It Takes Two
Two bottles solve a design problem for California Tan..
If at first you don't succeed, try another bottle, or in the case of California Tan (Beverly Hills, CA), two bottles.
The company is a marketer of tanning products for salons. Product differentiation is essential, so when Andy Jones, vice president of operations, and John Moore, packaging engineer, had to create a package for the company's new two-in-one Naughty & Nice tanning product, they chose a bottle metallized in two colors. Unfortunately, their vendors told them metallization does not allow for selective color. Rather than scrap their concept, Jones and Moore designed two separate bottles that are joined together after filling.
The bottles are metallized, decorated, filled, capped, and then assembled to form one unit. "The bottles look fantastic both apart and together, and using two bottles alleviated a lot of problems on the filling line," says Jones.
The metallized bottles are designed to stand out on the shelf. Also, customers recognize that Naughty & Nice is a two-in-one brand when they see the lotion pump dispenser on one product and a fine-mist sprayer on the other.
Executing the Idea
Last summer, Jones and Moore had difficulty finding a vendor who could meet their tight time line. Blow-molders wouldn't design, troubleshoot, and prepare molds in time for the November 1, 2000, rollout deadline. Finally, Jones and Moore found Poly-Tainer Inc. (Simi Valley, CA). Using concurrent engineering to create and prototype the molds, Poly-Tainer designed and built the unit cavities and two production tools, one for each bottle, and delivered the bottles to the metallizer in eight weeks.
"With the cooperation of the tool shop, Century Die (Fremont, OH), we mapped out a plan to produce unit-cavity tooling for each part while concurrently proceeding with the production tools. Therefore, after the locking mech-anism was finalized in the unit cavities, it could be incorporated into the production tools as quickly as possible," says Frank Cowles, sales manager for Poly-Tainer Inc.
Since the design work was done using three-dimensional solid modeling software, Jones and Moore could clearly visualize the entire concept of the design in real time, including the details of the proprietary locking mechanism. This eliminated the need for costly models and the time necessary to produce them. The three-dimensional information was shared with the tool shop via the Internet, further reducing the overall design cycle.
"We shipped finished containers to the vacuum metallizer, Vacuum Metalizing (Rancho Cucamonga, CA), by the end of September," says Cowles. "This type of turnaround could not have been possible without the full support of the tool shop and the customer, and the key people involved."
The bottles are produced by a four-step process. The PVC bot- tles are extrusion blow-molded, then metallized, decorated, and filled. PVC was selected because the resin holds dimensions during blow-molding. Too much shrinkage at the joint could hinder the two bottles from snapping together properly. Decoration is performed by Artisan Screen Process (Azusa, CA).
Sales of Naughty & Nice have been brisk, although it's too early to quote exact figures. "We will not know what the sell-through is until February," says Jones. "But based on our early estimates, the rollout has been exceptional." Which shows that sometimes two bottles are better than one.