The Story Behind The Contender Brands Packaging Success

Contender's games were finding an audience, but the first packaging held the brand back. The company came to PakFactory with three things to fix.

• A plastic tub that undersold the games.
  The games shipped in a plastic container didn't reflect the brand's quality.
• Stickers that were hard to apply consistently.
  A four-piece sticker label on the outside was fiddly and inconsistent to apply.
• Original packaging was heavier than expected.
  Their original plastic container was heavier than ideal for the product.

“

We called to inquire about how to repackage our first game, and PakFactory immediately understood the concept we were trying to create.

”

Monique Honaman

CEO at Contender Brands

To replace the plastic tub, PakFactory reviewed the product and built a two-piece cylinder rigid box in coated paper over greyboard, finished in matte lamination for a simple, sleek, premium look that finally matched the games inside.

We suggested removing the stickers entirely. Instead of a four-piece label applied by hand, the artwork was printed directly onto the box in full-flood offset CMYK, so every unit looks identical and polished with nothing to misalign.

Inside, a custom insert holds the 150-card deck firmly in place, and PakFactory produced the cards themselves, each wrapped and secured, so the whole game shipped as one clean, considered package instead of a heavy plastic tub.

Rigid 2-piece cylinder

Custom inner tray

Matte lamination

PakFactory produced the cards as well

Custom insert

Full flood offset print for the artwork

Since the switch, the games have earned strong reviews for both the play and the packaging, and the new artwork and structure doubled engagement on the product. The same cylinder format now carries the whole GTKY line, each game in its own artwork, with PakFactory producing the decks alongside the boxes. Contender has kept coming back for new games since, and that is the kind of partnership PakFactory aims to give growing brands, pairing consultative design and structural expertise usually reserved for enterprise budgets with packaging that scales as the product line grows.