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Bottles: Sprouting Style

Tradition, with a Twist

With its marine and herbal ingredient bath products, Ofuro (Torrance, CA) brings the soothing ritual of the ofuro (the Japanese word for a traditional daily bath) into the bathrooms of modern women. Though Japanese tradition is at the heart of Ofuro's packages, the line's Treatment Bath Liquid bottles are untraditional for the personal care market. Each shaped like half of an oval, the baby-blue Deep Sea Bath bottle and the white Mild Herb Bath bottle form a complete oval when placed side by side.

The bottles' complementary design is a key marketing tool. "The bottles were deliberately designed to complement each other attractively on the shelf," says Marlisa Butler, marketing and sales director for Goshu Yakuhin Company, Ltd. (Toyama, Japan), the parent company for Ofuro. "By pairing the two bottles together like this, [we] meant to encourage the customer to try both formulations, [whose ingredients] also complement each other."

Ergonomic contours make the bottle, which was custom molded in-house, user-friendly. "The bottle's curved side and slimness make it easy to hold," says Butler.

Large front and back panels accommodate labels, designed by Imai Toshiyuki Design Office in Toyama, Japan, that set Ofuro apart. "This larger design space enabled us to create labels that incorporate traditional Japanese art in a striking way," says Butler. The labels replicate famous, traditional artwork published by famous Japanese woodblock artists: "The Great Wave" by Hokusai and "The Otsuki Plain" by Hiroshige.

Launched in the United States in October 2002, the Ofuro bottles juxtapose tradition with novelty, for a refreshing appeal. "The bottles' unique shape and labels are very distinctive in the bath-and-body market," says Butler.

Sport-Utility Vehicle

With its water-bottle­style body wash package, The Organic Sudz Co. (Gardiner, NY) is sporting a concept unique to personal care packaging. The blue Tour De Body Wash bottle can be reused as a water bottle and was specifically designed to fit in a bicycle rack's water-bottle holder.

"From the beginning, we envisioned gearing the line toward customers who love the outdoors and who seek an active lifestyle," says Steve Byckiewicz, founder and vice president of The Organic Sudz Co. and its parent company, Kiss My Face.

Like Kiss My Face, The Organic Sudz Co. promotes environmentally friendly values. Thus, the reusable and recyclable body-wash bottle fit the bill. "Since our customers tend to go camping and hiking in areas that are susceptible to pollution, we wanted to make sure that the bottle was reusable and recyclable," says Byckiewicz.

The sky-blue bottle was custom molded by Sudz to fit a stock push-pull closure that the company sourced from Creative Packaging (Buffalo Grove, IL). "We wanted the bottle and the closure to have wide mouths to make the bottle easier to refill with liquid," says Byckiewicz.

Other Sudz bottles include a stock 250-ml PET bottle from Silgan Plastics Corp. (Chesterfield, MO) topped with a custom-green self-foaming pump from Airspray International Inc. (Pompano Beach, FL).

In hopes that it finds cross-market appeal, Byckiewicz says that Sudz will also launch in sporting goods stores. Customers in various venues are likely to appreciate the look of Sudz. "Just look at the sports bottle and you can tell that it will stand out on the shelf," says Byckiewicz. "To our knowledge, there hasn't been a bottle like this in the personal care market before."

Magnetic Attraction

If customers find themselves drawn to the Magnetic Hair Care products by Giovanni Cosmetics (Los Angeles), it may be because of their packaging. Inspired by magnets, the silver bottles and red caps for the magnetite-containing shampoo and conditioner are meant to look compelling on natural-product shelves.

The tapered rectangular bottle is produced from a custom mold that was developed by Giovanni Cosmetics when the company redesigned the packaging for its Natural

Hair Care products in 2001. The Magnetic bottles, launched in August 2002, are silver versions of the white Natural bottles. "Our products used to be sold in a standard 8-oz bottle with a disk-style cap," says James Guidotti, new products director for Giovanni Cosmetics. "We felt that this bottle's shape was more modern and edgy. It's certainly helped to make our brand distinctive."

Molded by Precision Plastics (Fullerton, CA), the high-density polypropylene bottle is silver color-matched to the Magnetic line's other packages, which include a low-density polyethylene tube supplied by CCL Plastic Packaging (Los Angeles), a division of CCL Industries Inc., and a polypropylene jar supplied by Delta Plastics (Hot Springs, AR). "The difficulty was color-matching the same shade of silver for three different mediums of plastic," says Guidotti.

