Artisan du Chocolat
Case Study

About

From conching and refining their own chocolate to sending chocolate coated gingers into space, Artisan du Chocolat has broken the mould and redefined modern luxury British chocolates since 1999. At the heart of Artisan is a commitment to quality and innovation. Their atelier in Kent mixes traditional craftsmanship with technical advances.

Brief

Artisan approached Actionpoint for help with two key issues. They were dissatisfied with the performance of their existing packaging, which was causing products to fall over while on shelves in-store, and their packaging management had become too unwieldy and time-consuming.

Findings

Artisan du Chocolat were experiencing supply chain problems and packaging inefficiencies, caused in part by an unreliable packaging vendor. As a result, the director of Artisan and several employees were spending an inordinate amount of time managing the packaging workload and its various deadlines. This was becoming too much of a distraction and had the potential to impact on company performance.

Added to this, storage space was at a premium due to the fast growth of the business. Artisan urgently needed to dedicate more room to production facilities rather than packaging. An innovative approach would help Artisan to optimise their packaging management and storage in one fell swoop.

Solution

Actionpoint worked with the company owner in setting up our Freedom Programme to speed up and simplify their packaging processes. The key to the programme is flexibility, which includes on-site stock checks, stockholding, and efficient disaster-proof systems to ensure they get the right product every time.

A meeting was arranged to discuss the problem of Artisan’s packaging failing to stay upright. And, within 6 hours, Actionpoint’s packaging technologist and design team had a solution. They designed and prototyped an insert to go in the shelf ready packaging, which ensured the chocolate products were displayed correctly on the supermarket shelves.

Results

• Suggested product improvements and overall packaging reductions
• Created efficiencies within packaging process, decreasing previous administration tasks
• Designed a new packaging solution to solve previous packaging issues
• Set up and management of a stockholding agreement, providing flexibility of delivery