Opening Lines
Packaging Can Prevail
You're accustomed to redesigning the packaging for your products. Such reinvention is rather routine in an image-based industry that succeeds on its ability to keep consumers captivated with fresh, original-looking beauty products. While change can be a rebirth for a product dying in the marketplace, it can also evolve into a harmful approach to package design.
When companies become so ritualistic about changing their packaging that they don't make their best effort right from the start, betting instead on a redesign to keep a product on the market, then what's at stake is the type of packaging that prevails.
To give you an idea of what you could miss by adopting an out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new attitude at the outset of a project, I'll introduce Rebecca Pflueger and cosmetic solutions company English Ideas. Pflueger founded English Ideas, then recently sold it to a Korean firm, which plans to market its own skin-care technology utilizing English Idea's U.S. distribution channels. But chances are you probably already know Pflueger, or know of her, since recognition of her innovative packaging for English Ideas has been industry wide this year.
"People all over the world have been congratulating me," says Pflueger of the refillable packaging for English Ideas skin-care, which won the grand prize in the 2001 International Package Design Awards competition. Pflueger accepted the award in New York City in June, where she drew crowds. Packaging professionals wanted to talk with her about the unisex packaging with its sleek lines and silver details. They wanted to find out what challenges she encountered when developing the molds, how she merged a high-tech aesthetic with an environmentally friendly appeal. But perhaps most of all, people wanted to be in the presence of a designer who gambled on a unique look and concept and came out ahead.
Way ahead, as a matter of fact. The packaging has been so well received and has such a promising future that Pflueger felt compelled to retain the rights to the packaging when selling her company. Pflueger plans to use the English Ideas five-sided, triangular-shaped primary package and matching cap, and the refillable inner tube, for Rebecca Cosmetics and Skin-Care, her new line set to launch in spring 2002. In addition, Pflueger is considering granting the license for the molds, also retained by her during the sale, to companies who've expressed interest in using her distinctive packaging for their own product lines.
The package's unique design was a calculated risk, but one well worth taking. "Being brave enough to try something unique is difficult," says Pflueger. I agree. Having the courage to realize your vision, to begin with it and commit to seeing it through is the first step. Without that, all bets are off.
Lori Bryan
Editor
For more about English Ideas, check out CPC Packaging's coverage of the award-winning packaging in the May/June 2001 issue.