Inside Design: Everything Eyebrows
ModelCo’s custom-tooled Eyebrowz kit features a sliding drawer that contains four brow pencils.
Brands and suppliers are providing customers with everything they need to create the perfect brow.
By Jennifer Kwok, Managing EditorEyebrow-grooming products no longer comprise just a tweezer and an eyebrow pencil. Today, products span everything from stencils that help shape the perfect brow to fiber-containing gels and even products designed to help eyebrow hairs grow.
Although types of brow products vary, brand owners and brow experts all agree that an ideal eyebrow kit should contain all of the tools necessary for customers to groom their brows. As a result, brands have found different ways to provide many items in one package. Some rely on compacts. Others choose pens. And some have created truly unique, custom-designed solutions.
The Convenience of a Compact
Compacts are very common for brow products. “Kits and palettes are becoming more popular in general because they are so convenient,” says Lauren Hilton, public relations manager for cosmetics brand DuWop. “People have less time to sort through different beauty products in order to find the ones they want to use. They want one convenient kit. It’s a time-saver.”
Benefit’s Brow Zings kit was the first brow compact on the market, according to the company.
Benefit Cosmetics’ longtime brow aesthetician, Arianne Damboise, says that Benefit’s Brow Zings was the first brow compact on the market when it launched in the early 1990s. At first, Brow Zings contained just brow wax and a small, angled brush. Later, small-sized tweezers, a small powder brush, and brow powder were added.
The Brow Zings compact was redesigned to contain the additional products. The small-sized tweezers and brushes all fit in the small black compact. “Brow Zings is great because you have everything all inclusive in this little kit, and you can carry it around wherever you go,” says Damboise. “We made sure that the mirror on the compact was a good size so you can see what you’re doing,” she adds. The kit continues to be one of Benefit’s best-selling items.
Other companies have followed suit to ensure their compacts can hold all the brow-grooming products a customer needs. For some brands, that means creating a custom-tooled compact.
For its Eyebrowz kit, launched last year, ModelCo custom designed a compact that holds wax, powder, two angled-head brushes, a grooming wand, and a small pair of tweezers. In addition, a sliding drawer contains four brow stencils.
“We took into consideration all the tools you need to create the perfect arch and put them into a user-friendly, portable compact that makes it easy for consumers to have groomed brows anywhere, anytime,” says Shelley Barrett, founder and CEO of ModelCo. “You don’t have to go searching in the bottom of your makeup bag for your tweezers.”
Browwow, DuWop’s first-ever eyebrow kit, is packaged in a stock compact. It contains brow powder, pomade, a highlighter, and a brush.
Oftentimes, stock compacts that were originally meant for lip gloss and eye shadow are also perfect for eyebrow products. DuWop’s first-ever eyebrow kit, Browwow, launched this fall in a stock compact. The compact is filled with brow powder, tinted grooming pomade, a highlighter, and a brush. The bronze compact, which also features a mirror, was supplied by Roberts Cosmetic Containers (Chatsworth, CA).
Ramy Beauty Therapy’s Miracle Brow stock compact was originally meant for lip gloss.
For Ramy Beauty Therapy’s Miracle Brow kit, founder Ramy Gafni selected a stock compact from World Wide Packaging (Florham Park, NJ). Originally designed for lip color products, the compact contains two shades of Ramy’s tinted brow gel, as well as a double-ended brush.
“It was challenging to find a component that could hold two hot-pours, a brush, and a mirror, while still looking sleek and chic,” says Gafni.
Suppliers often recommend which of their stock compacts would be good for eyebrow kits. Sometimes, brands make the suggestions.
Tarte Cosmetics and HCT Packaging (Bridgewater, NJ) worked together to create the packaging for Tarte’s Brow Know-How Eyebrow Kit, which launched earlier this year. The rectangular compact features a pan that slides out from underneath and contains brow powder and brow wax. In the main chamber, four compartments hold a full-sized tweezer, a brow pencil, brow gel in a bottle, and an angled eyebrow brush. Three brow stencils are also included.
Nejla Safyari, senior project manager for HCT, says, “The compact that Tarte chose wasn’t specifically meant to be used as a brow kit. The three long wells, which are used to hold the grooming tools, were originally meant for eyeshadow, but Tarte creatively used them to hold the utensils.” HCT Packaging also supplied the tweezers and brushes.
Safyari says that many companies modify compacts for eyebrow kits. “Often, they are looking for a very versatile package, something that’s very sleek, compact, and that can hold a lot of different items,” she says.
Alcan Packaging Beauty’s Slim stock compact includes a bottle that fits in the compact’s hinge area.
Alcan Packaging Beauty (New York City) offers several such packages in its stock line. The supplier’s Slim compact is suitable for eye, lip, face, and eyebrow products. The eyebrow version includes full-sized tweezers, gel in a mascara bottle, a long mirror, an applicator, and two product wells for hot-pour or powder products. The mascara bottle fits in the hinge of the compact.
