Personalized Wine Packaging: Wine Industry under Internet Thinking

[Chinese Packaging News] In recent years, with the continuous development of technology, wine production from brewing to packaging has become fully digitalized and controllable. Alongside the increasing integration of e-commerce systems into the wine industry, the adoption of these new technologies is becoming inevitable, making truly personalized custom wine accessible to millions of households.

What are the opportunities for personalized wine packaging?

1. Personalization and diversified consumption have become mainstream

Currently, the main consumer group for customized wines consists of the post-80s and post-90s generations, often referred to as SoLoMoPe (Social, Local, Mobile, and Personalized). These consumers exhibit social behavior, local preferences, mobile usage, and a strong inclination towards personalization. This means that alcohol brands must adapt their marketing strategies to meet consumers' needs across all platforms—social media, full sales channels, and throughout their daily lives. Personalized demand in this context can be seen in three key areas:

(1) Full interaction requires a sense of participation. Personalized wine packaging allows consumers to see custom graphics, such as logos, images, or gifts, in physical form before them.

(2) Circle culture demands a sense of belonging. The internet can quickly gather like-minded individuals. People within a certain community naturally develop specific consumer needs, which personalized wine packaging can symbolize, serve as gifts, and help build a culture. For example, some universities have their own branded wines, and certain organizations produce unique wines for their members.

(3) Shareable, fun, and trending content. Jiang Xiaobai, for instance, prints interesting drink-related messages on its bottle labels, allowing consumers to easily share these stories with friends through social apps like WeChat and Weibo.

2. Major changes brought by the Internet

The Internet has revolutionized human thinking and lifestyle, and business operations are no exception. It can directly connect users to products through communication and connectivity functions. Brewmaster was one of the first to solve the connection issue, shifting the traditional model of wine sales through local distributors and instead connecting wineries directly with consumers.

The Internet also enables direct understanding and collection of user needs, allowing for quick responses. In the commercial value chain, the closer the business is to the end-user, the more valuable it becomes, and the easier it is to control the supply chain. For example, Jiang Xiaobai uses online channels to gather users and create a fan effect, aligning its marketing with the consumption habits of the new generation.

When new consumer habits meet the Internet, the real C2B (Consumer to Business) model emerges, marking the true entry into an era of individuality. At that point, the wine industry will lead the way, and personalized wine packaging will become the next big market trend.

What are the challenges of personalized wine packaging?

The biggest challenge lies in resolving the contradiction between personalized customization and mass production, and building a personalized marketing software system based on the Internet.

Personalized wine packaging should have three key features: low order thresholds—allowing even single bottles to be customized, with large-scale orders from online aggregations; reasonable production costs that don’t significantly exceed regular batch packaging; and short delivery times, typically within five days. These requirements demand high levels of automation, production flexibility, and efficient order identification and scheduling in the production system.

Although these standards are high, advancements in digital printing solutions in recent years have made the production process much easier. The HP Indigo 30000 digital press is a popular choice for fulfilling personalized wine packaging needs. Combined with integrated automatic die-cutting and hot stamping machines, the Gaudi Digital Synergy Printing Machine, and the Kama Digital Smart Sticking Box Platform, they complete the entire process of packaging, post-press processing, and molding. An intelligent personalized wine packaging system covers 300–500 square meters and can be operated by 5–10 people. It supports full-process barcode and JDF control, offering high flexibility and zero waste, capable of meeting orders ranging from 1 to 10,000 wine boxes.

As for the development of the Internet-based personalized marketing software system, it needs to be tailored to different wine brands. The DIY system and the barcode generation system related to packaging production are already well-established on both computers and mobile devices. Integrating all these into a comprehensive marketing platform makes the process seamless and efficient.