PACKING PROPRIETARY packing of a pro prietary article is often a question very much neglected by the manufacturer, yet the form which goods take when they are delivered to the public is very often a great factor in determining their success. Most manufacturers pack goods with due regard for their safety, and it is seldom a complaint would have to be made under this head. Few manufacturers, however, consider the packing of goods from the imaginative point of view, and they pay little attention to such an important fact as how the goods, when they are made up, will strike the public.
llow important packing is may be seen by glancing round any store which deals in proprietary articles. The smaller proprietary articles are usually displayed on the shop counter or in show cases, and their very appear ance there, if they are made up in attractive packages, very often acts as a great inducement to buy. Perhaps the most startling case of packing of recent years was the making up of a dentifrice, pretty well known to-day—Odol. When Odol came into the market the chemists and stores were full of pre parations for similar purposes, made up in collapsible tubes, jars, tins and paper packages, and bottles ; but the packing of Odol struck an entirely new note. A liquid dentifrice, it should have been offered to the public in a sealed bottle, and in many cases it would have been made up in a bottle and the preparation would have been left at that. In the Odol case, the man who devised the method of making it up had a shrewd idea of the advertising value of the packing. Dealing with a liquid, he was limited to the bottle as a suitable means of marketing his goods, but he went a step further than the average manufacturer by devising an entirely new shape of bottle and fitting on to its neck a patent stopper which gave the preparation to the public in drops. The unique shape of the bottle, the label on it in keeping with the shape, the patent stopper which made it so easy to use the contents—all made a great impression on the public mind. Odol was advertised for many
months on its appearance as offered to the customer, and there is no doubt part of its success was due to the attractive way in which the preparation was made up.
Americans were the first to realise the value of an attractive make-up, and many of their goods have been packed by very attractive methods. They have devised new ways of making up soaps, particularly shaving soaps ; their food products have been marketed by similar original means ; they have put paints and other preparations in new and attractive disguises ; while their trade in sweetmeats has been largely founded on attractive packing. One might say the same of many other lines of goods distributed in the States, but it is sufficient to roughly indicate what is being done.
The main point lies in the fact that the manufacturer, having produced a good line, spares no trouble in seeing that it is packed in such a way that it strikes the public as a novelty before they have time to sample the contents or see them. This question of packing is all-important in proprietary articles, because, in nine cases out of ten, a proprietary article has a special story. Articles in staple demand, bought in various establishments, are packed in conventional ways, and no one expects anything different because the public have become accustomed to receiving a particular line of goods in a particular way, though it does not follow that improvement in packing any staples would not bring a better result. But where the article is a pro prietary article, advertised along special lines, the public may not look for special efforts in packing, but they are decidedly impressed by any indica tions of originality. When goods are packed carefully and tastefully in an original manlier, they give an impression of their value. The more carefully the packing is designed, the more goods give off a suggestion of exclusive value to the people who buy them.