Joanna Cosgrove of Beauty Packaging recently wrote an article detailing the importance of supporting independent beauty brands. With the ever-growing social media influence, the industry is seeing new brands pop up left and right.
As popular as these new brands may be on social media, new ventures often don’t have the budget to be as creative with packaging as they’d like. Luckily, some companies offer the perfect solution as did East Hill Industries with startup SLMD Skincare. The following is an excerpt from the article on Beauty Packaging with commentary from our own Chris James:
Chris James, VP sales and marketing, East Hill Industries Inc., Carrollton, TX, says stock options are well-suited for new ventures because they can be sold in smaller quantities and are the perfect stepping stones for scaling up later on. “[Stock packaging] allows the brand to only buy as few as needed to get them launched and they can do small and quick re-orders when needed. It also helps by not tying up too much cash flow in inventory,” he says, noting that East Hill offers in-house silk screening and labeling options to help brands make stock packages uniquely theirs. “[Customizing] can be as simple as flood printing a white tube to give it a custom color look or doing a full 360-degree label on an airless bottle or jar. Our goal is to help the brand build their sales up enough so we can then help transition them to a truly custom package in the future.”
SLMD Skincare approached East Hill last December 2016 as a startup wanting to launch four acne treatment products in standard and starter kit formats. East Hill produced round 50ml PP airless bottles at its China factory then skirted the minimum print quantity issue at the factory by shipping them stateside with no decoration and printed them domestically at just over 2,000 per SKU. The other product SKUs were housed in in-stock, five-layer COEX tubes in .5-, 2, 4-oz sizes, plus 1oz tubes with airless pumps that were silk screened in house, all on time for the designated launch.
“As their sales are direct via online, it’s very difficult to forecast demand early on, thus they needed a packaging solution that could be produced quickly to fill orders as needed,” James says. “We have been able to do reorders for all the tubes with an average lead-time of two weeks, allowing them to run lean with a limited inventory of finished goods on hand.
“As their orders have grown, we are now in the process of transitioning them from in-stock packaging to custom produced packaging,” he adds. “We are now running larger custom orders for them which has allowed them to reduce their overall packaging cost, but they continue to have the same look they launched with.”