Latest Launches: Packaging Blossoms This Spring
Several products have recently debuted with one thing in common: colorful, innovative packaging.
Fresh Look
Michael O'Rourke's Fresh Concepts hair-care products are ripe for purchase. Part of O'Rourke's Sexy Hair Concepts (Chatsworth, CA) brand, the products are charged with botanical ingredients, antioxidants, and fruity scents. And the packaging looks just as delicious.
"The
packaging inspiration came from the health food industry,
where products speak directly to the consumer through brightly
colored packages and images of fresh fruits," says Donna
Federici, Sexy Hair Concepts' senior vice president of sales
and marketing.
Bright labels take center stage on the plastic bottles. Designed by the company's marketing and creative team, the labels feature close-up photos of fruits.
To make the fruit theme interactive, transparent, fruit-scented scratch-and-sniff stickers were applied to the labels. "The scratch-and-sniff labels engage the customer to come over and see what the product is," says Federici. "The images, names, and fragrances make this line very consumer friendly. It's easy to understand what the product does for your hair. The packaging sells itself off the shelves."
The labels were supplied by Pac-West Label (Compton, CA), a division of Impaxx (Lakewood, CA).
The containers are just as striking as the labels. The line's white, high-density polyethylene bottle loosely resembles a glue bottle. Design Worx Packaging (Lake Forest, CA) supplied the bottles in sizes of 200, 300, and 400 ml, as well as the colorful push-pull closures. "These bottles were specially developed for Sexy Hair Concepts," says Federici. "They have a wide front to give the images a lot of billboard space so that you can see them from far away."
The colorful aerosol cans were supplied by CCL Container (Hermitage, PA) and decorated using litho printing.
Although the products launched in September 2003, Sexy Hair Concepts is promoting the line heavily this spring. "Spring is the time to renew and refresh your mind, body, and soul," says Federici. "The fresh fruit theme works hand in hand with this concept."
Baby Bottles
Hawaiian Tropic's newest sunscreen packages may have customers doing a double take. Two of the brand's popular products, Baby Faces 60+ SPF and Ozone Sport 60+ SPF, have launched in a unique 8-oz bottle that comes with another 2-oz travel-sized bottle connected.
The
concept of packaging the retail- and travel-sized containers
together was inspired by convenience. "Research has shown
that both the sport and baby segments beg for portability
and convenience," says Lori Davis, product manager for
Hawaiian Tropic (Daytona Beach, FL). "This innovative
package meets both these needs. Sports consumers can throw
the 2-oz bottle in their sports bags and take it to all of
their sporting events while leaving the larger 8-oz size at
home. The same idea goes for the Baby Faces 60+ SPF. Mothers,
who have busy lifestyles, can take the 2-oz bottle and throw
it in their diaper bags and leave the larger size at home
for application before they leave the house."
Hawaiian Tropic owns the package's custom design. The high-density polyethylene bottles were blow-molded by Empire/Emco Inc. (Amherst, NY). Empire/ Emco also supplied the 8-oz bottle's polypropylene closure, while the 2-oz bottle's polypropylene closure is from Zeller Plastik (Libertyville, IL). Decorating was done out of house. Hawaiian Tropic filled the packages and attached the bottles by hand.
"This package proposed many design challenges," says Davis. "Our goal was to develop a package that separated into two parts but that also stayed together when attached, so that they wouldn't separate if they were knocked off a shelf or handled by customers. This was achieved by tweaking the tool until we achieved the tightest fit the package would allow."
Another challenge was making sure that customers would still associate the Convenience Packs with the products' original packaging. "The aesthetics had to be in line with our current line," says Davis. "This was met by incorporating the sunburst rays on the bottle and keeping the lines of the overall package consistent with the original packaging."
The Convenience Packs have started launching in stores and should be in most stores by March, when the sunscreen marketing season starts.
Café Comfort
Jaqua (Santa Barbara, CA) invites customers to indulge in its new Café Collection. The spa product line consists of tasty treats like White Chocolate Milk Bath and Cinnamon Vanilla Bath Sugar. And two of the line's products, the Marshmallow Cocoa Body Whip and Night Cap Body Treatment Kit, are housed in vintage-inspired hot-cocoa tins.
