Applications: Served Deli-Fresh
A unique departure from conventional spa products, The Body Deli products are packaged in containers more often seen in a grocery store than on beauty product shelves. The Body Deli products are so fresh, they're packed on ice.
By Jennifer Kwok, Managing Editor
It's rare to find beauty products formulated without any preservatives. It's even more rare to find such products shipped to retail stores in a cooler and displayed in a refrigerator. For The Body Deli, however, coolers and refrigerators are a means of preserving its line of facial and treatment products, which are made in-house, by hand, with fresh food-grade items and no synthetic preservatives. Previously, OKeeffe's used standard, white, screen-printed jars. The new low-profile jars were custom designed by O'Keeffe with several functional features. The jars were sourced through distributor and mold maker Container and Packaging Supply Inc. (Eagle, ID) and made by a supplier in China. The logo is by Bill Chiaravalle of Brand Navigation (Sisters, OR).
"Our concept is fresh food for the skin," says David Parker, who cofounded The Body Deli with Margaret Skarin in 2001. "Our philosophy is that the fresher a product is, the more potent itsnutrients and botanicals will be—and will deliver more results. Some of our products have no preservatives, and they're manufactured weekly. They're so fresh that they have to be refrigerated."
The products are shipped on ice to stores in insulated plastic foam coolers. Customers who purchase The Body Deli products leave stores with an insulated cooler, instead of a typical shopping bag. And customers who order products through the company's Web site get them express mailed and packed among gel-based freezer packs.
In retail stores, including spas and The Body Deli's locations in Palm Desert, CA, and on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands, the products are sold in refrigerators customized with The Body Deli logo. "Our products need to be sold a little differently than others," says Parker. "Other personal care products are designed to sit on shelves. Our products are more like the fresh produce you would buy from a grocery store. We refrigerate everything, even the products that don't require refrigeration, because we feel that it keeps everything fresher. We want to ensure that when a customer buys The Body Deli products, they know that the products are as close to being fresh as they were when they were first made." Parker adds that companies that sell The Body Deli products understand that the products shouldn't be kept for long and must be sold quickly.
Refrigerators help preserve the products' fresh food-grade ingredients, such as fresh fruits, organic yogurt, tofu, protein, olive oil, European sea salts, and soy. The packaging even lists a sell-by date before which the products' ingredients will expire.
For primary packaging, the line features stock PET bottles and jars; matte-silver aluminum bottles, aluminum sprayers, and lotion pumps; and plastic lotion pumps, sprayers, and dispensing caps. All were supplied by the Cosmetic Packaging Group, a division of O. Berk Co. (Union, NJ).
The aluminum look suited The Body Deli's goal of a streamlined look. "They liked the matte-silver look of everything," says Dean Lang, account executive for the Cosmetic Packaging Group. "Even the PET jar caps are metallized."
"We wanted to create a very modern, utilitarian look," says Parker. "We felt that the aluminum and our signature colors of silver, white, and green would appeal to both men and women."
The inside of the aluminum bottles are finished with a coating that prevents the aluminum from reacting with the product ingredients. "The lining prevents any bad reactions between the product and the aluminum, and it prolongs the shelf life of the product," says Lang. "Most products that contain water react to aluminum. We tested all of the packaging with the products to make sure that the metal wouldn't rust and contaminate the products."
Several of the primary packages even resemble containers found in a grocery deli. A facial scrub is housed in a Parmesan cheese shaker container, as used in the food industry. Several of the botanical body scrubs are sold in plastic deli jars, similar to those found at a salad bar, Parker says.
To make packaging more cost-efficient, the Cosmetic Packaging Group is in the process of developing solutions for the brand that don't affect the look of the packaging. "Going forward, we may eliminate using aluminum," says Lang. "We're trying to take PET, a clear resin that is 100% recyclable and compatible with most products, and spray it in a brushed-aluminum color. In other words, we would change the whole line to PET, but maintain the same aluminum color, color-matched to the original aluminum containers." Switching from aluminum would also decrease costs, as the price for metals has been increasing.
Parker says that he is always open to considering new packaging ideas for The Body Deli. "We always want to innovate new looks," he says. For now, customers can whet their palates with all that The Body Deli has to offer.