Why does Xiaomi make its own packaging?
It is understood that Xiaomi chose to do its own packaging, one is because of its values, has been adhering to the cost-effective product strategy, and there is not too much budget for packaging; Second, for the products of millet, the design of the packing limit very much, should not only consider the cost, and to ensure that the packaging can through a variety of rigorous testing, but also reflects the design style of millet, looking for outsourcing companies do, is not the most efficient low cost and high level of appearance and meet the millet as functional packaging requirements; Thirdly, due to the product development cycle of Xiaomi, the packaging design is required to respond to product design as quickly as possible, and the fastest response can be achieved by packaging ourselves.
The birth of a carton
Before "One carton", Xiaomi had tried a variety of schemes. In addition to ensuring the basic protection function and visual appearance of packaging, traditional methods have been unable to meet Xiaomi's requirements for packaging. Rather than improve on the existing design method, it is better to redesign and try to design an extreme solution with the lowest cost. Thus came the One Paper Box project, which reduced the amount of material used to the lowest limit, using only a single piece of Paper, to test whether the packaging structure can be designed to meet the requirements of electronic products testing under the extreme amount of use. With the cooperation of designers, product managers, project managers, resource development, eco-chain companies and suppliers, "One carton" was born. The folding sequence of "one carton" is shown in Figure 1.
FIG. 1 Schematic diagram of folding sequence of "one carton"
According to the project leader, this scheme almost meets the needs of all departments: the product wants low cost, the project wants short production cycle time, the resources want low process difficulty, and the quality wants to meet the test requirements. According to calculations, the "one box" design can reduce the cost of traditional packaging by up to 40 percent, while avoiding the waste caused by excessive packaging on the planet. Each box will be tested by national standards and Xiaomi's own standards to ensure stability and safety.
At present, there are already 6 types of Xiaomi eco-chain products using the "one carton", the back of the packaging box has the corresponding "one carton" logo, and do garbage classification tips. However, at present, a carton can only be used for the packaging of small products. Xiaomi hopes to break through the size limitation in the future and expand to more categories and forms of products such as mobile phones and precision instruments, so as to further reduce costs, benefit users and avoid more packaging waste for the industry and society.
As soon as it was launched, the "One Carton" was hotly discussed by netizens, who gave xiaomi a lot of praise. In addition to arousing the resonance of consumers, the emergence of "one carton" has aroused the attention and hot discussion of the whole packaging industry chain. What are the other advantages of one carton? What are the problems with its promotion? In order to give you more perspective to understand this new product, the magazine invited two professionals to comment on it.
1. An electronic product brand:
First, the pros:
(1) Low cost. One-piece structure, eliminating a lot of post-processing procedures, but also save materials, labor.
(2) More environmentally friendly. All paper, no plastic, more convenient garbage sorting.
(3) Simple, practical and elegant appearance, strong sense of design, low price not low quality, in line with Xiaomi's product positioning.
(4) Changed the industry to follow the trend of imitation, a new trend.
Let's talk about the disadvantages:
(1) It will deal a blow to the industrial chain. If we change it to this way, the enterprises that make paper trays will go bankrupt. The box factory is also suffering from a decline in sales.
(2) PERSONALLY, I think the buffering and protection performance of this kind of packaging is not very good, so I doubt the protection performance of the product.
(3) This kind of packaging generally has a large opening material, which requires a large-size printing machine to produce, and the utilization rate of materials is not known.
(4) Dustproof performance is not good. Paper powder produced by cardboard can easily contaminate products.
2. Yemirror (from a well-known packaging company) :As a professional packaging engineer, I can't help but give a thumb-up to the brand's packaging feelings when I see xiaomi start to make its own packaging and implement the "One Paper Box" plan. What is a carton? Xiaomi put forward: a piece of paper design to meet the minimum amount of material use and meet the physical requirements of the brand characteristics of the packaging. These include the following demands:
(1) Low cost;
(2) High production efficiency;
(3) Low technical difficulty;
(4) The quality meets the transportation requirements;
(5) Proofing research and development cycle is short;
(6) All degradable materials (no adhesive) -- this is my personal addition, because I saw that the internal structure is bonded to insert card structure, I guess the designer included this intention.This reminds me of Amazon's simple packaging -- FFP(Frustration free Packaging).
FFP packaging is made from 100% recyclable materials and is designed to reduce waste, reduce costs and enhance the packaging experience. Its main requirements are to meet: the protection of contents; Easy to open and assemble; Cost-effective lightweight design: small size, fewer components, low cost.Xiaomi's packaging concept and Amazon's packaging concept both pursue the concept of green, degradable and environmentally friendly packaging, and achieve low-cost design under the protection of product contents. So what's the difference? The difference between the two mainly lies in the different demands of customers during design. Xiaomi packaging demands pay more attention to internal departments, including internal product group, project group, resource group, quality group and ecological chain. Amazon packaging design customers from online shopping consumers. Because of different customer targets, Xiaomi focuses on production demands: lower cost, higher efficiency and shorter supply chain links; Amazon focuses on what consumers want: things that are intact, easy to open, lighter and easier to assemble.So which packaging concept is better? I think the task of packaging design is to meet the needs of customers, and it is commendable to meet the needs of core customers when designing. However, in terms of customer demands, we can consider more customer demands, including external customer consumers, downstream customer brand side, internal cross-department production, upstream customer material suppliers. The broader the comprehensive consideration of customer demands, the more flexible the packaging design can be.