The idea for the tins was born when one of the Jaqua sisters, Sara, who is a huge fan of hot chocolate, brought home some hot-cocoa tins as trip souvenirs. Sara and the other Jaqua sisters, Jennifer and Allison, then came up with the idea of using cocoa tins to package their new line.
The
sisters considered the look of various tin designs and decided
that they needed a tin that was larger than what they were
finding. So they decided to create their own custom tin molds.
"Creatively, one of the biggest challenges was figuring
out that we needed to create our own mold," says Jennifer,
Jaqua's CEO. "By super-sizing the tins, we had to make
sure that they were still going to look like cocoa tins and
translate that concept to the customer." The tins were
imported from an overseas supplier. "We sent them the
tins whose look we liked and asked the company to recreate
them in the dimensions we wanted," says Jennifer.
The tins' screen-printed graphics were inspired by the Jaqua sisters and designed by the brand's graphic designer, Joelle Hannah. The background design is meant to look like old-fashioned wallpaper. "We wanted it to evoke images of people drinking cocoa in their grandmothers' kitchens," says Jennifer. The image repeated in the background pattern is a steaming cup of cocoa.
To further emulate the feeling of an authentic cocoa tin, a thin-strip paper label was applied to the top of the tins. Jennifer says that tins for cocoa and imported tea often incorporate this type of paper strip. To open the container, customers must first tear the strip, making it feel like they are actually opening a cocoa tin. "We feel that even the act of opening our packages should be a treat for customers," says Jennifer.
Other packaging suppliers for the Café Collection include Five Oaks Packaging (San Dimas, CA) for the Sweet Escape Bath Set window carton and the clear, triangular plastic carton for the Warming Lip Glosses, which warm lips when applied. The clear carton was designed with inserts at the top and bottom to secure the lip gloss containers, suspending them to make them appear as if they are floating. The line's jars and bottles came from TricorBraun (St. Louis). The clear 4-oz stock bottles with silver metallic caps were inspired by old-fashioned spice containers, says Jennifer.
The Café Collection complements the brand's pastry-inspired Bakery Collection kits, which launched last spring in pink cake boxes (see CPC Packaging, March/April 2003 issue, page 96.) "We want all of our product lines to be able to sit next to each other on a shelf and share a story," says Jennifer. A sweet idea, indeed.
Earth-Friendly Tube
Postconsumer recyclate (PCR) is the new buzzword for Burt's Bees (Durham, NC). The personal care brand is currently switching all of its plastic laminate and aluminum tubes to environmentally friendly PCR versions.
Burt's Bees' tube supplier is CCL Plastic Packaging (Los Angeles), which was one of the first North American tube suppliers to successfully commercialize PCR tube extrusion for a project for Aveda. The supplier is able to manufacture pliable, high-percentage PCR tubes, which is a feat because PCR resins are often rigid. CCL Plastic Packaging is also one of a handful of U.S. closure manufacturers to offer PCR closures, like those seen on Burt's Bees' tubes.
"Burt's Bees saw in PCR an opportunity to offer its customers a more user-friendly package, which has such environmental benefits as using existing resources instead of allowing them to go to the landfill," says Donna Hollenbach, Burt's Bees' director of new projects.
"When
we started using tubes for many of our products, PCR tubes
were not available," says Hollenbach. "Because of
this, we used the next-best environmentally friendly material,
aluminum. But aluminum tubes can easily crack and, therefore,
leak. The rigidity of aluminum also made dispensing all of
the tube's product more difficult."
CCL Plastic Packaging and Burt's Bees' engineering, manufacturing, and product development teams worked closely together to develop the entire new tube line. "I had to admit I was apprehensive about making the switch to PCR, but only because it was such a new and unexplored technology," says Hollenbach. "It was a very long process, but it went smoothly and was certainly worth the time and money invested. Now that we have developed the first two tubes, we anticipate it will be a much easier transition for the remaining items." Estimated completion of the transition is the end of the first quarter of 2004.
CCL Plastic Packaging will supply all of Burt's Bees' PCR tubes and closures, for products including the 1.75-oz tube for Doctor Burt's 100% Natural Children's Toothpaste (pictured). Tubes with diameters of 3/4, 1, 1 3/16, and 1 3/8 in., will be created for Burt's Bees' toothpaste, baby diaper ointment, cleansers, crèmes, and other personal care products. Each tube will be capped with a PCR closure and sealed with a foil heat-induction seal. The tubes will be decorated to Burt's Bees' specifications.