Consumer Experience Drives Design

Body care, hair care, sun care, and even baby care brands often use bathroom-friendly plastic packaging. Bottles, tubes and jars are essential for these products, and brands are always on the lookout for sustainable packaging solutions.

Color, decoration, and user-friendly features can help a brand rise above competitors. A shampoo bottle with a “grippable” shape or a body wash tube with a flip-top cap, for example, can help improve the user’s experience—especially for products meant for the shower. Body creams and hair conditioners are often packaged in tottles or plastic jars.

Which suppliers excel in providing packaging options for these types of products? Read on for leads and design trends. 

‘Branding’ with Color

Hair care, bath and body lines and other personal care products succeed with the help of the right packaging. Design is essential and conveys a message to consumers through color and other elements.

Colorproof Haircare has a new look that commands attention with bold color. The brand redesigned its packaging, and relaunched with a new look. “Our goal was to come up with a modern, sophisticated and functional design while ‘sparking joy’ at every touchpoint,” says Maureen Saenz, Colorproof’s vice president of marketing. “We completely reconsidered our shelf presence. Now, after the restage, our packaging matches the outstanding performance of our products,” she says.

The new look features rich, jewel-tone plastic bottles and brushed gold metallic caps. The bottles are decorated with a new tactile logo design. “We developed custom bottle molds and chose debossed, brushed metallic caps,” says Saenz. “Our color palette features spot-gloss finishes for a tone-on-tone effect that delivers depth and dimension,” she explains.

“So much love went into our new design, and no detail was overlooked. We wanted to entice the consumer to pick up the bottle—and display it. That was the goal,” Saenz says.

The team at Asquan spoke to us about the importance of color. “We’re seeing more interest in black, white and green,” says Monika Pfeifer, business development director, Asquan. “Brands also seem to have a renewed interest in labels,” she says.

Vali Braselton, marketing manager, Consumer Products North America, Berry Global, says many brands search for a unique look. “There is a cultural shift towards individuality, and it’s reflected in package design. We see more custom shapes, bold colors, and decoration that breaks the norms,” she says. “This is driving a premiumization trend in packaging, and we are all well past the one-product-fits-all mentality. Consumers want a brand that speaks directly to them—and there are lots of brands that are doing just that,” she explains.

Sean Kavanaugh, senior account manager, JSN Industries, sees a minimalist trend emerging, rather than bold looks. “Simplicity is on-trend. It seems that many brands want to convey an image of calmness—due to all of the chaos in the world. We see lots of clean, simple designs with one or two-color graphics becoming more popular now,” he says.

E-Commerce Is Driving Design

E-commerce sales have skyrocketed, and are expected to grow by another 16% this year. Since more beauty brands are selling online, Berlin Packaging developed ‘Moda,’ a line of durable and stylish e-commerce-ready pumps. “We custom-designed them to withstand shipping, and to meet Amazon’s Tier 3 ‘prep-free’ packaging requirements,” explains Balaji Jayaseelan, vice president of sustainability, Berlin Packaging.

Moda’s 8.5oz, 17oz, and 1L bottles have an integrated pump and streamlined shapes for an elevated aesthetic. “They are perfect for hair care, sun care, lotions and more,” says Jayaseelan. “They are available in custom color configurations, allow for pressure-sensitive labels or direct printing, and can be made with PCR,” he adds.

Focusing on ‘Ease of Use’

If the consumer struggles with a package, they’re not likely to repurchase it. “Many brands still get caught up in the overall look and not function,” says JSN’s Kavanaugh. “We keep it simple—our classic shower-friendly flip-top dispensing cap may be traditional, but it has been so successful because of its ease of use,” he explains.

Asquan’s Pfeifer agrees and says that often it only takes a few slight changes to make a package more user-friendly. She says brands should have a close relationship with their supplier for better communication—and better results.

“Whenever we think a brand can tweak an existing pack for a better user experience, we will explain our suggestion and reasoning behind it,” she says. “One example is to use a cap with a larger diameter to give a standing tube or ‘tottle’ better stability,” she says.

