Mark Gallen, Packaging Design and Production Manager at John Lewis department store in London, UK, speaks to Eoin Redahan about honing the own brand packaging process.

Not many packaging careers burgeon in the sedate suburbs of South County Dublin, trundle through ceramic pot factories in Guangzhou, China, and return to unfurl their accumulated expertise on John Lewis’ shelves in London. For the company’s Packaging Design and Production Manager, Mark Gallen, this was the cut of his odyssey.

As incongruous as it seems, he originally started out as a law student. However, after graduating in 1984, he reflected on a discipline that ‘he did not find particularly stimulating.’ So, he confounded his training to become packaging buyer at Oriflame, in Sandymount, Ireland.

Twenty seven years later, Gallen is Packaging Design and Production Manager at UK department store John Lewis. His role is two fold. He sets the corporate social responsibility agenda (CSR) within the Brand Creative team, and he also oversees the technical aspects of packaging own brand products. This process involves developing products with suppliers, getting cutter guides to make sure the packs are in the right format and that transit samples are fit for purpose, monitoring artwork and reproductions, and aligning colour proofs to specifications.

In all, he and four others manage roughly 100,000 packaging lines. Gallen explains, ‘We divide it into categories within the team. We have someone that looks almost exclusively after CSR – ensuring that our packaging suppliers are all doing the things they should be doing in terms of the material used. It makes sense in any business to have experts in a certain area. We have someone that deals with fashion. We have someone that deals with home packaging. I do a bit of everything’.

As daunting as these duties may seem, previous employment has prepared Gallen well. He broadened his palette with Peterborough-based toiletry manufacturer Potter & Moore, where he set up line staff in factories and familiarised himself with UK manufacturing and the logistics of delivering products to the consumer.

He also gained relevant experience from his role sourcing materials and products in the Far East for Gilchrist & Soames in Peterborough. From a base in Hong Kong, he visited toiletry, sewing and fragrance factories in countries including Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Thailand, where he ‘really got an understanding of how factories work in terms of the logistics of putting stuff together’. And, in his retail role at British Homes Stores in London, he married his knowledge of materials, manufacture and retail to develop the company’s own brand.

Colour scheming

Putting everything together is what Gallen does. Apart from oiling the cogs of the John Lewis supply chain, he must also work closely with in-house and external designers throughout the design process. He ensures that they weave their creativity within specific guidelines in relation to colour and CSR standards, and that they ‘do not over elaborate or design products that cannot be manufactured’.

His team is constantly reviewing designs with in-store visits. The difference with John Lewis’ approach, he says, is ‘the way we sit within the brand creative. We are much more collaborative. In other companies, the role of packaging can be quite isolated’.

He illustrates this approach when it comes to colour selection. ‘When we work with a designer and they come up with a colour, we do a wet proof and a colour standard with various suppliers to make sure they can achieve that on different substrates. In practice, you have to set it by eye. A colour on a piece of plastic is different than on card, but effectively, you have to do it because they have to look like they sit within the same family’.

The company’s style is relatively minimalistic. ‘It does not include boxes covered in a million typefaces and pointsizes,’ asserts Gallen. Packaging is generally produced in litho print with relatively few colours. ‘I do not think that having a huge amount of colours, foil or emboss is an indicator of quality. If it is designed well, is produced well and is considered, that is what makes it look like quality packaging’. As a result, he says, ‘You know you are in a John Lewis store if you look around. We have a product brand that sits through home, technology and fashion at all price points, which is unusual’.

He adds that, ‘It is all very well to launch a product that is beautiful, but by the time it has been printed three or four times by different suppliers, it could potentially get worse. It is considered overall look. [The product] has to fit in with its surroundings in the store, its point of sale and its signage within whatever brochures sit with it’.

He notes, ‘John Lewis own brand did not exist seven years ago – we have had a remarkable transition. We do packaging to support that. When I first started my working career, and before I was at John Lewis, you had to employ a typesetter to literally set each letter by hand. Now, we have automated artwork that simultaneously produces 100 artworks that can be reproduced and sent to print directly’.

Not so materialistic

Gallen emphasises the role processes will play in alleviating price issues borne out of possible future material shortages and high demand. ‘The only thing you can really do is to decrease the number of processes that a product undertakes. Embossing – that is a process. You put gold foil on it – that is a process. A UV varnish – that is another process. We are looking at every job. [We look at] how that job can be produced economically, whether we use half tones or take one of the colours out and use another one.’ In the future, he says, ‘the changes will be down to the processes more than anything’.

A fundamental aim of the company’s packaging strategy is to use the smallest amount of the most appropriate material available, without compromising the packaging’s basic function – to protect the product.

This approach, he notes, is an important means of encouraging suppliers. ‘We always try and work as collaboratively as possible with our suppliers so that they fully understand our brief. We do not want to be seen as someone adding cost or delay into the process. If we do this (reduce packaging), people engage earlier with us in the process’.

Each year, John Lewis aims to deliver 100 examples of lightweight packaging. Examples of this include an 18% reduction in duvet packaging by removing one of the flaps, replacing PVC linen bags with lightweight polyethylene bags and taking plastic out of the majority of the own brand toy selection.

They use recycled plastic wherever possible, and all of the paper and card used is either recycled or made using a renewable resource. The only material they will not use is PVC, due to its lack of disposability. It is replaced using recyclable or disposable plastic. Similarly, the company intends to remove all polystyrene from its products by 2012 due to environmental impact and bulkiness.

In general, though, John Lewis tries not to outlaw materials. He explains that, ‘Some countries have more availability of a certain type of material. So, in my view, it is not necessarily the most environmentally friendly thing to ship stuff in just because it is a specified material. If it is available, and it is still okay and has the same impact on the environment, then I do not think there is a huge amount of difference between the two areas.’

Despite the movement towards lightweighting and alternative materials, Gallen is once again mindful that the central thrust of packaging is not lost when it comes to material selection. He mentions own brand televisions as an example. There is no “one size fits all” [approach]. Our own brand televisions come with a polystyrene shell. Our priority is always to make sure we deliver all our products to the customer in a fit and undamaged condition. Our customer isn’t going to be happy if we produced minimum packaging, it rattled and if the item was in a poor condition as a result. Our packaging is ultimately there to protect the product’.