How Brand Owner Dynamics Are Changing the Packaging Opportunity

What brands want from their packaging is changing — for more than one reason. Brands are facing shifting consumer demands, competitive pressures, and evolving regulatory requirements.

For the printers and converters looking to gain brands’ business and keep it, it’s important to understand what these pressures mean for their own operations.

In a session at PRINTING United Expo, Lisa Cross and Nathan Safran of Alliance Insights offered package and label providers a window into brands’ minds.

According to Safran, VP of research at Alliance Insights, different size brands have different packaging needs. Typically, larger brands order high-volume jobs, are often risk-averse, have more resources for packaging, and are continually adapting to consumer preferences.

Safran acknowledged that while it may be appealing to work with those bigger brands, opportunities lie with smaller brands, too.

“What's interesting too is the smaller brands are more nimble,” Safran said. “They have lower order volumes. They change graphics and text frequently. They're ready to experiment. They're ready to try interesting things — both with the product that they're creating, which is interesting and innovative, but also with packaging.”

Packaging’s Opportunity for Growth

Regardless of the size of a brand, packaging is key to success as they vie for attention in an increasingly competitive retail landscape. Part of brands’ strategy to maintain market share is to increase the number SKUs they offer.

SKU proliferation is widespread among brands. Of the brand owners in “Digital Packaging: Maximizing Innovation and Impact,” a 2025 report from Alliance Insights, 61% say they increased the number of SKUs in the past two years; over the next two years, 75% expect to increase their SKU counts.

This growth is spurred largely by consumer demand for more variety (reported by 59% of brand owners), wanting to keep up with competitors (43%), increases in limited-edition products or packaging designs (43%), and retailer demand for more package sizes (34%).

Combined, these factors mean brands are keeping SKUs on the shelf for shorter periods of time and changing their packaging more frequently — a prime opportunity for package and label producers to step in and provide value.

“What is it that you're working toward?” Safran said. “… Do we have the processes in place to accommodate growing SKUs? Do we have a way to message and to show our customers we're the right place for your growing SKU proliferation?”

Top Three Challenges for Brand Owners

When Alliance Insights surveyed brand owners for the 2025 digital packaging report, several of the challenges they’re facing came to the forefront. Safran and Cross, principal analyst at Alliance Insights, covered the top three, and what printers and converters must do to address them.

Efficiency and Responsiveness

At the top of the list is improving supply chain efficiency and responsiveness, reported by 47% of brand owners.

“There's the Amazon effect, right?” Safran said. “You order something, and an hour later, it's on your doorstep. … I'm sure many of you live that pain from one day to the next, but it is a real thing where agility is important, responsiveness is important.”

Digital technology can help with that. Among the 89% of brand owners who have purchased digitally printed packaging and labels, top benefits include cost-effective short runs (51%), increased speed to market (44%), and ability to change designs more frequently (33%).

Influencing Consumers

Also weighing on brand owners is the need to design packaging that influences purchasing, cited by 47% of brand owners.

Embellishments can play an important role in engaging consumers. According to research from The Harris Poll, 86% of consumers aged 18 to 44 years say it’s essential to touch a product before purchasing it. Additionally, 71% of consumers say physical retail experiences deepen their connection to brands.

“Foil and texture and coatings and embossing and other enhancements really give brands another way to make that physical experience memorable,” Cross said.

Brand owners recognize this. When selecting a label or packaging printer, 27% of brand owners cite embellishment or special effects capabilities as essential criteria, and 46% cite it as very important.

Sustainability

The third biggest challenge — cited by 38% of brand owners — is meeting sustainability or environmental goals and objectives.

What makes a package sustainable? Recyclability still tops the list, with 42% of brand owners citing this as an important attribute. But recyclability isn’t the only way to achieve greater sustainability. Other attributes rising in significance include lightweighting and rightsizing (37%), reusability (34%), reduction of packaging material waste (30%), compostability (25%), extending shelf life (24%), and reduction or elimination of plastic (20%).

For packaging producers, this is an opportunity to be a knowledgeable partner to brands.

“Increasingly, brands don't just need suppliers that produce the package,” Cross said. “They need suppliers that can help them navigate the requirements surrounding it.”