Cosmetic/Personal Care Packaging.

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Cosmetic Feature : A Flexible Approach

Clear Solutions

Although traditional paper-based cartons may always dominate the marketplace, companies are increasingly seeking interesting ways to set their products apart from the cardboard crowd. Many firms are finding that transparent cartons made from polypropylene, PETG, and PVC offer a different look and tactile experience while showing off the very bottles they are designed to protect. These transparent plastics are especially useful when a company's goal for the carton is that it be understated or barely seen at all. Such is the case with the gift sets and skin-care kits marketed by H2O Plus (Chicago). "We want the product to be the hero, so we use transparent cartons with very minimalist graphics," says Laura Elliott, H2O's director of package development.

PETG and PVC have long been popular plastics thanks to their clean, transparent appearance, but the need for durable cartons is making newer alternatives equally attractive. When Estée Lauder launched Tommy Hilfiger's Freedom fragrance line using PETG, the cartons looked as the company had intended, but some of the units fell prey to ripping and scratching. That's when Lauder turned to MJC Enterprises (New York City) for a solution. Their answer: packaging with polypropylene.

"Polypropylene has evolved," says Jennifer Chouraqui, U.S. agent for Raffypack and Dapy Paris of MJC Enterprises. "It's a relatively new material that's been on the U.S. market for about four years. It came along as an alternative to PETG's problem with brittleness."

Polypropylene offers many benefits: it is waterproof, recyclable, resistant to alcohol erosion, and can be varnished for protection against the scratches that PVC and PETG are subject to. Perhaps polypropylene's greatest feature is its environmental friendliness; the material can provide an alternative to PVC, which is banned in some parts of Europe due to potentially harmful additives used in its manufacture. According to Chouraqui, "There's strong resistance to PVC here in the United States, so polypropylene is gaining popularity as an environmentally sound alternative.

"When we started using polypropylene, the construction had to be done by hand and the cartons were folded together with tabs and no glue," says Chouraqui. "Now we have improved gluing and scoring capabilities. Scoring deeply along the lines where we want to fold is important because it allows us to build the cartons on an automated setup machine." Companies can save money, she says, by not having to fold their cartons by hand, a process that can cause breakage.

One potential drawback is that polypropylene isn't crystal clear; the material gives a slightly misty view of the carton's contents. But this doesn't seem to be hurting the material's popularity among package designers. Just like Hilfiger with its Freedom line, Escada recently made a postlaunch switch from PVC cartons to polypropylene with its Sport line, Chouraqui says.

More is More

Of course, not every cosmetics company has adopted the "less is more" design philosophy. In an effort to make their brands stand apart and grab consumers' attention, many cosmetic and personal-care firms are incorporating ink, stamp, and coating technologies into their packaging. Such carton decorating techniques have undergone numerous advances in recent years.

For example, Arkay Packaging Corp. (Hauppauge, NY) specializes in techniques that give package designers options beyond those offered by traditional four-color ink printers. The possibilities range from colorful stamping, embossing, and coating techniques to more-subtle technologies that enhance the brightness and shelf life of the carton materials. "You can call them value-added processes, but I call them special effects," says Arkay president Mitchell Kaneff. "The effects on a carton have to be special, because if they don't [command attention], the customers will walk right by."

One particularly versatile special effect offered by Arkay is Aperture lamination. "If you die-cut a window in a carton and then laminate over the entire piece, including the window, you get a seamless gloss appearance over the entire carton," says Kaneff. "This layer protects the outside of the carton, by resisting fingerprints and potential water damage, as well as adding to the package's overall strength." In addition, Arkay can provide lamination that produces an overall matte or gloss effect to the finish of cartons. Chanel's Black and Gold makeup line is a good example of this process, he says.

"These value-added features make products look more valuable even though they may not be more expensive to use," according to Shawn Smith, vice president of sales and marketing at Impaxx Eastern Region Division (South Plainfield, NJ). Impaxx recently manufactured custom folding cartons for the Joan Rivers perfume Now and Forever. "It's clearly a showpiece—one of the more high-end cartons [Joan Rivers Results Products LLC] has used. It involved stamping to add bold color, embossing to appeal to the customers' sense of touch, applying a UV coating for added shine, and using gold foil that really makes the package pop on the shelf."