Asquan developed its popular Essential Push-Button tottle, and it’s available as a refillable package. “It’s perfect for hair treatment products,” says Pfeifer. The company says they see increasing requests for all types of tottles.

Asquan’s Katharine Chang, vice president of sales, West Coast, says, “Beauty brands want interesting features. Innovative designs are more in demand, such as tottles with different types of caps and nozzles.”

Custom Designs

The team at Berlin Packaging says design is a powerful differentiator. “Design plays a significant role in creating a better consumer experience at every touchpoint, from unboxing to dispensing. A custom structural design can help a brand rise above all competitors,” says Jayaseelan.

Berlin Packaging’s in-house design and innovation division, Studio One Eleven, helps brands develop custom design solutions. “We consider consumer insights, design functionality, aesthetics, manufacturability, sustainability and more, to ensure our designs drive trial, grow sales and encourage brand loyalty,” says Jayaseelan.

A Focus on Texture

Just like the matte and gloss deco on Colorproof Haircare’s bottles, O.Berk’s account executive Mike Furey says texture is a popular design element for packaging. “Texture, whether in-mold or the use of graphics is a dominant trend. It allows you to ‘feel’ the design,” he says.

Tactile Elements Add Visual Interest

The team at O.Berk has worked with many brands that incorporated texture into the bottle designs to provide a prestigious look and feel. “We have the ability to add an embossed or debossed element to tooling,” says Furey. Adjusting tooling for a custom design can take six to nine months, according to Furey, but the team at O.Berk can accomplish this in 40-60 days. “We’re known for quality and speed-to-market when it comes to tooling,” he says.

Colorants & Finishes

Berry Global has an extensive portfolio of packaging options, and offers custom designs. “We offer brands a complete package—closures and containers in virtually any format, whether it’s bottles, tubes, jars, overcaps, or airless technology.

And we have both custom and stock solutions,” says Braselton. “We can also produce custom packaging in-house by building custom molds through Blue Clover Studios. We have a global footprint, and access to an uninterrupted raw material supply with high-quality, sustainable polymers,” she says.

The team at Berry Global continually works to develop innovative colorants and finishes. “These can add “pop” to a design, so a brand can embrace a style that makes them unique,” says Braselton. The supplier offers a new “Antique Glass Effect” colorant. “It can make a PET bottle look like antique blown glass,” says Braselton. “This is a great way for a brand to differentiate. It’s available in clear, amber, blue, and sea glass green,” she says.

Stock Options & Design Standards

Stock packaging can help a brand achieve the same goals as a more expensive custom design. “Stock packages are budget-friendly and readily available. Combined with a beautiful design and the right marketing message—consumers will take one look and instantly think of your brand,” says Eileen Wang, Allstar Packaging Corp.

Stock packaging is often essential for Indie brands when custom tooling isn’t within a budget. Berry Global operates several large manufacturing plants to accommodate some of the biggest beauty brands, but also works with small companies and Indie beauty brands. “We can support a brand’s needs as they grow from boutique to mass production,” says Braselton. “Our Winchester, VA plant offers a wide range of stock and custom solutions in low MOQs with full decoration capabilities,” she adds.

Pretium Packaging, which acquired Alpha and Olcott Plastics, offers an extensive range of standards. “We offer the most comprehensive size ranges in our core product lines,” says the company’s vice president of marketing, Marny Bielefeldt.

“For liquid bath and body products, we have packages that range in size from 1 ounce to 32 ounces. They come in a variety of neck finishes to accommodate all types of dispensing closures, pumps, and sprayers,” she says. “We also offer PET jars in the same sizes, with lightweight options,” she adds.

Asquan also has an extensive stock catalog with everything a brand needs to package hair and body formulations at every price point. The supplier says it is a technology and innovation-focused company with an experienced team to meet short lead times. Offerings include airless pumps, tubes, tottles and bottles in glass and plastic.

Asquan also offers brands use of its innovation studio, equipped with 3D-printing technology, prototyping, and more—with designers available to help bring a brand’s vision to market.

O.Berk has a vast stock portfolio. “We have over 3,000 bottle shapes,” Furey says. “As a distributor, we work with many different companies, so our options are extensive. And if an Indie brand wants only 5,000, we can do low quantities,” Furey says.

