There was a not-so-distant moment in time when acquiring customers online was an affordable, profitable means of growth for many CPGs. Dropps was an early direct-to-consumer (D2C) player that took advantage of that then-nascent online shopping golden age. The challenger brand pioneered the laundry and dishwasher pod movement as early as 2006 and paved the way in consumer acceptance for big players like Tide and Persil. Interestingly, it even moved off the retail aisle completely to focus on more efficient growth through D2C only.
The laundry pod movement was inherently a sustainability play since it solved the fundamental problem of shipping extra water through the supply chain, replacing heavy bottles mostly containing water with mono-dosed pods of concentrated cleaner. These pods also offer convenience since they’re already dosed, so no pouring or measuring. This alone has made pods the format of choice for many consumers.
With a one-two punch of a sustainability story and mono-dosed convenience, Dropps acquired a subscriber base of about 300,000 hyper-loyal repeat customers.
While that D2C business bloomed, the brand to continue to invest in product innovation. The company says it has achieved parity in product efficacy with conventional powder and liquid detergent brands. Parity in efficacy is huge for a sustainability-minded brand that had all but eliminated shipping excess water, with a USDA-certified bio-based product where 58% to 81% of the formula is derived from renewable, biological sources.
“During that time, our loyal subscriber base gave us some insights that let us approach Amazon and take from that channel even more capture,” says Alastair Dorward, CEO, Dropps. “We found ourselves the becoming the fastest growing dish and laundry pod player in the category and actually becoming the top ranked sustainable brand in dish detergent, and equally strong also on the laundry side.”
With a sustainable product, packaging sustainability quickly swam into view. Dropps’ packaging evolved to match its sustainable brand ethos, while also optimizing for the rough and tumble D2C and e-commerce channel. Balancing those two factors isn’t always easy, but the product itself—coated in polyvinyl alcohol film—doesn’t require much by way of barrier and is surprisingly robust.
In 2016, the company moved out of its initial multilayer flexible pouch format and into what consumers think of as more sustainable, curbside recyclable, all-corrugated cases that could be attractively two-side-printed. This sturdy corrugated case could be shipped SIOC (ships in own container) on Dropps.com.
Breaking into retail
The D2C gold rush is over—the era of cheap and easy online customer acquisition has ended. That’s why Dorward, after joining Dropps about two years ago, sought to harness early momentum to find opportunities for growth. From a D2C and subscription-based identity, in 2024 Dropps set out to challenge the retail aisle in a new omnichannel approach.
“When you look at what the market rewards, it used to be the direct-to-consumer pure play business would be highly valued, highly rewarded, and highly desirable. That's simply not the case these days,” he says. “We listened to our customers, and while we have a loyal base, something like 80% of them prefer to buy detergent in their favorite grocery store or retailer.”
But CPG brands aren’t welcomed onto retail shelves simply because they have a product to sell. The detergent aisle is particularly competitive. Brands need to persuade a retailer to cough up shelf space by simultaneously delivering several unique elements. Dropps had at least two aces up its sleeve, both in familiarity among consumers on Amazon, and in environmental bona fides. The Amazon rankings vary week by week, but Dropps’ frequent position as “the number one green player in dish and laundry on Amazon” got retailers’ attention.
“Our success and ranking Amazon gave us permission to come to the table not as a naive startup, but actually as a proven brand,” Dorward says. “Also, retailers are constantly looking to improve their green scorecard. And while many aisles in many categories have seen major steps forward in sustainability, there's a lot of plastic in the laundry aisle. Consumer focus on zero plastic is at odds with what is currently on offer on the shelf. Our commitment to a curbside recyclable paperboard structure, to bring that sustainable element to the retailer, has been important.”
A third feather Dropps’ cap, detergents tend to be a low-margin category. Retailers are forced to bring loss leaders into their shelf mix to cover all the bases for consumers. But profitability can be balanced by a portfolio that includes higher margin products that bring sustainability, innovation, and proven online success, thus a fairer margin to a retailer.
“Being margin-accretive, sustainable, and a leading online Amazon brand is the set of facts we bring to the table in any retailer conversation, and that's why we're seeing a lot of exciting reception to what we're doing here." Some product packaging easily jumps from retail shelves to e-comm. Simply overboxing a product optimized for retail shelves in corrugated often does the trick, though the extra material can give some consumers pause. But going the other direction, from e-comm-only to retail, is more difficult. Dropps’ packaging had evolved over time to be optimized for e-comm—SIOC specifically.
