Showcase: Tailoring Tubes to Suit Your Products
The tube for Banana Republic's Skin Nutrients Nourishing Hand Balm is created for a high-end appearance. Gap's Close Shimmer Lotion is designed for a natural look. Products courtesy of GAP Inc., Personal Care Division. Communicating brand with tubes has never been easier thanks to graphics, labels, closures, and other decorating options.
By Joanna Cosgrove Tubes are versatile packages, and thus are often the choice of cosmetic and personal care companies needing a vehicle for conveying brand to consumers. Given the array of options available—from materials to decorating and finishing processes—companies can customize tubes to convey exactly what they want about their products.
Tubes Made Tastefully Rich
Elegance was the aim when the House of Bijan (Beverly Hills, CA) designed three tubes to complement its Bijan With A Twist fragrance for women.
The tubes for the Twist-scented body lotion, body cream, and body wash help create a rich, unified presentation for the line, a result that Daniela Pakzad, Bijan's vice president of creative services, is pleased with.
"The Bijan customer expects a high level of quality from this product and its extended bath and body line," says Pakzad. "By bringing together the rich gold color [of the primary packaging] with the vibrant yellow of the secondary packaging, the [tubes convey] the [luxury of the] brand." In that, she says, is a touch of the world-renowned Bijan showroom on famous Rodeo Drive.
The gold foil spiral-shaped logo on the tubes emulates the movable rings that coil around the Twist fragrance bottle, adds Pakzad.
The full-wrap, pressure-sensitive labels for the L.A. Looks hair-care line were designed specifically for use on tubes. Photo courtesy of Promo Edge. Supplied by JSN Packaging Products (Irvine, CA), the 6.8-oz tubes were specially crafted for an even softer surface than that provided by conventional soft-touch tubes, according to JSN sales manager John Ulibarri. "We created a custom, metallic gold tube with a custom soft-touch coating that's similar to a matte- finish coating [but has] finer granules that give the tube a softer feel," Ulibarri says.
Like Bijan, L'Oreal wanted to create an elegant-looking tube to launch its Richesse ammonia-free hair-color line. While L'Oreal selected the same aluminum tube used for some of its other products, the company chose inks and graphics with the aim of creating a unique identity for Richesse.
The tube, which is supplied by Montebello Packaging Inc. (Oak Park, IL), features brilliant color and is designed to exude the image of tasteful elegance, with three-color metallic pigmented inks and crisp, well-positioned graphics.
Tracking Tube Trends
Current trends in tube packaging attest to their popularity among cosmetic and personal care companies and their customers. These trends can be grouped into five categories, according to Joseph Paskar, president of Paskart Designs, a packaging and brand identity design firm.
The biggest trend is transparency, says Paskar, a tube segment he calls clarity by design. "New plastic materials are exceptionally clear," says Paskar. "This allows [consumers] to enjoy the look of the products through their packaging." Many designers are also using labels and images on the front and back walls of such clear tubes to create an eye-catching three-dimensional effect.
Sharp, crisp images designed to appeal to Generations X through Y are perhaps the next biggest trend in tubes, Paskar says. "These tubes have a professional look that often features brushed aluminum and metallic finishes," he says.
Also trendy are understated apothecary-style tubes, as well as tubes with iridescent colors and holographics. The latter has been difficult to achieve until recently, says Paskar, due to the flexibility requirements for labels that are applied to tubes. But such joint developments as the one recently formed between American Bank Note Holographics (Elmsford, NY) and labels supplier Avery Dennison (Painesville, OH) are enabling cosmetic and personal care manufacturers to apply conformable holographic labels to their tubed products.
Tubes designed primarily for convenience and functionality complete this list of trends, says Paskar. Tubes in this segment feature hangtags, ergonomic shapes, and [materials] that allow users to see how much of the product is left in the container as it's being used. An example of the convenience trend in tubes is the new tube closure from Cebal Americas (Norwalk, CT). The CebalCap is a flip-top dispensing closure with rounded edges for aesthetic appeal. The cap has an orienting feature that aligns it with the tube's front panel for ease of use.
