New bottles make hair care products shine

Joico Laboratories has redesigned its packaging for its professional hair care products and uses a sleek, specially molded bottle and color coding system to help hairdressers and consumers choose the best cosmetic method.

Joico, based in Los Angeles, California, recently relaunched a series of professional hair care products. Its formula and packaging embody the perfect combination of art and science. According to Mary Freeth, the company's marketing director, the key to Joico's new packaging is to embody a strong professional concept and create a series of easily identifiable categories to help hairdressers and consumers choose the right hair products for specific hair types.

Freeth explained: “We feel we need to re-expand our business and continue to innovate in order to remain competitive. However, our packaging has been in use for more than five years, so we need to update our image so that our product line continues to evolve. "It is not easy to sell our products to a stylist or a consumer. It includes a very large series, so it is more difficult to operate. ”

A year and a half later, Joico launched a brand new look and feel package for his brand. From the sample point of view, they are smooth, specially molded bottles with a crowned closure. The color is a modern metallic color that allows consumers to clearly identify Joico's seven hair care options. But Scott Palmer, Joico's director of packaging development, said that redesigning packaging has also brought many challenges. “Relaunching new products has encountered difficulties in many aspects. The main challenges include the production of moulds and decorations for such asymmetric packaging, the selection of many packaging materials, the coordination of multiple suppliers, and the production of new packaging. The speed makes the color match the metallic tone of the series."

Joico has been providing hair care products for professional stylists and chain beauty salons for more than 30 years. His clients include Regis's Supercuts, Hair Crafters and Regis Beauty Salons, and a branch of Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido. Since 2002, Joico has gained a reputation for high-end products including shampoos, conditioners, gels, sprays and wax products.

With the launch of the new packaging, Joico took the opportunity to make corresponding improvements to its formula. Freeth said: “I took a serious look at our products from the point of view of recipes, decided where improvements were needed, and adopted new technologies and new materials in recent years to improve the performance of our products.”

The bottle's cover is specially designed so that it can always face the front of the package, giving the product on the shelf a neat feeling.

The new product line includes 107 products, half of which are sold to the international market and are divided into 7 categories, including the K-PAK(R) series (mainly used to “restore, repair, enhance and protect” damaged hair); daily Care; Shaping; Moisturizing (for dry hair); Long lasting color (for hair dyeing); Body Luxe hair extension series and Silk Result® (for hair conditioning, smooth hair).

Both Freeth and Palmer admit that although Joico's previous packaging was also made by special molding, it was not exquisite and lack of modernity, and could not convey the company's high-tech ideas. Palmer said that they need a new bottle to attract consumers' attention, but it should be more than just a bottle. He explained: "Most people think that repackaging a product is to change the pattern on the bottle, but this is not enough, you have to invest in your packaging, because packaging is the first thing to attract the attention of consumers. To stand out from the The only way is to make your packaging unique."

The production of new bottle designs required specialized engineering techniques and innovative expertise, so Joico found Dieter Bakic Enterprises. The company is mainly dedicated to the design and technology research and development of personal care and cosmetics. Joico's marketing and packaging engineering department collaborated with DBE to produce about seven packaging ideas. Finally, these concepts were consolidated and compressed into one.

Palmer said: “The more complex designs and shapes we thought of were not feasible and were troublesome to produce. Others lacked the necessary stability and functionality. They didn’t feel comfortable holding hands.” He went on In addition, “In this industry, most consumers are women, and their hands are relatively small. This is a problem that must always be considered in the redesign. You must ensure that consumers feel comfortable when they hold the package and do not It will slip off the hand."

The final design of the bottle is a slim, smooth cylindrical bottle made of 300-ml high-density polyethylene. The left side goes straight up and down, while the right side protrudes toward the bottom of the bottle and is angled. The nozzle is also made of DBE and molded by Rexam. It is a two-piece polypropylene seal and is fixed to the bottle with a 27 mm screw cap. The cover is specially designed to face the front of the package all the time, giving the bottle on the shelf a neat feeling.

To differentiate it further from similar hair care products, the new bottle design includes several easy-to-use features. The large flat lid allows the consumer to turn the bottle upside down on a flat surface so that the last bit of product can be poured into the lid to squeeze it out when there is not much left in the product. In addition, the top flap allows consumers to easily open the lid with one hand.