Packaging to achieve different goals
Consumer’s zero moment of truth for Dropps had always been on its website or on Amazon. Both are platforms where product info can be simply related in easy-to-read text, with bright and attractive product images. In e-comm, packaging serves as a sustainable, robust, and sometimes playful delivery mechanism. But the supporting story, ethos, and market positioning are all online, and meant to make that sale long before a consumer interacts with the packaging.
Of course, this information can also be printed on the pack, or in an insert, but the consumer would have already pulled the trigger on the purchase by the time they received that material. A consumer might first interact with products packaging on their doorstep. Also, with a subscription model, consumers only had one zero moment of truth over the course of more time and transactions—they sign up for the long haul, sometimes in a “set it and forget it” model.
The retail aisle is a very different space. It’s bright and stimulating, with packaging competing for consumers’ attention in ways that brown Kraft corrugated, for all its other virtues, cannot.
There’s also a spec to hit when it comes to form factor. Shelves are static, and retailers want them to appear visually full. The brands want to fill that space too—packaging there can’t waste vertical billboard space or give the appearance of being smaller, especially in the era of shrinkflation. Even if the added packaging isn’t performing its primary duty of protecting the product itself, it’s performing a critical marketing function.
After all, what is it that consumers tend to be doing in a retail environment? That’s right, they’re shopping, even if they have a favorite brand in mind. They’re shopping in much the same way they are when they’re browsing D2C products’ websites. That means messaging needs to be clear and sharp, legible, and complete. Again, it’s hard for trusty brown kraft corrugated, which is harder to print while maintaining its natural appearance, to compete in that space.
New retail pack disrupts the aisle
Dropps landed on a brightly colored, sharply printed, trapezoid-shaped paperboard carton to meet the needs of the retail channel. The company believes that uniquely shaped paperboard disrupts an aisle filled with plastic tubs and bottles by appealing to consumer perceptions on sustainability and plastic. As already mentioned, the mono-dose pod format was a sustainability breakthrough because they’re concentrated, thus avoid shipping water.
“Because of that, it has been broadly adopted by many brands. But there’s a huge opportunity missed when you then take that more sustainable concentrated pod and then package it in a big plastic tub with empty space. The category went from big plastic jugs to big plastic tubs, and we think that completely missed the point of the opportunity.”
The pack is designed to stand as tall as the PET or HDPE packaging next to it on the shelf and fully fill the vertical space. Viewed from the front, or from a consumer’s point of view in the aisle, the shape is trapezoidal, already standing out among the tubs and bottles nearby. Viewed from the side, the closure on the top narrows to a point in a 2D triangle—the pack is a prism shape when viewed in three dimensions. The wide base at the bottom of this prism shape contains the laundry and dish pods, while the narrowing top and closure continue the billboard appearance to the top of the shelf.
“We are competing with some large competitors who have spent a lot of time in the category,” Dorward says. “We want our consumer messaging to be prominent using bold color palettes and use imagery that speaks to efficacy. We're out there to communicate this product really works and is powerful, so we're not going to put a leaf or a picture of the planet on the front of the pack,” that the package is in paperboard at all communicates recyclability.
Prior to filling with product, the 2D auto bottom (or auto lock bottom) cartons pop into shape with pre-glued flaps that overlap and interlock. After filling, the carton is pinched at the top, folded inward into itself. In this structure, the 3D hollow chamber at the base narrows to a nearly 2D flat point, a narrow triangle from the side view, at the closure. The nearly 2D closure is formed by folding the front flap over the back flap, and is sealed with an adhesive that allowed the package to remain curbside recyclable. A tear strip closure allows for easy opening.
The unique format is reminiscent of a gabletop juice carton top, only narrower. A brown school lunch bag, folded closed at the top, also comes to mind. More importantly, the design serves two functional purposes. When closed and folded or pinched in, empty space within is minimized, so the front and back walls "accordion together" over the pods, acting as bracing that holds the product firmly. This prevents them from jostling freely in unnecessarily empty space. But in the home, once a consumer opens the folded tear strip and the gabled paperboard carton unfolds like a bellows folder, opening to a wide mouth through which pods are easily, comfortably retrieved.
