A Message from our President, North America and SVP, Marketing, Design & Engineering

Your packaging represents your brand’s identity, and it must effectively deliver the product with the experiences and functionalities consumers care about most. Achieving this begins with research—and understanding the consumer and market insights that help brands consider what inspires, motivates, and drives (different) people to make buying decisions.

Welcome to TricorBraun Beat. In this issue, we’ll start to examine the duality of today’s complex consumers. We’ll explore two seeming contradictions and how you can navigate them to develop—from concept to commercialization—your perfect package. We will identify who is driving these trends, the implications for your business, and the packaging implications you must consider to both maintain and grow your market share. We appreciate and care about your business, and we’re here to help you with packaging that delights consumers and drives brand loyalty for long-term sales success.

Sincerely,

 The Big Picture

Consumers are defying traditional boundaries, blurring demographic lines as they pursue products that reflect their evolving priorities. They want it all: products that are clean, responsible, convenient, beautiful, innovative—ideally, at the lowest price. Indeed, modern consumers shop primarily on value, but that doesn’t always mean cheap. Value is increasingly personal and understanding what it looks like for different people can be the difference between achieving fleeting buzz and realizing genuine market traction. 

In this complex market landscape, packaging is no longer merely a container. Rather, it’s a signal of values—and defining “value” depends more on your mindset than on any generational, income, or geographic divide. For example, budget maximalists prioritize packaging that looks luxe while costing less; strategic stockpilers want efficiency and control over uncertainty. Meanwhile, your conscious curators prioritize design and a story that aligns with their values while eco-pragmatists look for the proof points in your sustainable story. Whatever micro mindset your consumers have, the best packaging strategy to appeal to them is a forward-thinking, shelf-smart approach that designs for what they want, not just who they are.

 value

Bringing Convenience to Sustainability

Consumers are pushing for sustainable packaging, with Gen Z and Millennials leaning into low-waste formats, while Boomers prioritize eco-friendly options that remain easy to use. This demand is driving interest in waterless formats, dissolvable pods, and refillable or closed-loop systems.

From a packaging perspective, it’s a clear call for lightweight, minimal, and modular solutions like compostable sachets, dissolvable films, and reusable vessels. With usability still key, especially for Boomers, intuitive closures, clear refill cues, and tactile-friendly components are moving to the forefront.

 wellbeing

Category Spotlights: 

• Home Care: Concentrates and refillable systems are scaling fast. Colgate-Palmolive has partnered with with TerraCycle to make it easy for consumers to recycle their dish soap refill pouches and closures, while Target has brought refillable and biodegradable wipes brand Biom to store shelves. 
• Beverage: After playing a key role in mainstreaming canned water as both sustainable and culturally relevant, Liquid Death is now expanding into the ready-to-drink market with single-serve electrolyte powders (just add water). Meanwhile, BlueTriton has embraced water in a can by launching five of their water brands (Poland Spring, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Arrowhead and Pure Life) in sleek aluminum bottles.

 Elevating Experience

From Millennials juggling parenthood and finances to Gen Z chasing affordable luxury, and Gen X simply wanting quality without the hype, all these consumers are all looking for an elevated experience--on a budget.

Dupe culture and quiet luxury are driving interest in packaging that feels premium without the premium price tag. Design elements like rich color, refined structure, and distinct personality go a long way. Right sized portions, travel friendly formats, and recyclable or lightweight materials offer practical ways to deliver that polished, elevated feel.

Category Spotlights: 

• Beauty: Beauty brands are taking accessible premium to heart, designing affordable fragrances in the forms of solid fragrances, stick balms, and body mists. Harper’s Bazaar reports that “searches for body sprays jumped by 9.8 percent compared to last year, and the #bodymist hashtag now has more than 1.4 billion views on TikTok.” And according to research firm Beauty Matter, Sol de Janeiro sells one of its perfume mists every seven seconds.
• Personal Care: Affordable premium is also a trend in personal care. Garnier, for example, introduced a line of Fructis hair care products with cleaner lines that is designed to appeal to budget-conscious shoppers who want a more-premium look and feel. Another example: CVS, which redesigned its personal care label with an elevated look, eliminating the Beauty 360 brand altogether, and boosted sales by 20 percent. 

Learn More

Palmolive® Dish Soap Launches Refillable Packaging with Help from TerraCycle

Biom Refillable Cleaning Wipes Launch at Target, Hermés Refillable Glass Bottles for Personal Care Line, GAIA Refillable Skincare Amenity Range

Should Liquid Death’s Powdered Drink Mix Raise Doubts About Its ‘Death to Plastic’ Mission?

BlueTriton Taps Circularity of Aluminum Bottles

Top 15 Beauty Predictions for 2025: Insider Insights

The Triumphant Return of Body Sprays

Today’s consumers are defying easy characterization and prioritizing their purchases based on seemingly contradictory trends. In working through how to appeal to these tensions and resonate with shoppers at a personal level, it’s more important than ever to design with empathy, agility, and nuance.

From material selection to format, and artwork to on-pack messaging, your packaging choices speak to features and functionality—and, yes, the tensions—that inform how people perceive the value of your product. We can help you identify stock solutions that provide a sustainable foundation or functional efficacy while addressing what consumers’ respond to aesthetically. We can design on-pack messaging to highlight how your product is innovative, clean, natural, or otherwise fits into a consumer’s life. We’re continuously exploring the world of packaging, and investing in new materials and formats, to bring you both tried and true options and packaging innovations from the US and around the world. We can also create custom packaging to reduce your carbon footprint while protecting your product and showcasing your brand story. Because when your packaging speaks directly to how people live, shop, and feel—you don’t just stay on trend, you stay in their carts. 

Stay tuned for TricorBraun Beat: Duality Part 2, where we’ll explore three more seeming contradictions and how you can navigate them to develop your perfect package.

The TricorBraun Beat is the companion newsletter to The TricorBraun Pulse. Our newsletters are designed to keep our customers abreast of industry shifts and consumer trends—and the opportunities these shifts create for packaging—in order to help you navigate the challenges and seize on opportunities to grow your business. Gleaning insights and behaviors from these trends helps us identify and deliver packaging solutions that protect and preserve your product, resonate with consumers, and boost sales. From supply chain and operational challenges to economic and market opportunities, we are here to help you understand what’s happening and how we can work together to win.  

For more, contact your TricorBraun packaging consultant or marketing@tricorbraun.com.

TricorBraun’s proven process will guide your packaging decisions from napkin sketch all the way to the retail shelf. Click below to get started.