amazon that has a certification program? That is a great question. I'm not going to say that there aren't because I haven't looked into it in depth. There may be. I know that Amazon is the giant right now so they are most prominent in creating packaging standards and certifications partnering with organizations like ISTA but other providers or packaging providers might have their own unique certifications but I would look to what I presented today as kind of the entities that are setting the standard that anyone to come will follow. Another question we've got is do we give up the wow factor in packaging to survive the e-commerce marketplace? I love this question and it goes back to the first question I answered and some of the personal experiences shared like the example of the flatware you saw, I say no as a consumer please no. I think that we still have the right to be delighted by packaging even though we're not buying it in the store. We shouldn't have to completely sacrifice that experience and it doesn't have to be through extremely expensive methods of personalizing packaging. Even a simple insert of a piece of paper representing the brand with a fun message can accomplish a smile on your customers face. So as a consumer please don't sacrifice great design and as someone who loves great packaging I say that as well but also as someone who runs a business I understand that it's an equation for the bottom line so always evaluate your design and your innovation and trends that you're following in light of how it's going to affect what you charge your consumer and how much profit you're able to make as a company. How probable or possible is the no package package? Hmm no package package. I'd love to see examples of this if you have some. I mean I've seen like edible packaging or you know bio materials that are to dissolve with the product but the closest in e-commerce I have seen is the Amazon Frustration Free Packaging which houses the product in that shipping container. So I think that that would be probable since Amazon is striving to do it and with a number of products have accomplished it but as we all know packaging is essential to the integrity of a product not only to get it to its end destination but to comply with laws and regulations and communicate to consumers what's inside. So I don't know that there will ever be a time in our lives that packaging is not existent if that answers your question. I think that that probably does. They may have been talking about the secondary packaging too. There seems to be a lot of packaging and online. How does that fit sustainability goals and you know are the sustainability goals Amazon's or the brands they're trying to sell? It's a partnership. Sustainability is key in any packaging initiative especially for major consumer packaged goods companies who have that well tied into incentives and shareholder reports. So I would say that Amazon is working very closely with consumer packaged goods companies to make sure that the packaging initiatives they create are in line with the sustainability goals they've already set. But Amazon also realizes their responsibility as really the creator of this category essentially and someone who handles so many products that they have to take it upon themselves to really take that next step forward in prioritizing sustainability and setting these goals for how much material we can save through less packaging through more lightweight packaging and working with brands to right size packaging. So overall I'd say it's a partnership and something that more packaging providers and even smaller manufacturers should get into the conversation with. So I would love to hear from you and hope to really cross collaborate on any of these sustainable packaging initiatives. Okay another one here. It appears we have to go the route of pouch packaging to be successful. Is that true? I knew this question would come up. This is flexible packaging. We do see an overwhelming trend of products switching to this package format of the pouch to be optimized for e-commerce. I don't know that you have to to be successful. I would say that in a lot of product categories as you saw in my presentation it does increase your chance of success for reducing the size of that package bringing down your weight of what ultimately someone is going to be charged to ship that product to the consumer in. That's really where flexible packaging has a huge benefit as well as many of you probably know shipping flat to the point of packaging those goods themselves. So there are a lot of benefits to pouches but there are also a lot of benefits to other package formats. I still see great usage for of course paper. Corrigated containers are what run our shipping environment and paperboard cartons as well still work for a lot of product categories out there. I'm even saying this from a consumer perspective of goods that I have received in the mail and thought were a good experience and felt right sized for the shipper. But we can't overlook glass and metal and plastic. They all have their place too. It's with material innovations that we're increasing the strength and lessening the weight of these where we'll be able to continue to use them as primary packaging for e-commerce. Okay. All right. Well Sarah we're slowly getting to the end of our time. I want to appreciate everybody's attendance today. The broadcast will be posted on the CPA website at contractpackaging.org. So please if you have somebody who has missed it please spread the word. We'd love to have them come back and listen to it. Sarah thank you for your time and appreciate it and that will end our webinar for today. Thank you all for attending. Thank you so much Ron and all of the attendees today. Contact Packaging Association. The packaging school was proud to participate. Thank you Sarah. Take care now. Bye bye.