Other options for eyebrow products include a compact that holds two eyebrow-product colors and two applicators. Individual grooming products such as tweezers, bottles, brushes, and stencils are also available.
Caroline Defrance, operational marketing manager for Alcan Packaging Beauty, says that demand for eyebrow kit packaging has increased over the past year. “This is a very active business,” she says. “Because the interest in eyebrow shaping and eyebrow makeup started earlier in the United States than in Europe, demand today is greater here.”
Defrance says that more and more, brands are looking to create complete eyebrow kits. “Most brands try to create a kit that offers everything from A to Z,” she says.
Anastasia’s Extensive Kits
Celebrity eyebrow groomer Anastasia Soare has found numerous ways to package the many products included in her extensive Anastasia brow-grooming kits. “An eyebrow kit has to give you the right tools for a perfect eyebrow shape,” says Soare. “A good brow kit will contain stencils for a precise shape, great tweezers, brow gel, and, naturally, brow powder. The right brow kit should also be versatile and easy to tote around.”
Soare’s many kits include the deluxe, seven-piece All About Brows kit, which is contained in a black patent-leather carrying case. It includes stencils, brushes, pencils, brow gel, after-tweeze cream, a silver compact with brow powder, and a highlighting pencil. There is also a six-piece All About Brows kit, created exclusively for Sephora and housed in a pink travel bag. The five-piece kit is also contained in a pink bag. Finally, the brand’s Brow Express Palette is packaged in a book-style compact.
Anastasia Soare launched several holiday brow kits, including this one called Brows of Jolly.
Soare is launching two limited-edition brow kits this holiday. The Incredible Browzer comes in a plastic box that houses brow-grooming and other products. The box features a circus theme, and the kit comes with a CD. The Brows of Jolly kit comes in a red pouch adorned with a festive ribbon.
The “Swiss Army Knife”
Estée Lauder’s small-sized Artist’s Brow package is referred to as the Swiss Army Knife because of the many brow products it contains.
Instead of using a compact to house its brow kit, The Estée Lauder Companies created a completely custom, extremely portable package. The brand’s award-winning Artist’s Brow package launched last year.
The package is approximately the shape and size of a mascara bottle and has caps on each end. One end of the package contains a compartment, out of which slides a double-ended pencil. This pencil is covered with a cap. Compartments on each side of the cap house a mini-sized tweezer and a brush. The other end of the package contains gel and a mascara brush.
French supplier Cosmogen molded the package in Asia. Herve Bouix, Estée Lauder’s corporate vice president of packaging, new ventures and special projects, orchestrated the package’s design. He says that there weren’t many production difficulties. “Everything went very well, and our first shot at molding the package was already quite good. The difficulty was incorporating the tweezer and the mini-sized brush in the cap, while leaving enough room for the pencil. We call this the Swiss Army Knife because everything is in one package.”
The Mighty Pen
Pens are also used to house eyebrow products, especially gels. A niche product trend is gels containing fibers that add volume to eyebrows. Pens are a common choice for this type of product.
Fiber-containing gels such as Talika’s are a new trend.
Cosmetics brand Talika is best known for its Lipocils products that help eyelash and eyebrow hairs grow. While Talika customers are waiting for their eyebrows to grow, they can use Eyebrow Extender, a transparent gel formula filled with lightweight nylon fibers that make eyebrows look fuller.
For its Eyebrow Extender product, Talika custom designed a brush with a special
applicator that dispenses the product’s fiber-containing gel.
A translucent pen was custom designed for Eyebrow Extender. Twisting the bottom of the pen makes the gel and fibers rise to the top of the plastic applicator comb. The applicator was specifically designed with an opening in the middle that lets the fibers pass through.
“The special plastic brush allows the fibers to be placed on the brow for a natural look and gives the consumer more control and flexibility regarding the placement of fibers,” says Alexis de Brosses, founder and president of Talika. “Once the gel dries, only the fibers remain.”
De Brosses says that the Eyebrow Extender is currently available in black, but that light-brown and dark-brown versions will launch in a few months.
Last year, ModelCo launched a fiber product in a pen called More Brows. “More Brows helps to thicken your existing eyebrow and is great for someone who wants a more natural look and not a drawn-on pencil look,” says ModelCo’s Barrett.
Barrett says that a pen helps consumers more easily apply the product. “The brush head brushes through your natural brows, filling in the sparse areas, and offers a great deal of control,” she says. The pen was custom designed.
Cosmopak (Port Washington, NY), which specializes in cosmetic packaging, including pens, has innovated several unique pens that would suit eyebrow products.
One new design is a brush pen that allows applicators to be interchanged. Called the Injector System, the pen has applicators that can be screwed on and off. Applicator types include combs, silicone applicators, and brushes.