Tubes with a Flair for Hair
When Zotos International Inc. (Darien, CT) searched for an upscale tube to house its ISO Multiplicity line of hair-care products, the company didn't have to look far. Packaging supplier Tubed Products Inc. (Easthampton, MA) had already impressed the company by designing the award-winning tube for Zotos Hold It Super Hold Gel in the 2000 Tube of the Year competition sponsored by the Tube Council of North America (Wayne, NJ).
John Gilbertie, manager of purchasing and packaging for Zotos, worked with Tubed Products, eventually selecting the supplier's low-density polyethylene, high-gloss, Clearly Superior tube with a matching transparent cap. Gilbertie felt the tubes were well suited for ISO Multiplicity products Disciplining, a smoothing gel, and Multi-Texture, a styling cream, but an adjustment was needed. Tubed Products had to create a "cheater band" that would exactly match the product color to conceal empty space inside the top of the tube. "You can't fill a tube completely with product [and have it] seal correctly," says Gilbertie. "We needed to fill the clear tube with our colorful formulation, leaving roughly half an inch to an inch of empty headspace."
The color of ISO Multiplicity's tube blends with the product's color. Products courtesy of Zotos International Inc. Tubed Products solved this problem for Zotos by printing the tubes with a gradation of the product color, making it darkest at the top, lightest at the bottom. "The [tube's] color blends with [the formulation] so well," he says, "that you can't tell where the printed color ends and the actual product begins." The result: a seamless look that complements the entire ISO Multiplicity line.
Another company that sought tubes for its line of hair-care products is Schwarzkopf & DEP Inc. (Rancho Dominguez, CA).
Spike It, Slick, and Push Up, products in the firm's L.A. Looks line, were packaged in tubes with one-piece, full-wrap, pressure-sensitive labels from Promo Edge (Neenah, WI). The supplier designed the labels specifically for use on tubes.
"The label material is designed to be applied to tubes before they are filled and crimped closed," says Perry Peterman, product manager for Promo Edge. "The material is extremely flexible, so the tube can be squeezed without causing the label to lift off."
Schwarzkopf & DEP is pleased with the labels and how they help promote the products' brand identity to consumers. "With the labels, we were able to get the look we wanted, one we couldn't have achieved by printing directly on the tube," says Hope Keifer, purchasing manager for Schwarzkopf & DEP. "We used seven colors and were able to get an opacity that wouldn't have been cost-effective any other way."
Tubes Can Say It All
Because tubes allow for a wide range of decorating options, they can provide the ideal package for companies designing for more than one brand. For example, Ted Wang, director of package development for Gap Inc.'s personal care division (San Francisco) designs packaging for the Gap's three personal care brands: Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy. While the packaging for these brands is designed under one roof, each brand must be created so as to communicate its own distinct message to consumers.
Old Navy's Lip Gloss tube features an applicator wand with a self-wiping mechanism. Product courtesy of GAP Inc., Personal Care Div. Packaging for Banana Republic is designed to look high-end, says Wang, adding that "Gap [packages] exude a natural ideal, while Old Navy says 'cheap fun,' something customers love." The differences between packaging for Gap and Old Navy, he says, are usually related to the level of the artwork used and the retail price.
Wang recently developed a tube for Gap's Close Shimmer Lotion. The product is packaged in a transparent tube. The tube incorporates an iridescent effect in its outer layer that, according to Wang, helps to enhance the barely perceptible shimmer of the formulation.
To package Old Navy Lip Gloss, Wang selected a tube from CCL Container, Laminate Division (Swedesboro, NJ). "Using a tube [afforded Old Navy] such decorating options as hot-stamping and silk-screening in six colors," says Jim Cooper, CCL's vice president of sales and marketing. "Printing in the flat offered tight tolerances," according to Cooper. The Lip Gloss tube features an injection-molded neck that accommodates a wand with a self-wiping mechanism.
Talk of the Town
Tubes are packages of great versatility, ones that cosmetic and personal care companies have helped to popularize and make trendy (see Tracking Tube Trends). With so much to offer beauty manufacturers and their customers, tubes are likely to stay in the limelight—all dressed up and ready for show.