Today, clients have greater expectations than ever before in terms of innovative design and variety of choice. It means that today, Brands must have a very wide catalogue, always updated with new products and glamorous styles to meet their requests. It is increasingly difficult to satisfy clients’ demands. In this article, we want to discuss the latest trends in cosmetic packaging design that a modern supplier must be able to propose to its clients.
Cosmetic packaging design: what clients expect today
Packaging is the first thing that attracts customers when they look for cosmetics products. It gives immediate information about the brand’s spirits and values and it is very powerful in selling a product. That’s why companies give so much importance to packaging for cosmetics, perfumes, and makeup products. Brands look for innovative designs that make their products stand out, be distinctive, unique, and recognizable. It is true that often Brand designers have the concept in their mind and they need some help in developing an industrial project. That's why the best supplier’s team should be proactive in proposing and suggesting new solutions tailor made on the customers’ expectations and industrially feasible. Let’s have a look at the latest trends in cosmetic packaging supplies design and at the most stylish developments, trying to understand what clients expect from their suppliers.
Sustainability combined with luxury
Environmental protection is an important issue for consumers, who are increasingly aware of the problems our eco-system is facing. They often prefer buying something recyclable if they can. Luxury companies are increasingly interested in ecological materials, but they don’t want to give up on their powerful, trendy, and sometimes sumptuous image. They demand solutions that combine sustainability and elegance, which is why they really love wood as a packaging material. Wood, in fact, is warm, alive and provides a tactile and sensory experience that is impossible with other materials. Moreover, it can be enriched with many types of finishing to satisfy individual needs. We also have to consider that there are very expensive species of wood (such as mahogany, teak, ebony, santos, bubinga, wengé, and burl, which are some of the most precious woods currently on the market) that make caps and packages prestigious and give value to the products.
Complicated shapes
Clients today look for unconventional shapes for their wooden components to make cosmetics and perfumes real pieces of design. Again, wood is one of their favorite materials because it is flexible and easy to manage. In fact, if compared to plastic, for instance, it definitely doesn’t require moulds. It means that if you have to modify your cap you can do it easily without needing to make a new mould. The problem is that very often suppliers cannot propose many shapes of wooden components because—in order to escape standard shapes as in example simply round shape—it is necessary to have different kind of technologies and machineries. That’s why small cylindrical and rounded shapes are so common, but in some cases less attractive too. It is not true that larger diameters or multifaceted caps or any other geometrical shapes are not feasible, simply supplier must have the right machinery and tools to process wood correctly and precisely.
Unique and innovative finishing
To make their products special and distinctive, clients want caps and packages enriched with any sort of finishing. A current trend among luxury companies is polymer coatings. It means using special finishing to make wood resemble plastic; in this way, they have a plastic-like cap, exploiting all the advantages of wood, such as flexibility, malleability, elegance, and cost-effectiveness.
Clients also love water-based finishings, which provide a clean and clear effect, but also embossing, engraving, and soft-touch finishes, which add a velvety-soft feel to printed wood.
Sometimes clients prefer to maintain the rough effect of wood to give a sense of purity and naturalness to their products. This is especially true for organic and “green” brands because the container must reflect its content. The most innovative finishings can enhance the natural characteristics of the raw material, making the product elegant and beautiful, always preserving its typical roughness.
Combining more than one material
Very often clients want to be able to combine different materials. For example, if they want to give a sustainable image to their products, they want to use a wooden cap on a glass container (or on a plastic container, if sustainability is not their objective). Moreover, sometimes clients want to add a metal insert on a wooden cap—a sort of plaque or just a decorative border—to give more prestige to their products, especially perfumes. If the supplier is not able to guarantee this variety of choice, he cannot be competitive.
If you want to widen your catalogue with innovative designs and unique products, you must choose a manufacturer that is able to create these types of objects. Especially if you decide to offer wooden objects, you must be sure that the manufacturer can guarantee precision and punctuality and has the right knowledge, machinery, and tools to create perfect products.
At Minelli, all of our expertise and innovation are at your service to meet your needs, even the most complicated. If you have a project in mind, please contact us: we will be glad to help you shape your idea!
