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Stock Packaging: Exercising Your Stock Options

All Dolled Up

Adding accessories is a good way to give stock packages a custom look. From cartons to bows, there's a lot of room to get innovative when it comes to secondary components. "You see great lines out there like Kiehl's and Philosophy that are able to make stock components look so great by just focusing on outer packaging or a great label," says Jennifer Maloy, creator of beauty brand Bella Il Fiore. "And outer packaging is often the first thing a customer sees anyway."

For Bella Il Fiore's December-launched Cinnamon Honey Lip Plumpers set, Maloy chose a purse-shaped carton to make stock lip-gloss vials look not so standard. "I had stock packaging and needed to make it look cute," she says. "I started out working in the gift industry, so I wanted my items to look 'gifty' and fun. And I saw this little purse-shaped carton with chocolates in it that a friend had brought me, and I thought it was just perfect."

Maloy first used the purse-shaped carton to package the brand's nail polish gift set. She had sketched out a design for the purse and sent it to a carton manufacturer, which created a die. Once she had the custom tool for the carton, it became a trademark look for the brand. Now, she can use the component to package many of her stock components. In addition, each set of set of stock items can be made to look different by simply changing the look of the carton. For the Lip Plumpers set, Maloy altered the nail polish carton by switching the graphics to a floral pattern.

When accessorizing stock, Maloy offers a word of caution: "You have to be careful and make sure your packaging doesn't end up looking too handmade. There's a fine line between having it look like it came from a craft fair and making it look professional enough to be sold in stores."

Lip Lingerie (Zurich, Switzerland), a new brand launched in fall 2004 by famed New York pop icon Dianne Brill, has successfully combined a precious and a high-end feeling. Brill drew on a number of inspirations to dress up her primary packages, which are primarily stock. The result is a line with many surprising secondary elements that will leave customers wanting more.

Lip Lingerie's packaging is made especially sweet by little touches taken from the confectionary industry. For instance, inside the brand's small lip-gloss cartons, jars are nestled in paper baking cups printed especially for Lip Lingerie. "I love to watch my end-customer's face as she opens up the package," says Brill. "She always 'oohs' and 'ahhs.'"

Drawing on this concept, Lip Lingerie created the packaging for its newest product, a holiday kit comprising six miniature lip-gloss pots, called Panties in a Bunch. The outer carton is reminiscent of a chocolate sampler box, complete with a sliding tray and the brand's signature paper baking cups.

Brill says that the inspiration for the baking cups came from a chocolate box she saw in Austria. "I came across the most perfect set of tiny chocolates that were arranged like a precious treasure box," she says. "So I found a company that made those types of chocolate wrappers." The supplier is located in Germany, where the rest of the line's packaging components come from. The lip pots are hand-packaged in the cartons in Europe.

The confectionary industry isn't the only market that inspired the line. For Lip Lingerie's lip liner, Brill chose a metal cigar tube from a cigar packaging manufacturer. It's is a surprisingly masculine look for such a feminine line, but it's one that Brill says works. "Lip Lingerie is about so many feminine archetypes--lingerie, feathers, pink," she says. "I wanted to take a masculine symbol and reinvent it, so we made the cigar tube pink."

All frills aside, the primary components for Lip Lingerie's line are still classical. Brill, who in addition to being a model, an actress, an author, and television commentator, has also designed suits for rock stars such as Duran Duran, the Rolling Stones, and Prince, says that her design experience has taught her that there is value in a basic shape. "Back in the days when I was designing clothes, I found that if I took a suit whose shape was very far out and used a crazy fabric on top of that, it just didn't work," she says. "But if I took a classic structure and dressed it up with wild fabric, then it was very successful. So for my line, I decided to use classic, easy-to-understand packages, and make them into something a customer has to have using details. And I need that level of classic to really get beyond kitsch, to have some level of seriousness in all the playfulness."

Finding ways to make stock packages unique is vital, says Brill. "Just because you're buying stock doesn't mean that you don't have to invest in the packaging," she says. "These stock components weren't necessarily beautiful when they came to me, but we've found ways of making them beautiful. The end customer is exposed to so many new packages from exciting niche brands that a sleek black compact with gold foil décor won't necessarily move her anymore. You have to really consider all of the different layers that a customer sees when she is shopping, from the outer packaging, to the inner packages, and finally, to the product itself."