Decorating Tubes

Bottles are one of the most common packages, but tubes are also popular. JSN’s new Aura line includes tubes, and the supplier can decorate through the shoulder. “We also offer tubes with oxygen barrier protection options, which are ideal for hair care, body and sun products,” says Kavanaugh.

One of Berry Global’s unique offerings is an oval tube that is extruded, formed, and decorated at its tube facility in Easthampton, MA. Like all of the supplier’s tubes, it is available in PCR. “We offer one of the only oval tubes that is fully assembled in the U.S.,” says Braselton.  “Since most tubes are round, the unique oval shape can signal to the consumer that this brand or product is different,” she says.

Asquan offers tubes with customizable ‘tails.’ “We can create any shape a brand desires,” says Pfeifer. “Butterfly wings and whale tails are a few ideas,” says Pfeifer. “We can also make the end a hook to hang the tube in the shower,” she says.

More Deco Details

Suppliers use a range of decorating techniques to help brands create packaging that the consumer will notice.

Kevin Lahiff, sales manager, Kaufman Container, says the industry is moving toward a greater use of servo equipment for screen-printing. A servo system is a type of motor or drive used on some packaging machinery. “Servo machines push the envelope on what is possible in screen printing,” says Lahiff. “We are seeing more projects with complex designs that are only possible with servo equipment,” he explains.

A complex decorating job can be done by just one person on a servo machine. “Many decorators in the industry are using older machines—but they are more labor-intensive,” says Lahiff. “The tight registration and reduced labor requirement make this style of machine ideal for this climate,” he adds.

Dispensing Tips

Pairing a bottle with the right dispensing system is crucial to elevating the user’s experience with a product. Suppliers emphasize the importance of testing a formula for compatibility. “Sometimes a product formulation is too viscous to use a certain package, or they may have an ingredient that makes the product more challenging to dispense with certain types of pumps,” says Allstar’s Wang.

Allstar offers a range of different dispensing solutions. “We typically ask for some details about a formula so we can recommend a suitable solution, but we always advise that brands conduct testing.”

Pumps—especially foaming pumps—are great options for lots of different types of personal care product formulations, including bath & body products and suncare lines.

Global supplier Z&Z Industrial has a new North American division, Z-Z Dispensing Systems. The company aims to bring sustainable dispensing solutions, including pumps, triggers, and sprayers, to North American-based consumer brands.

“Our new division is timely and provides a resource for beauty brands since packaging needs are being severely challenged right now by supply chain headwinds,” the company states. “Our unique local-global hybrid approach to manufacturing is designed to eliminate product shortages and delivery delays.”

Z-Z Dispensing Systems’ North American team will be led by Bill Riley. The company is in the process of setting up production facilities in the U.S.

Suppliers Offer Sustainable Solutions

Sustainability is always a priority—especially since many beauty brands are focused on meeting specific sustainability goals, which often include reducing plastic use. Packaging suppliers strive to help brands meet goals by offering new materials and eco-friendly innovations. Allstar’s Wang says, “We’re gradually bringing in more eco-friendly and recyclable packaging to our stock packaging lines.”

Asquan’s sales manager, Marina Henkelmann, says nearly every request from beauty brands lately is for PCR packaging. “Global brands are looking for a minimum of 30% to 50% PCR to comply with new UK regulations and the ‘clean’ requirements of some major retailers, such as Sephora,” she explains.

The team at Asquan says, “eco-consciousness is at the heart of every decision we make.” The supplier offers a rapidly expanding library of standard bioplastics and PCR. The supplier’s PCR PET bottles can be combined with any of its all-plastic pumps, which don’t contain any metal springs. 

Pretium Packaging’s Bielefeldt also says that nearly every request from beauty brands is for PCR packaging. “Brands are looking for ways to incorporate from 30% to 100% PCR resin into plastic bottles and jars,” she says. “Brands are also moving away from colored or tinted plastics to clear polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for maximum recyclability,” she says. “When clear PET is combined with recycling-friendly decorating techniques such as UV-cured screen printing, the bottles can be easily recycled and repelletized in high grades of PCR,” she explains.

