Why Your FMCG Packaging Is Losing You Sales on Shelf

You have three seconds. That's the window a shopper gives your product before their eyes move on. In a Woolworths or Coles aisle, surrounded by 30,000 other SKUs, your packaging either earns attention or it doesn't. There's no middle ground.

After 20 years of designing packaging for FMCG brands — from Unilever innovations to independent food startups — we've seen the same mistakes made repeatedly. Here's what's actually costing brands sales on shelf.

The hierarchy is wrong

Most packaging tries to say too much. Brand name, product name, variant, health claims, certifications, cook instructions — all fighting for attention at the same size. The result is visual noise that reads as nothing.

Great shelf packaging has a ruthless hierarchy. One thing catches the eye first. Everything else supports it. When we design packaging for retail, we're always asking: what's the one thing a shopper should see in 0.3 seconds?

Packaging designed on a 27-inch monitor at full zoom doesn't always translate to a 10cm product seen from 1.5 metres away. The typography is too small. The colour contrast isn't strong enough. The brand name gets lost in the background.

We always mock up packaging in situ — photographed in a real fridge or shelf environment, surrounded by competitors. What looks premium on screen can look invisible in context.

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