Developing a family of high-end packaging solutions made with sustainable local materials

Client: Award-winning South African luxury safari company

Services: R&D, Design, Materials sourcing, Prototyping, Quality control, and Production management, content-creation

Project

An award-winning luxury safari company with a growing property portfolio in Kenya tasked us with a new product challenge: develop a family of packaging solutions for its retail arm, which would be quintessentially Kenyan, in materials and 100% local production, and aligned with their high-end positioning to match the expectations of their global and discerning clientele.

Methodology

At Crafting Kenya we understand that every brand touch point - physical and digital - is an opportunity to share a brand’s identity, values and stories. Knowing our client’s ethos, a successful packaging solution would converge consistency of brand, functionality, sustainability and provenance. The packaging solution would also leverage local capacities, materials and production techniques to deliver the Made in Kenya story most powerfully. This would also mean taking on the complexities and risks of local materials sourcing and management of artisanal production, on behalf of the client. With this understanding, we could now start, anchored in the pillars that guide our practice: research, design, prototyping and compliance/testing.

Implementation

Step 1:

Harness Crafting Kenya’s database of heritage craft and materials to identify collaborators and settle on the perfect material: hyacinth paper.

Born out of a destructive weed that invaded Lake Victoria, hyacinth paper merges sustainability, quintessential Kenyan resourcefulness, artisanal “Made in Kenya” production, and an elevated aesthetic.

Step 2:

Design and prototyping, balancing brand, grounded elegance inspired by the surrounding landscape and the value of generosity with the practical need for a range of sizes and an air-travel friendly product.

Step 3:

Production management, closely monitoring risks associated with artisanal production, and putting out fires along the way.

Step 4:

Alongside submitting a finished product, we captured interesting tid-bits from the development and production process, building stories for the clients’ digital platforms, understanding that for today’s customers, the story of the product is just as important as the product itself.