When is the Right Time to Hire In-house Packaging Expertise?

When I worked at Procter & Gamble, packaging was seen as one of five strategic pillars that the company believed it needed to win vs. competition in the market (see the figure below). Clearly, if you are a Fortune 100 company and you believe packaging is necessary for you to win, you will have a packaging organization built to support that. It will have designers and scientists with both broad and specific expertise (blow and injection molding experts, graphic designers, industrial designers, and intellectual property experts) to create winning packages with strong proprietary positions. However, even if you are not a Fortune 100 company, if your business model demands winning packaging, building an in-house organization will be critical to this strategy. The specific needs and size of the organization will depend on the type of business and the size of that business. For example, if your product requires very special barrier properties (due to stability usually), a materials expert would be top of the list. Or if you need specialized electromechanical devices, an injection molding, 3D printing, or industrial designer would be top of list. For smaller companies, I would always recommend hiring experienced people as you likely won’t have the time or resources to train and develop the expertise internally. Larger organizations will be best served hiring both experienced and new hires to maximize output and minimize cost.

At last year’s PACK EXPO International, I was able to participate in some round table discussions with various companies with packaging questions. One of these had created an entirely new product form—a hydration gel. The inventor was inspired by her sick grandmother who could stomach solids but struggled to swallow liquids. This new form required a new packaging form. She had chosen a stick pack, which worked, but I was left wondering if there wasn’t a better form that could completely transform the experience into something that could become a daily routine. The inventor was just a single-person company, and she was right to seek out consultants at this early phase and before she grew the company into something large. However, products like this that call for new packaging forms typically also call for an internal packaging organization to create them. I encouraged her to seek out stock packaging suppliers in the short term as she grew her business, to work with consultants or contractors as sales increased, and to eventually seek to employ a creative packaging scientist (or maybe a good industrial designer) once her product lines begin to expand. The conversion from consultant to in-house organization usually should occur when the cost of the consultant is higher than the cost to hire a full-time employee. Obviously, be aware that the full-time hire will need full-time work, and usually benefits and training. But if you are paying more than $500,000 per year in consulting fees, it’s right to be looking for two to three hires with various skills to replace the consultants.

If you are experiencing recurring technology pains in your packaging, it would be a good time to look for in-house packaging experts to help. I have done some work with Premier Nutrition. It has over $1B in annual sales and a packaging organization of a half dozen people. The organization is dedicated and smart, but it was experiencing recurring problems with its packages that were mainly related to two specific technologies—ISBM and barrier. The team was struggling to solve problems here, and importantly didn’t have experts in these areas. This was an excellent time to take a hard strategic look at the organization’s design and decide if the occasional employ of a consultant (there are many great packaging consultants including one that I work for) or the hiring of in-house experts was the right solution. Premier chose to add to its team, and for leadership it was a good choice if they believed these problems would continue. They were happy with stock packaging solutions but needed an interface between the packaging companies and their businesses when these problems arose.

So, when is the right time to hire in-house packaging expertise? Clearly, it depends. But by asking yourself those questions on the facing page—several times every year—and being intentional and strategic in your choices, you can optimize your organization to achieve the results that your business strategy dictates.  PW