Childrensalon is an award-winning, forward-thinking British childrenswear retailer that provides clothing from fine designers around the world. Alongside their core values of family, creativity, innovation and heritage, Childrensalon is dedicated to helping build a fairer, greener and brighter future for children’s tomorrows.
Macfarlane Packaging have been working with Childrensalon for over 10 years, continually improving their packaging to help them perfectly present their products, while reducing their packaging’s impact on the environment.
The Brief
Childrensalon challenged Macfarlane with a new project to provide sustainable, luxury gift packaging and transit packaging for their products. The new packaging designs needed to:
- Reduce the amount of packaging material being used
- Increase parcel security to protect the designer garments
- Enhance customer experience
- Lower transport costs
- Cut emissions associated with packaging
The Solution
Rising to the challenge, Macfarlane’s team of packaging experts suggested two key solutions:
Optimising the highest use cardboard boxes from Childrensalon’s packaging range.
The redesign included significantly reducing material weight across Childrensalon’s small and medium boxes, while maintaining the protection they provide. The new cardboard boxes are also made with over 60% recycled content, further enhancing their sustainability. Childrensalon’s account manager, also suggested reducing the use of a deep medium box and swapping to a less deep carton, to provide further environmental savings.
Providing new, sustainable alternatives to traditional magnetic gift boxes.
Childrensalon’s new gift boxes are made using 100% recycled grey board, which is FSC® certified. Macfarlane’s experts recommended removing magnets, so the new designs are 100% kerbside recyclable. The boxes were also designed to be collapsible and reusable, so end-users can repurpose them if they want to.
The Results
Optimising the highest use cardboard boxes from Childrensalon’s packaging range enabled them to remove 54 tonnes of material from their supply chain each year.
The cardboard box optimisation also enabled Childrensalon to remove 44 tonnes of CO2e from their supply chain annually. This is the equivalent to 5.3 million smartphones being charged or over 100,000 miles being driven in an average passenger car.
In addition, by reducing use of their deepest medium box, their packaging could be delivered in fewer vehicles. This provided an additional transport CO2e saving of 0.36 tonnes, equal to over 43,000 smartphones being charged.
The gift boxes enable approximately 10.89 tonnes of material to be recycled, compared to the previous solution.
What Childrensalon has to say
“Working on this packaging project with Macfarlane to develop new and varied cardboard box sizes has been an incredibly rewarding experience.
By combining optimised box dimensions, the right materials and a user-friendly unboxing experience, my team and I have been able to significantly reduce paper use and volumetric weight. This has led to notable material savings, enhanced customer experience and lower CO2 emissions.
This project highlighted the critical impact of smart packaging design on sustainability. Macfarlane’s commitment to innovation and environmental responsibility made it possible to achieve these impressive results. My team and myself are proud to have contributed to an initiative that not only benefits our business but also supports our planet.”
Head of Logistics – Outbound for Childrensalon