SPEED-TO-MARKET PACKAGING
Milk Makeup (left) offers a lot of its cosmetics in solid stick formats that can be adapted to its iconic twist-up packs, while Face Halo quickly turned around limited edition pack designs, for example for Pride month (below)
agility have become important for all brands, not just indie brands.” Pai’s Acton Spirit hand sanitiser is one example of this success. The brainchild of Sarah Brown, her brand was able to engage with the customer’s needs, develop, package and bring the new product to market in just a few weeks. It was the first product to be pushed out by the
“These businesses cannot afford to stock and they source packaging on demand, so quick turnaround is essential,” notes de Maistre. Other simpler techniques that Quadpack has adopted to ultra- streamline launch-to-market is placing colour-coding discs on lipstick packs at the last minute. By doing this, any increase in popularity for a particular shade can be accommodated in the packaging with minimal effort. “Start-ups and indie brands cannot afford to stock and they source packaging on demand, so quick turnaround is essential,” adds de Maistre. “A surge of these businesses is entering the market during the pandemic to meet emerging consumer demands. Many are doing so with great success, being small and agile and quicker to adapt to market changes. “In fact, due to the Covid-19 crisis and uncertainty of the future, time-to-market and
brand’s newly introduced incubator division, Pai Labs. This section of the business allows Pai to trial and accelerate its product releases by producing experimental lines in small runs using pared-back packaging sold direct to consumers. “In the case of our first Pai Labs launch it was all about responding to an immediate customer need, very quickly, in a time of national crisis,” Brown tells Cosmetics Business. Prior to her new division, which sits right underneath her office, Brown – like other beauty brand owners – was at the mercy of packaging companies’ gruellingly long lead times. “Packaging is the big challenge. It’s the big block to speed. Typically it can be 16 weeks’ lead time from ordering. “We’ve had one particular [packaging] component that we ordered in February and we still haven’t received it; supply chains have been stretched.” However, with her new division, which sits directly under Brown’s office, she is able to push out product in just six weeks.
“In the case of our first Pai Labs launch it was all about responding to an immediate customer need, very quickly, in a time of national crisis
Pai’s incubator division, Pai Labs, was set up to bring out products in just a few weeks; its first sku was hand sanitiser Acton Spirit (below)
“The way we’ve mitigated long lead times for our packaging is to create not necessarily new and innovative packaging, or first-to-market packaging, but packaging that is quite generic that we can use across different formulations. “In the earlier days of Pai, we would start by thinking about the formulation first. Whereas with Pai Labs we need to be a
bit more fluid and think about the packaging line and whether that would fit either of those moulds as it is.”
But despite her brand’s success in being able to guarantee speed-to-market, Brown is not convinced it is the be-all and end-all for beauty brands: “I think people can get quite hung up on being first-to-market, but it doesn’t automatically mean success. You could have a new piece of packaging that dispenses in a particularly new way, or a new ingredient that no one else has used, but if you haven’t got the marketing budget clout behind you it could have no traction. There are so many other factors at play about this first- to-market piece which drive success. “Equally, you could have a great product or great piece of packaging and competitors could come in at a rock bottom price… and displace them both”
cosmeticsbusiness.com January 2021 35
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