Behind the Liberty magic

Ian Hunt, director of customer services and procurement at Liberty, reveals how thoughtful packaging balances luxury and sustainability, and why the brand is gearing up for London Packaging Week 2025.

There are shops, and then there is Liberty. Nestled at the top of Carnaby Street, its mock Tudor façade, carved from the timbers of two ships, rises like something from a fairy tale! Step through its floral framed doorway and you enter another realm: wood panelled galleries, honeyed light, and a labyrinth of curiosities that stir the senses and slow down time. It is not just a place to shop, it is a place to wander, to dream, to be moved by beauty.

This October, that same devotion to detail and storytelling will be in the spotlight at London Packaging Week (15 and 16 October, Excel London), where Liberty will join other leading brands to explore how packaging shapes the customer experience.

This year marks 150 years since Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his ‘Emporium of the Exotic’ in 1875, and remarkably, the store still retains its true founding spirit. Atmospheric and idiosyncratic, Liberty remains one of the few department stores that resists the urge to modernise away its magic. Instead, its rooms are filled with stories, stitched into fabric, glazed into ceramics, or, quite literally, tucked into drawers.

Take its iconic Beauty Advent Calendar, for instance. A modern marvel in seasonal retail, it has become one of the most in demand products in Liberty's history, selling out year after year to queues that wrap around the building. But behind the glittering product line up and illustrated façade lies something less visible. Still, no less magical: the quiet choreography of packaging experts, production teams, and creatives who work for months to ensure that each drawer opens with elegance, holds its shape, and delivers delight. Packaging here isn't an afterthought; it is a form of storytelling in its own right.

When people think of Liberty, they tend to think of prints. Of carved staircases and softly lit rooms, wood panels and curated curiosities. Of beauty and boutique luxury wrapped up in an iconic purple bag. What they don't often think about is the machinery behind it all, the quiet decisions that shape how the Liberty experience is felt, shared, and remembered. But packaging, in all its forms, is one of them. And for over a decade, Ian Hunt has been the person quietly shaping that side of the story.

‘There is an expectation that our packaging is beautiful, luxurious, and reflects our brand,’ said Ian Hunt, director of customer services and procurement. ‘But at the same time, we get a lot of pressure from our customers and from our colleagues to be more sustainable. And sometimes trying to do both isn't easy. It is like having your cake and eating it, right? So, we have worked very hard over the last five or six years on maintaining that luxury feel for what we do, but looking for ways to do it more sustainably.’

Striking that balance isn't easy, especially in a business where customer expectations are high and every detail matters. As Ian recalls, even the most seemingly straightforward projects come with layers of hidden complexity.

‘The biggest challenge I faced when I first joined the team was not appreciating how difficult it is to print the purple carrier bag without laminating it. If you consider the impact it can have if someone is wearing white trousers, for example, then you start to understand the consequences of some of the decision making,’ he explained. ‘The push for making things more sustainable has come predominantly from me. A big chunk of our customers aren't necessarily considering that.’

Cost is another factor, but Ian’s approach is more behavioural than purely budget driven.

‘And then there is the cost element. Every time I get pushed on the cost of packaging, my pushback is not to make cheaper bags; it has to make it easier for people not to want a bag in the first place. Do they need one bag for every single product they buy? Can they buy a reusable option, or are there reuse models we can sell them, or that they can use?’

No Liberty packaging project looms larger than the annual beauty advent calendar. Beloved by customers, hotly anticipated by the press, and one of the fastest selling items in the brand's history, it is also a feat of careful planning and precise execution.

‘One of the biggest packaging projects we do every year is our beauty advent calendar. We have worked with a couple of suppliers over the years, and every year, someone comes along and suggests they can do it cheaper, which is great because we make a lot of advent calendars. However, the people we have worked with in the past are the ones we trust. We know they'll turn up. That is such a huge thing. And the beauty advent calendar – if we don't get it right, we cannot get it out the door. So, to be able to know that the account team we work with, at our current supplier, is always there for us is vital,’ Ian said.

Working with partners who truly understand the Liberty way of doing things is, he says, non negotiable.

‘Working with people who know us is hugely beneficial,’ he added. ‘I am sure many other retailers say the same thing, but we can be a bit unusual. We are a big brand but not a particularly big company, which can sometimes mean that everybody has an opinion. So, working with suppliers who can cope with that is essential.’

Over the years, the advent calendar has evolved significantly, often through changes and improvements that go unnoticed by customers but are crucial in ensuring a seamless and delightful brand experience that unfolds slowly, drawer by drawer.

‘Using the advent calendar as an example, for the first five or six years of iterations, it was 25 drawers in a five by five square,’ said Ian. ‘This meant that all the drawers were the same shape, size, configuration, and volume, but the products themselves weren't. So, when we started making the drawers in slightly different sizes, one of the geniuses we worked with at our packaging company found a way to maintain the structural integrity, ensuring the products didn't get damaged. That helped, both in terms of packaging and customer service.

‘I am involved in this project from the start right through to the very end. And in the years when people spent more than £200 on an advent calendar and it fell apart by the 18 of December, well, that doesn't happen anymore. However, nobody notices that when they are looking at a new one at a press event or in a marketing showcase.’