Even the smallest detail on a primary component can make a difference. Just ask Peek Cosmetics (Richmond, KY). For the brand, all it took was adding a polka-dot bow to the stock bottles for its nail polish and Glamour Dust products to make them fun.

The bottles are stock components from supplier Arrowpak Inc. (Richmond Hill, NY). The ribbons, which are applied by hand, have an elastic loop that slips over the cap. "The polka-dot bows give the bottles the flirty image our brand is known for," says Paige Heinrich, president of Peek.

Highly Decorated

Of course, brands also rely on decorating primary components to differentiate their stock packages. The best-case scenario is if a never-been-seen-before decorating technique can be found. Suppliers often play a key role in advancing such new methods.

This year, Inca America Corp. (New York City), a specialist in metals and plastics, developed a new way of decorating one of its stock aluminum jars for Luscious Cosmetics. Inca calls the process sublimation. It's a method of transferring an image to a container'ssurface, similar to the way graphics are screened onto a t-shirt. Luscious took full advantage of the new process to add photos of flowers to jars of cream blush.

"Sublimation allows you to cover the surface of an aluminum component with graphics that have the characteristics and clarity of digital images," explains Erin Dutton, sales manager for Inca America. "The boundaries for decoration are really limitless. You can add textured looks such as of stone, fabric, rare skins, or you can customize a piece with scenic pictures. This decorating technique not only adds aesthetic value, it acts as a strong protective coating that is resistant to scratching and surface damage while keeping the touch and feel of aluminum."

Metal isn't the only material getting a brand-new look. Lerman Container Co. (Naugatuck, CT) recently adopted a new spray finish for plastic. The process was innovated for Lerman's standard 250-ml Cosmo Round bottle for Rusk's new Thickr hair-care line. Without the spray finish, the bottle is a naturally colored high-density polyethylene. With the finish, the bottle's bottom half is sprayed custom blue or pink, while the top half graduates to the bottle's natural shade.

"We didn't spray-frost the entire bottle," says Tom Piskura, Lerman's vice president of business development, who came up with the idea for the decorating technique. "We spray-frosted it so that the color gradually ran out, so that part of the standard, natural bottle showed through."

The idea for the process was born as an alternative to an effect Rusk had initially asked Lerman to create. "This project came about because Rusk's marketing team wanted Lerman to mold a plastic bottle in two separate colors, which wasn't possible," says Piskura. "So I came up with the idea of spray- frosting the bottle in one shade, faded out, so that the bottle would have the effect of having two different colors."

Piskura says that though he has seen this type of graduated spray done on glass bottles before, he hasn't seen it applied to a plastic container for the beauty industry. The process took some work on Lerman's part to develop. "The difficult part was getting the technique to achieve steady results," says Piskura. "We had to make sure that when the bottles went past the spray nozzle on the line, we would get a fairly consistent spray so that the gradual fadeout of color on each bottle would look the same." Once the spray was applied, Lerman screen-printed logos and graphics in two colors, and did spot labeling.

Piskura says that marketers are increasingly relying on suppliers for innovation. "I think that right now a lot of companies are trying to keep their costs down and develop packages based on the stock that's out there," he says. "Most people would like to see something that's unique, but they don't want to spend the money for it. So oftentimes, it's up to the manufacturer to develop new shapes and decorating techniques. A lot of suppliers like us are continually beating our heads trying to think of a new technique or shape to offer."

Now that this new technique has been developed by Lerman, the company can now offer it as an option to other marketers for other of its stock components. "It just goes to show how different you can make a stock package look simply by tinting it with different color pigments," says Piskura. "Colors can really add to a package's uniqueness."

Cospack America Corp. (Edison, NJ) recently used color to give one stock PETG jar two very different looks. The 1.7-oz square jar was chosen by H2O Plus for its Balancing Marine Night Cream and its Night Oasis Oxygenating Rejuvenator. Though the jars for both feature the color blue, the tint was applied differently on the two jars, which, without any added colorant, are clear colored.

