Designer Interview: Sean Brosmith & Scott Oshry
Sean Brosmith and Scott Oshry By Jennifer Kwok, Managing Editor
Sean Brosmith and Scott Oshry are the designers and two of the founders of Zorbit Resources Inc. (Los Angeles). Their clients include Estée Lauder and Victoria’s Secret Beauty. It’s a pretty good track record for two designers whose company is only two years old in the cosmetics industry and who started off by designing CD storage cases.
Brosmith and Oshry met while attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. In 1990, they became the first to market the now-ubiquitous zippered CD storage cases. To sell the products, they started a media storage company called Roundhouse, which they ran for 10 years before selling the company to Targus, a laptop case maker.
Once they sold their business to Targus, Brosmith and Oshry were, by contract, prohibited from selling any designs that competed with those of Targus. “We already had partnerships with factories in Asia that had been manufacturing our products,” says Brosmith. “So we were looking to do business in another industry in which we could make use of our factories and design abilities. We had some friends in the health and beauty business who ultimately became our partners, and that’s how we got into the cosmetics and personal care industry.” In 2003, Brosmith and Oshry, along with their partners, founded Zorbit Resources. They started designing primary, secondary, and promotional packaging for beauty brands.
Brosmith and Oshry have had a lot of success with cut-and-sew items like leatherette-covered compacts. Oshry says that Stila Cosmetics was the first customer to use their cut-and-sew designs for compacts. “At first, Stila came to us with the idea that, instead of wrapping their compact in their traditional paper, wrapping it in a material more like cloth or leather,” says Oshry. “So we said, ‘Let’s not just figure out how to rewrap your existing component; let’s find out what your ultimate design goal is.’ After a discussion, we found out that they thought Marc Jacobs’s leather purses were hip. So we said, ‘Then let’s design something that actually looks like a woman’s handbag, instead of taking this paper compact and trying to wrap it in some kind of faux fabric.’”
Zorbit is known for doing compacts with unique materials. Setup boxes are another component Brosmith and Oshry have brought up-to-date with magnetic closures. Both are also becoming more involved with designing injection-molded, primary packaging such as those for the new John Varvatos skincare line.
Both Brosmith and Oshry also teach graduating students at their alma mater about how product designers must work hand-in-hand withdesign, pricing, and manufacturing experts. “For us, design is much more than an aesthetic pursuit,” says Brosmith. “It’s the pursuit of materials and manufacturing and getting things made for the right price so they can actually make it to the shelf and be sold.”
Oshry says, “We aren’t fine artists; we are product designers. Don’t get me wrong—we have designed things in our portfolio that are purely fine art. But if you don’t take price or manufacturability into consideration, you’re not a product designer. When you take into account market parameters and can still design something fantastic, to us, that’s when design becomes the most exciting.”.