Summer is here and that means big changes in the spirits industry. Few and far between are the warming whiskies by the fire, quickly replaced by a spritz in hand whilst enjoying summer festivities. And whilst consumer drinking behaviours change with the seasons, so do distilleries’ focus on their product portfolio. But when it comes to summer drinks, the market is somewhat saturated. So how can you make your brand stand out on the shelf?

It is more important than ever for brands to be looking at how their packaging portrays itself with consumers’ buying habits being easily influenced by packaging and branding. In fact, 61% of consumers state that they are more likely to repeat a purchase if it comes in luxury feel packaging. And now is the perfect time to consider how you can better promote your brand to a summer market.

Selling Summer through Decoration

Refreshing your packaging for summer doesn’t require you to go back through the entire bottle design and development process. In fact, giving your glass packaging that summer touch can be as simple as adding extra details through decoration. Simple summer details added through printing and embossing your glass packaging can make the world of difference, without the expense of making bottle design changes.

A great example of how this has been done is the Marks and Spencer globe gins. Their Christmas snow globe gin was such a smash hit throughout the winter that they wanted to create something equally as popular for the summer season. To do this, they created a strawberry gin liqueur and gave their snow globe bottle design a decorative summertime twist. For this we took their original globe gin bottle and took the decoration in a different direction, printing on a delectable strawberry pattern using UV inks on state-of-the-art printers to give it that summer flair with sustainable decoration.

Portfolio Diversification

An excellent route to go down to keep consumers engaged all year round is by diversifying your product range. The best method for brands with products that are not popular year-round is horizontal diversification, as this involves expanding into new products that are unrelated to the current offering but target the same consumers. For example, a company producing sloe gin which is notoriously more popular over the Christmas period, may introduce a line of gin liqueurs for the summertime.

This tactic is incredibly beneficial to brands, as they see sales declining from their ‘summer’ drink, they will see a rise in sales for their ‘winter’ drink. Find out more about this method in our ‘Why Smart Distillers Diversify’ blog.

A Sustainable Summer

The trend that keeps coming up in both the drinks industry and the glass manufacturing industry, and the aspect that will set you apart from the competition is sustainability. With 8/10 UK consumers stating that they look out for sustainable packaging when purchasing, now is the time to start considering how this should be influencing your packaging.

When it comes to sustainability, glass packaging is an excellent option due to it being 100% recyclable and infinitely so without a loss in quality. Glass is the perfect material to promote a circular economy, and at Verallia, we work with many of our consumers to make their bottle more sustainable. Whether it be by removing some of the weight from the bottle or increasing the levels of recycled glass content in your bottle.

Revamp with Hy Phoenix

Here at hy phoenix, we specialise in bringing the world’s premium brands to life through the art of glass packaging and aiding our customer’s growth through our abilities in glass design, manufacture, sustainability, and decoration. Through a combination of expert knowledge of the industry and passion for creative design, we produce distinctive bottles recognised across the world.

If you would be interested in working with us on breathing life into your brand through glass, please get in contact with our team.