Designer Interview: Jennifer and Fiona Lees, Balmshell
Jennifer (left) and Fiona Lees.Twin sisters find packaging inspiration in a pen.
By Marie Redding, Senior EditorLaunching a cosmetic brand is a challenge in itself. When a brand’s first package design is a complicated one, it adds to the pressure. Jennifer and Fiona Lees are identical twin sisters and founders of the Balmshell brand. Their innovative design concept—based on a float art design for a pen—posed challenges that would have been tough for anyone with industry experience to handle.
Float art is the term used for an image that is printed on a die-cut film. The film is then floated in liquid in a cylinder-shaped barrel. The film moves around in the liquid when the barrel is tilted. This concept can often be seen on pens. The Lees’s lip gloss package is a double-ended design. Two acrylic bottles are joined by a connector piece. One bottle is filled with lip gloss. The other bottle contains the float art. (Read more about a few of Balmshell’s products in the Color Cosmetic Packaging feature beginning on page 40.)
At times, the Lees felt as if pulling off this concept was an uphill battle. They didn’t have any packaging experience or a single contact in the cosmetic industry. They stayed positive but wondered if their package idea could ever be a reality—at a reasonable cost. “We felt like very small fish in a huge sea. Just getting suppliers to speak to us was hard. There were definitely times when we’d get cold feet, so we’d have to stop and take a break, wondering whether or not we were in over our heads. This went on for years,” says Fiona. The twins spent approximately 2½ years doing research, while continuing to work full-time jobs in the marketing industry.
In the spring of 2005, Fiona quit her job. Jennifer quit the following September. There was no turning back. By November of 2005, they managed to meet a buyer at Holt Renfrew who decided to take a chance with the small company—without even seeing a sample product. This commitment from a major retailer meant that the Lees were able to secure financial backing and begin production.
The Lees paid attention to every detail. When choosing a lip gloss bottle, they considered many factors. “We wanted a hard plastic that wouldn’t dent when pressed. We didn’t want to be able to see a seam in the plastic, and we had to make sure that it didn’t leak. You have to be proud of what you’re going to put your name on,” Fiona says. They finally chose a lip gloss package supplied by Jackel International (Hong Kong; Hillsborough, NJ).
The first step was to use the Internet to find an illustrator. They hired Mar Murube, a freelance artist from Spain. The Lees decided that each lip gloss color would have its own “story,” told through a float art picture. They started to come up with product and packaging ideas. For instance, one purple lip gloss is named That’s So 80s. Its float art shows a girl dying her hair purple. Her hair color changes from blonde to purple as the float art moves. The Lees sent their design concepts to Murube, who illustrated them.
Next, the artwork was sent to the supplier that turned it into float art—and the challenges began. The Lees realized that an illustration that made sense on paper didn’t always work as float art. “In one, a girl should have been putting on a little black dress but ended up looking as if she was taking her top off—definitely sending the wrong message! We panicked because we were running out of time. We decided to use glitter and an illustration of a girl already dressed. This is our only design that doesn’t move,” explains Fiona.
Another problem involved production. “Some of the first float art prototypes didn’t fit through some of the machines that created the barrels, so the first films had to be cut by hand,” says Fiona.
Making sure that the float art barrel and the lip gloss bottle fit together in the right way posed yet another challenge. Jackel International had to work with the float art supplier’s engineers in order to achieve this. “There was a lot of back and forth between the two companies, but we were able to leave it up to them to figure out,” says Fiona. Once all the components were finished, they were sent to a supplier in Canada that handled the formulation, filling, and assembly.
All of their hard work and determination paid off. By September 2006, the first products launched at Holt Renfrew in Canada. “The whole process was very overwhelming at times, and we didn’t realize until we began how involved it was going to be. But our curiosity was greater than our fear of failing. If we didn’t try, we knew we’d always wonder what could have been,” says Fiona.