Another new launch is a fine-point brush pen that is suited for low-viscosity products such as brow tint. “Traditional brush pens don’t dispense low-viscosity products very well because they don’t have a valve in them,” says Walter Dwyer, president of Cosmopak. Dwyer says that the pen’s fine point makes it suited for brows. “You can draw very thin lines with it,” he says.
Dwyer predicts that plastic applicators, such as the one on Talika’s Eyebrow Extender, will become more popular. “If you look at what’s happening with mascara brushes in general, there’s been a lot of innovation in the last 12 months. Look at the new Maybelline wands and the new Chanel wand. People are moving away from the traditional wire-end brush. Because of developments in plastics and machinery, you can injection-mold bristles from a soft plastic, whether it’s silicone or some other flexible material. That’s what’s happening in mascaras, and there’s a natural following for eyebrows.”
A Double-Ended Mascara Bottle
Another component sometimes used for eyebrow products is mascara-style packages. Makeup artist Laura Geller chose a unique, double-ended mascara bottle for her Eyebrow Tint & Tamer.
The short-handled brushes on Laura Geller’s Eyebrow Tint & Tamer package provide users with more-precise application.
Launched in September, Eyebrow Tint & Tamer features two products: clear brow gel and brow tint containing nylon fibers. The double-ended package is a stock component supplied by World Wide Packaging.
“What we liked about the package is that you could put both products in one unit so that the customer doesn’t have to carry around two packages,” says Pam Strickland, vice president of sales for World Wide Packaging, who worked with Geller on the project.
“It’s very easy to travel with,” says Geller. “We wanted something that you could toss in your travel bag and not have to think about again.”
Geller’s double-ended package is unusual because the mascara brushes screw out of the ends of the dual-chambered barrel. “In a standard double-ended component, the brushes originate from the center of the component, and the bottles screw out,” says Geller. “When you’re applying product, you have to hold on to the entire component, which can be cumbersome and heavy and make it difficult to get an exact application—and exact application is critical when you’re doing brows. With our package, you can hold the brush in your hand and put the rest of the component down so you have more control.”
The mascara brushes are short, which Geller says allows the user to get very close to the brow. “Also, the brush comes to a very narrow point at the end so that you can apply the product with the tip of the brush, which is much more precise,” she says. “We were on a mission to find the right brush. We wanted something very stiff and firm, that wouldn’t splay, and that would pick up enough product.”
“We went through a number of different brushes with Laura,” says Strickland. “There was some custom development with the brush.”
Finding the Right Brush
Strickland says that for eyebrow products, many brands come to World Wide Packaging looking for versions of a mascara brush. “Sometimes it’s just a standard spiral-wound mascara brush that’s cut a little differently, such as a straight-sided brush,” she says. “Laura’s is a fatter brush, which works well when you have bushier eyebrows. But most of the smaller companies are staying with pretty standard mascara brushes.”
Makeup artist Shana Marshall, new brand development director for brush supplier Anisa International Inc. (Atlanta), says that having the right eyebrow brush is very important. “Having a good brush with a nice, stiff, angled slant is going to allow you to apply a brow powder well,” she says.
Benefit’s Damboise agrees. “A hard, angled brush is the only way to go. You can’t use eye shadow brushes, and you can’t use concealer brushes. You need something that’s actually going to shape and fill the brow area.”
Shorter applicator handles are also key. “The short handle allows the consumer to have better control over application,” says ModelCo’s Barrett.
Anisa recently launched its own private-label brand of brushes under the name A Design. One of A Design’s brushes is a three-in-one eyebrow brush that features a brow brush on one end and a lash separator and comb on the other.
The Trend Continues
Eyebrow grooming products will continue to grow in popularity. As they do, new styles of packaging will be introduced. “All of a sudden, there’s been a huge explosion in the brow category,” says Geller. “Before, I think people did not know how to market anything more innovative than a standard brow pencil. Now, people are doing everything—travel brow kits, stencils—whatever they can get their hands on—to broaden their distribution and cover all the categories. All of a sudden, brows seem to be the one.”
A Bright Idea for a Tweezer
The innovative TweezLight tweezer features a built-in LED light that clicks on and off with the press of a button.
TweezLight (North Hollywood, CA) offers a unique tweezer concept. The TweezLight tweezer features a built-in LED light that shines on the eyebrow, making it easier for a customer to see the hairs as she tweezes.
“The product was created [after] seeing my wife grab the mirror every day and move to a place where there was more light for her grooming needs,” says Vartan Shaljian, president of TweezLight USA. “My idea was to bring the light to her.”
Shaljian says that there have been a few knockoffs of TweezLight. The company’s patented version features stainless-steel and 24-karat-gold or silver plating. The tweezers can be customized with a company’s logo. In addition, the tweezers are housed in a luxurious oval-shaped metal outer case. “The tweezers were packaged so that they make the perfect gift,” says Shaljian. All components were manufactured in China.