The printed surface isn't the only place where carton designers can apply their creativity. Bob Smith of Cosmetic Essence Inc. (Holmdel, NJ) was recently approached by a customer with an interesting question: Does our box really have to be ... a box? "Fashion Fragrances wanted to package their Skirt bath and body line in bags," Smith recalls. "Unfortunately, they couldn't really use a bag because it wouldn't ship well, last long on the shelf, or protect the product."

Rather than completely abandon the idea of using a bag, Smith says, "We wound up creating a custom carton that looked triangular from the side and had a tapered top. The opening was in the top, just like on a bag, but we added a tab up there that could be folded into a slot on the back to seal it. Finally, we printed some graphics on the front of the carton that actually made it look like a bag." The end result, he says, is an appealing package that is feminine and that has an incredibly strong shelf presence.

Thinking Inside the Box

Of course, the design of any carton is ultimately limited by the realities of cost versus profit. From the material used to the manual labor required to assemble a carton, companies have to decide where to splurge and where to save to get the most for their money.

"A lot of customers start off with very intricately designed packages for launch, then simplify things later," explains Lesley Bates, a structural designer for Diamond Packaging (Rochester, NY). "They want to make a big splash in the marketplace to introduce their product."

Arkay has had similar experiences. The supplier often works with its customers to produce both lavish and moderate versions of the same package. As a product moves through its life cycle and demand for it begins to fall off, a more conservative carton is introduced to help balance production costs with diminishing product profitability. "Some of our customers call this value analysis," says Arkay's Kaneff. "It's equally advantageous for us as a printer. Without it, customers might continue asking for the same high-end package at the same low price, even as the number of units being ordered starts to drop."

Kaneff's family-owned company has enjoyed long-term partnerships with several major customers, including Chanel, Estée Lauder, Mary Kay, and Procter & Gamble. According to Kaneff, close relationships with customers allow Arkay to get involved early in the production cycle. "Our customers don't have to go to comp houses where they might wind up with package designs that are impractical to actually produce," Kaneff says. "We can lend our own design and printing expertise to help spot potential problems early on."

Containing Costs

A number of factors determine the ultimate cost of a carton. As a general rule, one third of the expense comes from the material chosen. After that, factors such as special color processes and the amount of work that can be automated come into play. "Design-wise, it's easy to make every package creative and unique," explains Diamond's Bates. "But the realities of the industry and the costliness of production complicate things. We often try to help [cosmetic and personal-care firms] by prototyping a range of three to four packages they can choose from, ranging from the least expensive option to the most expensive."

In the case of the bag-shaped carton created for the Skirt line by Cosmetic Essence, the unique box configuration made engineering a bit of a challenge. "In addition to two six-inch plastic tubes of body gel and lotion, [the packaging] contained a glass body-mist bottle imported from Italy," explains Cosmetic Essence's Smith. "To protect the contents, we had to make a special interior lining that fit the box's wild shape. Luckily, we have an in-house structural designer who was able to come up with a custom E-flute protective liner." The carton's cutting die was large, however, so the company couldn't fit as many dies on a sheet. In addition, each sheet had to be run through a four-color printer twice to accommodate the six inks and two matte coatings. The job still remained cost-effective for the customer, according to Smith.

But the circumstance Smith describes is not typical. In most instances, using large cutting dies drives up costs, because fewer die-cuts fit on one sheet. As a result, more sheets have to be run through the printer. Impaxx has tackled this problem with the simple strategy of fighting size with size. "We have a press with a 51-inch width," says Impaxx's Smith. "This enables customers to save money on stock, [because we can] position more cartons on each large sheet."

Arkay has applied a similar technological approach to dealing with jobs that require multiple inks and special effects. Their combination printing technology unites several processes in-line so they all can be applied in a single pass. "Some jobs may have to go through printing twice," Kaneff explains, "but our competitors will [typically] have to run jobs through three times to get the same layered effects."

Wrapping Up

The number of options available to carton designers is increasing year by year, as existing technologies are honed and new ones are developed. Cosmetic and personal-care companies would be wise to rely on the expertise of carton suppliers when it comes to choosing eye-catching containers for their products. Arguably, the most valuable product offered by many packaging suppliers may not be materials or printing processes or the like, but rather, the years of experience they have to share, to help beauty product manufacturers minimize costs and increase profits along the way.

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