Pretium offers PET and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles and jars in up to 100% PCR. “It performs just as well as virgin resin and has minimal aesthetic imperfections, even for clear bottles,” says Bielefeldt.

Pretium also offers a line of seamless PET jars ideal for body scrubs, bath gels, and hair care products, and they are lightweight. “Light weighting plastic packaging has become a popular sustainable solution, since it helps decrease the use of plastic. We can remove the gram weight while ensuring the package maintains the same performance attributes,” says Bielefeldt. “Our PET jars are ideal for screen-printing due to their seamless construction. Some of our larger PET jars have also been re-engineered to reduce their gram weight by up to 30%,” she explains.

Berlin Packaging’s Jayaseelan says, “New regulations regarding single-use plastic are driving change—and beauty brands need packaging solutions that are recyclable, refillable, and optimized for product performance.”

Berlin Packaging works with brands to provide market insights, sustainability road mapping, stock sourcing, life-cycle analysis and more. The supplier says its experienced team develops sustainability strategies that deliver impactful results, not greenwashing. “We’re able to create meaningful impact by seamlessly integrating sustainability analytics, design and innovation, and sourcing into the development process,” Jayaseelan.

Berlin Packaging recently worked with several brands to make their packaging more eco-friendly. DevaCurl repackaged its entire line. “We developed new custom packaging for DevaCurl. The line includes bottles made with 50% ocean-bound plastic and caps in 100% PCR,” Jayaseelan says.

Berlin also helped Sexy Hair and Kenra Sugar Beach incorporate PCR into their packaging—and Not Your Mother’s repackaged its Naturals hair care line. “We transitioned the line into new packaging made with 33% less plastic, which also required 25% less energy to manufacture,” Jayaseelan explains.

JSN has been offering beauty brands sustainable packaging options for six years. “We first offered a plant-based stock resin option for our tubes. Then, a few years ago, we began offering PCR resins. We are continually looking at better PCR options, as well as what may be next on the sustainable horizon,” explains Kavanaugh.

Berry Global says its team has expertise in sustainable innovations. “We partner with brands to advance resin material science, manufacturing, and design for circularity. With 285 plants, over 35 product lines, and 65 conversion processes, we can prioritize a brand’s sustainability initiatives to achieve the greatest impact,” says Braselton.

Berry Global’s Braselton mentions 2025—the deadline that some beauty brands have set for achieving specific sustainability goals. “As we get closer to that date, we are getting more questions from brands about how we can help them reach that goal. We offer tailored solutions to help brands increase their use of PCR, reduce their carbon footprint, develop more refillable, renewable options and more,” she says.

O.Berk’s Furey says that the industry may be moving toward the widespread use of chemically recycled PET PCR. “We have strategic alliances in place to meet increasing demands, so we will be able to accommodate future requests,” he says.

According to Furey, for a supplier to process chemically recycled PET PCR, the company has to obtain specific certifications. “Chemically recycled PET PCR is so similar to virgin PET and the clarity is phenomenal. So, it’s very hard to tell the difference between the two materials during processing,” he says. “We have a strategic partnership with a resin supplier,” he adds.

Final Tips

Asquan’s Sera Kinoyan, sustainability manager, says that over the past year, more brands are requesting what she calls a “unicorn solution.” “Brands often say they need to tick all the boxes, while staying under budget. We often advise that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ sustainable solution—it doesn’t exist. But we will find the best sustainable solution for their product,” she explains.

Also, suppliers say there’s no need to compromise design for sustainability. “A package can reflect a brand’s image, whether it is luxe or minimalistic—and it can still be sustainable,” says Kinoyan.

Berry’s Braselton says the best advice for brands is to collaborate with a supplier early in the development process. “Sustainable materials are in high demand right now, with not enough supply. Some projects can take 12 to 18 months, so make sure you forecast properly. We work with brands to ensure enough resin volume is contracted, and we guide brands through the entire process,” she says.

As a final tip, JSN’s Kavanaugh advises, ‘Consumers want to know details. So, if the bottle includes PCR or the cap is a plant-based resin or the tube was made in the USA, state it clearly on the package.”