Custom Craft
One Company's Anti-Cookie-Cutter Philosophy
Written by CARRIE DOW
While many outlets offer up cookie cutter options, Canada’s Phoenix Packaging finds ways to make distillery packaging as unique as the spirits inside it.
J
oel Miller, Phoenix Packaging’s CEO, says his company was founded some 45 years ago out of spite. “That’s where things began,” Miller said with a chuckle on a Zoom call from his home in Montreal. In a tale straight out of the HBO hit series Succession, the founder of Phoenix Packaging was originally part of a family-owned packaging company with a history dating back to the 1920s. In the late 1970s, when the family patriarch died, his will was set to split the business equally between his son and son-in-law, with the patriarch’s brother having a couple of voting shares. After the son-in-law did some behind-theback maneuvering to gain his uncle-in-law’s voting shares, he kicked the son out of the family business. The son then made it his mission to “show them.” Wanting to rise out of the ashes like the mythological bird, the son started Phoenix in 1980. However, taking what he had learned from his years in the family business, he decided to do things differently. Miller said the founder quickly built Phoenix into a strong company through business savvy and drive, while the big-spending brother-in-law and other family members drove the family’s packaging business into bankruptcy. “Then after the family business went bankrupt, [the founder] 54
started to lose interest and motivation because he’d proven his point,” said Miller. Long story short, Miller, who was friends with the founder’s son, was invited to join Phoenix, eventually taking over in 1993. Miller says he still uses the packaging principles that Phoenix was built on: skip the catalogs and warehouse stocks of cookie-cutter packaging to create something unique that stands out on a shelf. “His basic concept wasn’t to do what most packaging companies were doing then, which is: ‘Here’s a standard item, we’ve got this nice big warehouse, buy it from our catalog, and that’s all we’ve got,’” Miller explained. “His concept was, ‘What is going to best help you sell your product?’” “Most of what we do are unique, custom packages,” he continued. “It’s not that we don’t sell standard items. We do. But the majority of our business is creating what people want and what they think will help them tell their story.” Phoenix is not a design firm, nor is it a manufacturer. You could say they’re more of a matchmaking service. Miller says what they do is partner with packaging manufacturers around W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M