For the night-cream jar, Cospack mixed blue dye with the natural-colored PETG during injection molding. The result is a deep-blue, solid-colored jar. For the Rejuvenator product, Cospack sprayed an aqua coating on the bottom of the clear jar. "The blue spray shows through the bottom of the jar, making the walls of the jar appear blue," says David Hou, director of marketing for Cospack America.

"These two jars just show how you can use a single stock component and, by decorating, make them look unique," says Hou. "When you put the two jars next to each other, they look like two completely different packages."

One Supplier, One Look

One big benefit of using components from one supplier's stock collection is that the packages will look cohesive in a product line. For H2O Plus, using the same basic jar with the same silver-colored Cospack lids helped the two jars to match. Most suppliers design their stock collections with a look that's individual but also versatile. This ensures that many brands will be able to use the line, whether they are mass or prestige.

The new packages for By Terry are a good example. The ultraluxurious skin-care and cosmetic brand recently selected standard packaging from DieterBakicEnterprises' (Munich) new Futura standard line for its Gelée Hydra-Pureté, Serum Curseur Liftant, and Masque Extrapur products.

Because By Terry is a luxury brand, some might be surprised by the choice of standard components. However, the clean, tapered lines of the Futura containers perfectly matched the simple yet stylish look that By Terry sought. "For me, [the choice of standard components] wasn't based on money," says Terry de Gunzburg, founder and CEO of By Terry. "My decision was based on finding what I liked. I wanted packages with pure curves and a sense of simplicity. The elegance of the Futura line was consistent with our brand's status."

To make the packages feel branded, the containers were colored a deep purple and custom pearlescent green caps were added. "By mixing the containers with different caps and customizing the colors and printing, I was able to design the packaging so that it became totally a By Terry creation," says de Gunzburg.

DieterBakic's portfolio of readily available standard packages also made it easier for de Gunzburg to find what she was looking for. "I had a precise idea of what I wanted," says de Gunzburg. "I met with [DieterBakicEnterprises founder] Dieter Bakic and, in the company's catalog, I found the perfect product shapes that fit my creative objective."

DieterBakic has always focused on creating standard components that can be mixed and matched to form a complete product line. In addition, the company's designers are continually adding new components to existing standard lines to give clients more packaging options.

In October, supplier Arminak & Associates (Duarte, CA) introduced a new stock line with a unique look. The line consists of diamond-shaped PET bottles in a variety of sizes.

Arminak's president Helga Arminak says that the distinctiveness of the containers' shapes is what made the company decide to add the line. "A lot of stock containers on the market are so boring and uniform," says Arminak. "It's very rare that you find something that's different and that really stands out on the store shelf. These containers have added value because they're not cylindrical, and yet they're not square. The packaging looks higher end, so brands could choose to charge more for their products. Also, it's a whole family of containers for people to choose from."

To customize the packages, Arminak & Associates offers silk-screening, labeling, and a host of pumps, sprayers, and caps. "The options are basically endless," says Arminak.

Predicting Packaging Trends

For suppliers, anticipating what stock designs will fit in with future packaging trends can be tricky. "Standard-packaging designers have to be ahead of the times when making decisions about what marketers will want," says Bakic. "Companies choose standard and stock because the tooling and technology have already been developed and they don't want to lose any time in getting their products to market. We can really help them by keeping up with design and technical trends. We design our stock components ahead of time, so you could even view us as driving package trends."

Bakic also says that he sees more and more suppliers designing complete standard lines. And there is always the pressure for suppliers to be as innovative as possible. "As a supplier, there are two ways that you can protect your company," he says. "First, make sure all your designs are patented. Second, you have to stay ahead of the market by always coming out with new things."

Topline Products Company, Inc. (Wayne, NJ) has done both with its LuxePot line. The line comprises four ABS pots with clear SAN windows, suited for eye shadow, blush, and foundation. What makes the pots unique is that they feature an empty chamber on the bottom designed to hold applicators such as brushes. To access the compartment, customers simply lift a hinged lid, which conveniently has a mirror attached.

