“Are you ready for my unboxing?”. In the world of social media, this is a phrase we’ve become used to hearing from creators, who have trained us to share the experience of discovery of a product just delivered to our homes—making it effectively part of the purchase itself. But how important is packaging in a luxury product?
Credit: King Union
In recent years, with the growth of e-commerce and direct-to-consumer, enormously so. While in a boutique the experience begins with the architecture of the space, online that experience starts the moment a package is delivered to your home. And the packaging cannot fail to meet expectations.
Today the sector is worth around 18 billion dollars and continues to grow at an average rate of about 4–5% per year. At the same time, packaging is increasingly shaping product perception: more than 40% of consumers would be willing to pay more for packaging perceived as premium or sustainable.
This shift has transformed the role of packaging. Materials, textures, weight, opening sequence: every element contributes to creating a brief narrative that precedes the encounter with the product, as Cesare Forapan of King Union, a company with 20 years of experience in luxury packaging, explains.
“It is pure craftsmanship, because everything is handmade. And it is entirely exclusive to the brand: we don’t have a catalog to customize, we only produce custom pieces. Everything is designed around the object, taking into account all functional elements such as weight and logistics.”
Credit: King Union
These are often lacquered wooden boxes using water-based paints, covered in fabric or leather. The interior is soft, made from materials such as microfiber, suede, and flocking, designed to cradle the product. There is strong attention to sustainability, not only in individual materials but across the entire supply chain: “We monitor the origin of every component that makes up the packaging, also considering its end-of-life disposal,” says Forapan.
“These are objects that are not thrown away: they are collectibles, often resold in the second-hand market, gaining a life independent from the product they originally contained.”