"It needed to expand at the closure so consumers can easily reach their hands into the pack," says Sydney Waldron, senior director of Brand Marketing and Innovation. "In our packaging development, we tested various similar formats with consumers. One of the things that stood out was that the experience of scraping your hand when reaching into a packaging that's too tight, is really uncomfortable. So we challenged our packaging designers to create something with a tight form factor at top, but expand after opening to avoid a bad consumer experience."
The form factor of the product itself also impacted packaging decision. Dropps pods are 9 g, less than half the size of the 25-g pods offered by big brands.
“When you have smaller pods, that means more compact packaging. But we also know that to be competitive on shelf against somebody like a Tide, we can't have a smaller box because the U.S. consumer has a really hard time understanding that like smaller is bigger, in some cases. U.S. consumers assume bigger is better,” Waldron adds. “So from a shelf presence perspective, we have to present in a size that’s competitive with our category.”
Secondary packaging
The prismoid shape for the retail packs allows for tight and compact secondary packaging, since the packs dovetail neatly, nesting as a chevron shape into a shipping case, usually a six-ct per corrugated mastercase since each case of six roughly fills one shelf. It’s an efficient pack out that provides good rigidity through the supply chain. For standard 40-ct retail packs, 72 cases construct a pallet.
Consistent brand appearance extends to D2C
Dropps could have kept its existing D2C packaging and simply rolled out its new retail packaging as another format, optimized for the store aisle. But the omnichannel is more complex than that.
“It's also important to present a consistent look as a brand,” Dorward says. “We're actually going to be interested to see, now that we have visibility as a brand on a retail shelf, how that helps, from a halo-effect point of view, our direct-to-consumer. It's very important to have consistency between a product image on a digital shelf and making it exactly what you'd see as you walk down the aisle, or on an endcap in a grocery story.”
So, the trapezoidal shape of the retail shelf pack was extended to the D2C channel. And since most consumers tended to order more than one pack at a time, it turned out that paperboard primary packaging could do the trick for both Amazon and Dropps’ internal D2C channels.
The new D2C pack also consists of brightly colored paperboard with sharply printed, easily legible text, offset printed in five colors. But the D2C trapezoid has a flat top rather than a gable style top since compactness and space efficiency are the main goals in D2C; filling vertical space with a billboard isn’t necessary.
The medium sizes, usually around 64-ct cartons, use is a 24-point paperboard cardstock. The largest sizes, 120- and 140-ct, use 28 point cardstock.
“We've really maxed out this box to fit as many pods as possible to optimize the cubic dimension, knowing that these are typically shipping in multiples,” says Waldron. “And dead space in an e-commerce box just doesn't make any sense.”
Unlike the six-to-case retail channel secondary packaging, Dropps does a larger case pack to Amazon, either 10 or 16 cartons per case depending on the carton's product count, which vary from 32- to 160-ct cartons. These go to Amazon fulfillment centers in mixed pallets.
Orders coming directly into Dropps are packed out individually in right-sized corrugated shippers due to the high variability and comparatively small order size per consumer. Still, D2C consumers order two or more products. Beyond the common practice of cross-category ordering of laundry and dish detergents, and perhaps even different SKUs of each, a free shipping minimum threshold helps ensure consumers order more than one at a time when ordering D2C.
Concludes Dorward of the very similar packaging look that is able to serve different channels: “It's a conscious decision we're making. With D2C, we want to make sure it’s very compact, because these are shipping across the country. You want to get as many pods in the box as possible, so we maximize space with our D2C packaging. The overall trapezoid shape, and overall messaging on the bright billboard, is very similar between our new D2C and the new retail packaging. But clearly there has to be a differentiation between channels and their slightly different goals.” PW
Editor's note: PW asked Dropps about equipment and materials suppliers, as well as barrier properties/WVTR on the cardstock, but that information was not made available.
With its former pack design, a single kraft corrugated SIOC shipper unfolded to reveal two smaller cases, which folded out and could be removed from the connective outer boxing. The format had a lot of advantages in fulfillment, supply chain, porch appeal, and unboxing, but once in the home, some consumers found it difficult to differentiate between the dish and laundry detergent packs.