That attention to detail carries through every part of the packaging process, extending far beyond just the high profile projects. It is a commitment woven into every element, ensuring consistency and care, regardless of the scale or visibility of the packaging. This dedication helps maintain the integrity of the brand experience at every point of contact.

‘If you take the bags – we are in the West End of London. And when you go out for your sandwich at lunchtime, you see our carrier bags everywhere,’ Ian continued. ‘That brings us brand presence.’

He continued, ‘But when it comes to things like the more standard stuff – web packaging, outer boxes – that doesn't necessarily look like Liberty. You wouldn't recognise it as being a Liberty box, but it protects the product. And that is one of the phrases I hate in my customer service world, when people say, 'I expected more of you because you are Liberty’. What a courier does with my box once I give it to them is really out of my hands. However, if we have good packaging and protect the product, then it never becomes a conversation.

‘So, if no one is talking about my web boxes, that is probably a good thing, because it means they have done their job. There are only two extremes. We call it 'brown packaging' and 'purple packaging’.’

And sometimes, purple packaging becomes a product in its own right.

‘We have got our 150th anniversary this year. We have got our anniversary shop and a limited edition carrier bag, and we have found that people are coming to the shop and buying the smallest and cheapest items so that they can get the carrier bag. Which is great, because it means they are walking around the West End with it, and when they travel back to their destination, they are taking the bag with them.

‘It is a piece of marketing as much as it is a protective product or practical thing for carrying home shopping. So, it is part of the experience. And then, obviously, you have got the unboxing phenomenon. We have a team here at Liberty which is bought into this, and people get very excited about it. And we wouldn't ever say what they should or shouldn't get excited about.

‘Packaging is fundamental to what we do. From the attention to detail when you are putting the item in the bag, it is then all about consistency throughout the store, throughout the departments. That is the standard we strive for. We sell nice things, very nice things, and we want people to enjoy the experience and remember that experience when they leave.’

The legacy of that experience is built on consistency, a carefully maintained standard that customers come to expect and cherish. However, maintaining that standard is only part of the story; it also requires constant reinvention to stay relevant and exciting in a fast-paced market.

‘The planning cycle on our beauty advent calendar is more than 12 months,’ said Ian. ‘So, we raised the order for this year's one before we had even finished selling last year's one. That is not a nice challenge because we are talking about big numbers. But also, you are talking about trends as well. You can't keep doing the same thing every year. What is going to be big next year? I can't claim to be a buyer – thankfully, I work with talented buyers who can see into the future – but they don't necessarily plan as far ahead as we do in the packaging world. So that is my world, that is the challenge I have.’

Events like London Packaging Week, happening this year on 15 and 16 October at Excel London, offer far more than just practical solutions – they provide a rare opportunity for discovery and unexpected inspiration.

‘We always make a point of going,’ he added. ‘To catch up with existing suppliers that we might not necessarily see face to face regularly. And we always try to come across something we weren't expecting. So, we don't just look at the stands with the carrier bags and the usual; we are looking to be surprised,’ said Ian.

‘A few years ago, we saw a bag that was intended for food products. We ended up talking to the supplier and adapting their design for the fabric. Instead of previously wrapping our luxury fabric, bought by the metre, in tissue paper and then putting it in a carrier bag, we now have a specific bag that is fully recyclable. It saved us money. It is translucent, and you can see the product through it. That started with us having no intention of looking for that. It is one of those things. We saw what they were doing with somebody else, and we worked with the supplier to make it our own.’

Over the past decade, Liberty has undergone significant evolution, shedding its reliance on plastic that once defined its packaging. This shift reflects a broader transformation within the brand – one that balances luxury with responsibility, embracing sustainability not as a compromise but as an inherent part of its identity. As Ian explained, ‘Even in the relatively short time I have been at Liberty, which is more than 10 years now, we have come on leaps and bounds. I think back to when I started my career, and it was a plastic bag for everything. Plastic, plastic, plastic. And now that doesn't happen. There is this cycle of what we need to do versus what it costs, versus what becomes easier as things develop.

‘I think the sustainability stage we are in now is a good thing. Before, we would have dropped the luxurious nature of what we are doing and used sustainability as the reason. Whereas now, more and more people accept that what we do should be sustainable by default.

‘We have gone down the route of: we do the right thing. If we can shout about it to our customers, we will. If we can’t, we still need to do the right thing. But it also has to look good. And more and more people are doing it now, so it is no longer a sacrifice. There is more choice.

‘It should be given that you are not doing something harmful to the planet. And when you say it out loud like that, it sounds unbelievable, but it should be a given. And it becomes part of the decision making process. It is not the be all and end all, but it absolutely should be part of the decision making process.’

The Liberty team will join dozens of other leading brands, including Burberry, Harrods, Charlotte Tilbury, Jo Malone, and Fortnum & Mason, at what promises to be a pivotal London Packaging Week. Events like this showcase how thoughtful packaging goes beyond functionality to become an essential part of the brand experience. When done right, packaging is invisible – but it also protects, presents, and promotes. For Liberty, it remains a quiet yet vital part of the magic behind every exceptional customer journey.