To protect the design, Topline had the pots patented. "The functionality of the chamber improves the compact's performance, and we were able to get a utility patent for the line," says Charles Chang, president of Topline Products.

According to Chang, utility patents are more valuable than design patents. Whereas a utility patent protects the functional features of a package, a design patent merely covers one specific shape or package style. This means that if one company changed the contours of another supplier's package slightly, it wouldn't necessarily be infringing on the supplier's design patent.

Though the patent was granted a few years ago, the design is still relatively new to the industry. "After the patent is granted, it takes us a couple of years to finalize the aesthetic design and to build the production tools. We built 16 production molds to launch this product for eyeshadow, blush, and pressed powder," says Chang. He says that a major manufacturer will be launching a product with this design in the future.

Taking a Look Outside

Marketers don't always have to wait for suppliers to do the innovating. Sometimes, creativity means thinking outside of the box and looking at what's available outside of the cosmetic packaging industry. For personal care brand Aqua Dessa (Oakland, CA), doing so has proved especially fruitful.

Launched in September, Aqua Dessa's products feature all-natural, organic ingredients, many of which are the same ingredients used by the gourmet food industry. To match this food theme, Aqua Dessa chose stock packages, many of which were found in the food packaging industry.

"We researched both the cosmetic and food industries," says Rick Kostick, Aqua Dessa's CEO. "We exhausted all of our options. There are a lot of packages to be found in other industries, and the food industry, for one, is huge."

Among the notable packages in Aqua Dessa's line are a jam jar for a Strawberry Jam Facial Scrub, a wine bottle for bath products, and a salad dressing bottle. The company also paid attention to little details. For instance, because using a cork on the wine bottle would have been impractical for customers in the shower, the company instead decided to use a white screw cap, but also made sure to hand-wrap the bottle's neck in foil to maintain the wine bottle theme.

Kostick names California Glass Co. (Oakland, CA) as one of Aqua Dessa's main packaging suppliers. Others include O. Berk (Union, NJ), SKS Bottle & Packaging Inc. (Mechanicville, NY), and Freud Container (Alsip, IL). "We basically found all of our suppliers on the Internet," Kostick says. "If you go on-line, you can really find anything you want. Another place to find good ideas is at packaging shows, where we've seen some really great designs. It took us some time doing the research on our own. It was also a bit challenging to get samples from suppliers, because we're a new company and weren't a big account for them. That was probably the main challenge for us."

Kostick says that for the short term at least, Aqua Dessa will continue to use stock packaging as opposed to custom tooling. "We can launch a lot more products using stock packaging than we could if we used custom molds," he says.

Fine Tuning

Even once a company has found the perfect stock container to match its vision, it can take some tinkering to get the kinks worked out. For DuWop (Los Angeles), a lot of creativity was needed to figure out the best way to work with a stock component for its Anti-Venom lipstick, which launched in October 2004.

"When we first started DuWop five years ago, our goal was to be as innovative as possible with the packaging and use materials that were not always used in the cosmetics industry," says Cristina Bartolucci, president of DuWop, who founded the company along with CEO Laura DeLuisa. "We had all these lofty aspirations, but once we actually started working with packaging, we realized how difficult it can be and why people end up using stock packaging. When you don't and a package hasn't been tried and tested before, a lot of things can go wrong during production. And overcoming glitches is especially hard for a start-up company."

In the case of Anti-Venom, DuWop found what it considered to be the perfect lipstick container from the stock collection of distributor Roberts Cosmetic Containers (Chatsworth, CA). "We always try to find stock packages that haven't been used yet," says Bartolucci. The component itself is an oval-shaped lipstick container that features a well on the base with clear, decorative windows. DuWop decided that instead of simply leaving the windows clear or tinting them, it would fill the well with the actual lipstick so that customers could see the product's shade and texture.

One big setback DuWop encountered was that the emollients in the Anti-Venom lipstick reacted with the petroleum-based acrylic material the wells' windows were made of. "The acrylic is a petroleum-based product and it develops a layer of skin," Bartolucci explains. "So when you add a product with a lot of oil in it, it's sort of an oil-meets-oil reaction, and the skin lifts up so you end up getting what looks like a bubble instead of a nice, clean fill."