Palmer explained: “In addition to the 300 ml bottle, Joico also introduced 150 ml and 1 liter versions, and 200 ml of supplemental version tottle. This type of bottle designed by DBE is made of medium density PE. It can be flipped over.The left side of the bottle is tilted upwards, while the right side is straight up and down, so when the 300 ml bottle and tottle are placed side by side, they can be “embedded” with perfect fit.

Although the tottle uses the same nozzle as a 300-ml bottle, the 150-ml version comes with a 20/410 neck cap and a suction spray nozzle from Saint-Gobain Calmar. Calmar's Mark VI high-performance spray nozzles and Mark VII spray nozzles for high-viscosity products were also used on the second 300-ml bottle with a 24/210 neck cap. The 1 liter bottle uses a 27 mm directional neck cap and a special two-piece cap.

The third 300 ml bottle was also designed to contain foam products. This container uses a 43 mm neck cap and Easy Foamer HH series nozzles from Keltec Dispensing Systems. Palmer said that they chose this brand of foam nozzle because its high-grade appearance just fits the image of the bottle, and it is able to pump freely during the squeeze and release process. He also added that this foam nozzle can provide more long-lasting foam.

To package other product lines, including gels, serums, aerosols and other products, Joico chose similar elegant packaging designs and special colors to match the company's seven product types.

For its wax and pomade products, Joico used a 50 ml PP can made by Rexam Delta with a continuous threaded closure. The label includes a transparent pressure-sensitive wrap label and a circular label on the bottom of the jar. (518/664-9411).

The whey was packaged in a 1.7-ounce transparent polyester bottle, produced by Inoac Packaging Group (inoacusa.com), and the top lid of the bottle was also provided by the company. The above suction device was supplied by Microspray Delta. Screenprinting of the serum bottles was performed at Joico's facility in Geneva, New York. In addition to a series of blow molding, labeling, filling and other processing, packaging and decorating equipment, the factory also has an OMSO screen printing machine.

Joico's wet aerosol product is contained in a 350 ml aluminum bottle with a wet aerosol nozzle provided by Chicago Aerosol (815/634-5100). Other products, such as gels, hydrates and balms, are packaged in plastic tubes produced by Tubed Products.

Palmer mentioned that the biggest challenge faced by Joico's "extreme makeover" products is that they use the blow molding process, and the mold itself is asymmetric. "The structure of this mold is very complicated, especially the matching of mold stitches, vents and parison cutting and control."

After being rejected by its existing packaged blow mold makers and other plastic bottle suppliers, Joico found the DBE, hoping they would recommend a manufacturer capable of producing this unique bottle. Easy Plastic Containers, based in Concord, United States, proved to be willing and able to accept this challenge and co-produced it with Joico, using a die to produce bottles for stability, environmental and other tests.

Palmer said that in order to adapt to the irregular shape of the Joico container, Easy Plastic has developed a patented parison design and control method to minimize the weight so that the bottle gets a symmetry effect. The mold maker also designed a unique bottom shear plate and sprue removal jig to remove excess parisons at the bottom of the bottle and improve the molding quality of the bottle.

Joico also appreciates that Easy Plastic can blow molds with dark metallic resins without creating flow marks.

The next obstacle after blow molding is decorating, which requires special tools. Palmer said that the company chose to print the neck cover on one machine and use other tools to position the bottle without considering the neck cover.

Palmer said that the final challenge is to match different materials and metal colors of the product lines provided by various suppliers. According to the classification concept of new packaging, colors include light color, gray glitter, green, blue, magenta, rust and gold. The two-piece lid uses a two-tone design, with the same hue for the cover plane to the bottle, while the flip cover uses the same color but has a darker color. Palmer said that in order to ensure consistency between various packaging components and suppliers, once the bottles and lids are approved by Easy Plastics and Rexam, the company will prepare some plastic sheet samples for other suppliers to use for the parts they produce. The reference standard. He said: "Color matching is a long process, but the end result is really good."

In December 2005, it was distributed to all major distributors. In March of last year, it was formally opened at a beauty salon. Joico's new packaging attracted many consumers. Freeth told the author: “People like it very much.” “But before that, many stylists were still hesitant about whether to put the Joico family on their shelves, and people who were never interested in Joico before now are also Start contact us."

Palmer said with more and more hair care products