Custom-designed red polypropylene caps complete the bottles' magnetic appeal. "We studied science kits and noticed that magnets are traditionally silver with red tips," says Guidotti. The high-tech-looking bottles could spark a future trend in natural-product packaging.

Blossoming Bottles

Yves Rocher's Pur Désir shower-gel bottles, wrapped in colorful floral shrink-sleeves, truly blossom. "The homage to nature and flowers is immediately noticeable in the Pur Désir packaging, which transports the beholder directly into the heart of the flower," says Hollie Walker, product marketing manager for Yves Rocher North America Inc. (Exton, PA).

"The flower is the focus, [and the close-up floral graphics] draw your eye into the very center of its bud," says Walker. "The intimate portrayal of flowers is reminiscent of Georgia O' Keeffe's paintings, which depicted flowers as larger than life, for an up-close and personal view of their beauty."

A PVC shrink-sleeve serves as an ideal canvas on which to paint the floral motif. "The sleeve's matte satiny finish resembles that of a fine-art book," says Walker. Gravure-printed in eight colors by Sleeveco Inc. (Dawsonville, GA), the sleeves were applied by Kolmar Canada. The simple, 8-oz stock high-density polyethylene shower-gel bottles and tinted polypropylene caps were both distributed by Andler Packaging Inc. (Halethorpe, MD).

The flowers corresponding to each of the collection's fragrances--Lavande, Lilas, Lys, and Rose--appear throughout the line's packaging. "We wanted to convey our roots through nature and flowers by displaying them on every available space on the packaging," says Walker.

Radical Redesign

Veteran natural products companies also know that mundane packages aren't market-competitive. In addition to giving many of its own SKUs a packaging face-lift, Jason Natural Cosmetics (Culver City, CA), founded in 1959, overhauled the packaging for its most recent acquisition, Shaman Earthly Organics, which was founded in 1996.

Shaman's original bottles, which were brown with natural labels, bear little resemblance to the new vibrant cranberry and olive-green bottles, launched this March. "We felt that the younger customer was almost being ignored in the natural products marketplace," says Green. "With this in mind, we wanted to target the tweens, teens, and 20-year-olds with a trendy looking, high-performance line of certified organic cosmetics."

The high-impact cranberry polyethylene bottles, which are more easily recycled than polyvinyl chloride bottles, are eye-catching among other tamer-looking natural product bottles. "The cranberry color was custom designed for us and represents spirituality and passion," says Green. The olive-green caps and graphics, "like all things organic, represent growth, vitality, and abundance," she adds.

Shaman's trademark logo of a hieroglyphic-style medicine man also has a new place on the redesigned packages. The logo had been printed small and in black ink on the original bottles' back label, but now it takes center stage on the front of the new bottles. It is silk-screened in a textured finish that is vibrant purple and appears almost iridescent against the bottles' transparent cranberry plastic.

"A redesign is a tricky situation," says Green. "You want to update your look, but not in a way that will lose your existing customer. Since Shaman was a younger brand, we thought that the update and relaunch could only benefit the brand. The redesigned packages are much more trendy and stand out on the shelves much more than our competitors' [packages]. I doubt that you will see anything like the Shaman packages on the shelf."

Natural Evolution

The look of natural personal care packages is definitely evolving. Though custom-molded containers like those discussed in this story are sure to stand out in the natural products arena, stock bottles still remain popular. "I would say that most of our business in the natural personal care market is for stock molds," says Kate Harrington, marketing manager for Lerman Container Co. (Naugatuck, CT), a div. of Custom Bottle.

Natural product manufacturers looking for personal care bottles can find a range of stylish stock designs from suppliers like Lerman Container, which also does custom molding. Amber, cobalt-blue, and printed PET bottles are just some of the options that Lerman Container offers manufacturers. "Next to plain white plastic bottles on the natural product shelf, colorful bottles definitely stand out," says Harrington. "When customers are browsing a shelf, usually the first thing they notice is a package's color."

Companies should work to ensure that their bottles, whether custom or stock, keep pace with that of the competition. "As the natural personal care market grows, the industry becomes increasingly competitive," says Giovanni Cosmetics' Guidotti. "Changing your packaging increases your brand's marketing advantage."

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