To solve this problem, DuWop had to formulate a wax-based version of the lipstick product to fill the well that was the same shade as the lipstick but that wouldn't react negatively with the petroleum. "For the wax product, we took out the essential oils and the expensive ingredients that are in the actual lipstick," says Bartolucci. "However, when you take the essential oils (which are yellow in color) out of the formula, it changes the product's color. So then we had to retweak the color so that it would match the lipstick."

Another issue was that DuWop was told that in order to fill the well with wax product, the lipstick container would have to be delivered to a filling company detached in two parts. "The problem we found was that when the container is sent in two pieces, the parts don't always click together the way they should," says Bartolucci. "We ended up having to adapt the container ourselves so that the two pieces could remain connected and still be filled."

In total, refining the package took about eight months. "We've kind of come to this place where we realize that you have to balance your pure aesthetic aspirations with the reality of what's possible for packaging," says Bartolucci. "And there can be a lot of creativity involved in tweaking stock packaging so that it no longer looks stock."

Inoac Packaging Group (Bardstown, KY) encourages its customers to modify its stock packages. The supplier, which specializes in injection-stretch blow molding, lets companies adapt its stock preforms to the shape they desire.

"Once we injection mold a preform, the preform is then heated, stretched, and blow molded into the shape of a package," explains Paul Horgan, corporate vice president of Inoac. "All we have to do is to build a custom blow cavity to achieve a different shape. So instead of starting from scratch with a completely custom mold, customers only have to pay for the custom blow cavity to get a unique custom shape."

Horgan says that this option is a much more cost-efficient way to obtain a custom-shaped package. "A lot of our customers choose this option because of the cost savings in tooling," he says. "And we have a vast library of stock preforms, to suit the volume and neck finish a company is looking for."

Putting Stock to the Test

If companies can overcome obstacles like negative compatibility that can arise during the development process, the results can be well worth it. Although refining a stock piece can take time, it can still be a time-saver in the end. "If a company can use tooling that we already have in existence, it's something I would encourage them toward because not only is it much cheaper to use, but it can also be a lot faster to get to market," says Cospack's Hou. "It takes time to develop custom tooling. And sometimes a company may not realize that it can take even longer to do the testing."

Brands can never assume that a stock component has already been tested and thus will suit any product. Even with stock packaging, the responsibility of compatibility testing still falls on marketers. "We rely on our clients to do their own compatibility tests because formulas vary so much company by company that it's hard for a supplier to say, 'Yes, this will definitely work with your formula,'" says Hou.

It can be a large burden for a small company to carry. "The responsibility really falls on the company," says Bartolucci. "The suppliers that sell you the components are responsible to a certain extent, but you can't hold them completely liable. If you order packaging and it doesn't jive with what you're putting in it, it's your responsibility. For a small company that doesn't have financial padding—that rolls over all of its profits into R&D for its next product—when things go wrong, it's tough luck for that company. It can be very, very difficult."

Good stock suppliers will work with companies to solve problems. "We help them find other packaging options," says Hou. "Brands understand their ingredients; we understand our packaging. Sometimes all it takes is a little communication on both sides to find something that a brand can use and be happy about using."

Bartolucci echoes this sentiment. "It's important to have good partners," she says. "We work with Roberts Cosmetic Containers for a lot of our packaging, and Roberts is a company that takes so much pride in the products they sell. If there's an issue, they try to help us and work the problems out with us—they don't just leave us hanging. So if we're trying to innovate, we know that we're not going to be completely abandoned if something goes wrong. They're terrific and we couldn't do it without them."

If companies believe that a stock component will truly help set their brand apart, they will have the desire to work with it until it is perfect for use. "The other thing that comforts us is knowing that all companies, big and small, go through making adjustments," says Bartolucci.

Think Before You Tool

Before looking to custom components, companies are well advised to consider what they can do to make stock packages look custom. "Both small and big companies can have innovative packaging if they just have the ideas," says Bartolucci. "It doesn't need to cost a fortune. And sometimes, when there's a fortune to be spent, you can lose touch with some of the creativity that comes from being resourceful."

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