Phase One: Transforming Marketing Brief into Design Strategy

The design process is not merely about selecting fonts or images for packaging. It commences with converting a marketing brief into a comprehensive design brief. This initial phase lays the groundwork for developing a strategic approach to packaging design, setting the tone for subsequent stages.

Phase Two: Integrating Diverse Skillsets for Refinement

In subsequent phases, a myriad of skills come into play, ranging from strategic expertise to artistic prowess. Professionals adept in logo development, illustration, photography, and graphic design collaborate to refine the design iteratively. Each stage enhances the quality and precision of the final product.

Phase Three: Transitioning from Design Approval to Production

Upon client approval, the design progresses to the production phase. Here, meticulous attention to detail is paramount. Production professionals with proficiency in software tools like Illustrator ensure seamless translation of designs into production-ready files. They navigate project parameters, material considerations, color limitations, and manufacturing complexities with finesse.

Conclusion: The Holistic Impact of Package Design

Package design not only influences brand perception but also sets trends in brand activation, including social media presence. Moreover, sustainability considerations permeate every phase of the design process, reflecting a growing commitment to environmental responsibility. Amidst diverse creative inputs, a structured methodology underpins the beauty business’s packaging design endeavors, ensuring coherence and efficacy.

Marketing has changed a lot in the last couple of years and the future of marketing is going to get even more defined as the years go on.

Traditionally, marketing focused on identifying your target demographic and figuring out how to reach the people in the demographic. With the advent of social media, the number of customers that you can reach as a business has increased tremendously,

So, how can you approach marketing on social media? The most common methods are through paid sponsorship campaigns, where you pay to have a certain group of people targeted through your sponsored advertisements, and through posting organic and original content. The latter of by the far the most authentic

This is commonly referred to as digital marketing and it’s much more popular than traditional marketing nowadays. To start a business, you’re more likely to use Instagram and Facebook than post an ad in Vogue.

To be taken seriously nowadays, your brand needs to have thousands of followers. Ideally, around 30,000. To grow your audience to this number, it’s the same method as if you’re trying to grow your personal account. You need to post on a daily basis and your content needs to be relevant to your industry. This applies to both Instagram and Facebook.

A great way to begin is planning out the images you’re going to post for the next two weeks. This way, you can plan your feed and visualize how it’s going to look. One-third of your posts should be functional arguments, where you describe your products to your customers. The other two-thirds of your posts should be emotional and editorial.

Divide your content into these two categories so you can plan an even spread of functional and emotional content across your channels. This way, your feed looks visually appealing to your audience and catches their attention.

The beauty industry and beauty brands continue to grow at a rapid pace and so do the companies that support the beauty business, such as contract manufacturers.
Beauty is a growth industry and it’s increasing at a rapid pace. What is driving this growth?
The key factors are:
* The new efficient distribution channel of the internet
* Convenience and democratization of brands
* Selfies
* The need to create and be an individual
* The demand for natural and environmentally-friendly cosmetic products
* Customization and new technologies.

The industry is led by brands, whether large multinationals or smaller indie brands. However, there is an entire network behind the scenes that supports these brands. These companies are the manufacturers of the products, the packaging makers, the ingredients suppliers, or the machinery engineers. They are highly specialized experts.

Companies called “contract manufacturers” take care of all the details so that the brands can focus on their customers. These manufacturers can specialize in a specific field, such as pencils, or offer a full array of color cosmetics, skincare, and hair care. The expertise is supported by chemists, engineers, operations, and product developers that work collaboratively on making products that deliver to the needs of the brands.

So now that we understand contract manufacturing, what is the difference between that and private labels? I like to use the analogy of couture and ready-to-wear in fashion. The couture is a contract manufacturing, one of a kind, specialized for you. The ready-to-wear is private label, ready, available, in these shades, finishes, ready to be delivered to you.

Private label allows a new brand to start without a large minimum requirement of manufacturing, packaging, and testing costs. Formulas have already been tested, scaled up, and proven.

This also allows for speed to market, where a three to six-month test for a new formula would be required. A private label formula already comes with all the testing and documentation needed. We’ve reviewed contract manufacturing and private labels.

There are many careers available in these two categories for anyone interested in anything beauty.

Are you curious about the manufacturing process of the cosmetics industry? Cosmetics are the marriage between art and science and are made from a wide array of ingredients and processes.
The cosmetic development process begins with an idea, whether it is something new or an improvement on a current product. Ideas could come from brainstorming sessions, or they could be brought on by market or customer requests.
A brief is then created for the labs to begin the work. The brief outlines all the parameters needed to make the product successful. These include the product claims, texture, payoff, packaging, price, whether it is vegan, and if it will be dermatologist tested. As many details as possible are included in the brief so that the chemist knows from the beginning what the criteria is.
Once the formula is developed, the product developers start testing for efficacy. This preliminary testing is meant to give feedback to the chemists so they can perfect the product.
Once the product has met the criteria, a more in-depth testing occurs of the formula. The packaging is also tested against heat and cold extremes. If all tests are passed, the product then requires a scale-up.
A scale-up is the process of taking the product from the lab, to manufacturing, and finally to the shelf. This part is critical in the cosmetic development process. If the scale-up is not successful, then you must head back to the drawing board.
The scale-up starts with a pilot, which is a smaller quantity being made. This is normally a good learning experience for all. Observations are made by chemists, engineers, operations, and product development.
Once the pilot is successful, a full-scale production is run. After the pilot, product development works on more testing, whether it is with consumers, clinical labs, and other safety testing.

There are numerous product categories. They are skincare, haircare, fragrance, personal care, and color cosmetics.

Color cosmetics include foundations, lipsticks, and eye shadows. Over-the-counter (OTC) also falls under this category. OTC refers to products purchased without a prescription from a doctor. For example, skin tint with SPF.

As you can see, the product forms for color cosmetics are rather general. But, there are classifications inside each subcategory. Eye shadow, for example, can be further divided into creams, powders, and hybrids, such as demi press, slurry, and amorphous textures.

A baked powder is a product that undergoes a particular high-temperature curing or baking process to provide a product that is both wearable and weightless on the skin.

A slurry powder is an example of a powder subcategory. This technique converts powder into a mud-like consistency. It also produces a dry powder that’s ultra creamy and smooth.

The industry is moving toward hybrids due to our need for innovation and multi-use products. A hybrid combines qualities from two or more groups. A moisturizer with color and SPF, such as a BB cream, is an example. Another example is a pearl-infused primer that contains a skin-brightening cream.

The distinctions between skincare and cosmetics are becoming increasingly blurred. Transformative textures for tactile and visual senses, such as powder to lotion, cream to water, oil to lotion, cream to oil, foam to liquid, or new color forms, such as color shifting, transforming, and encapsulating, are becoming essential.

Swirl technology combines a variety of uses and colors into a single composition. It isn’t only visually appealing in lip gloss, lips, creams, hybrids, foundations, tints, skin creams, and primers. Special effects are especially significant since they provide various benefits while also satisfying a craving for beauty.

These ingredients provide a new texture or advantage that you can add to these formulas. Infusing a skin tint with extra moisturizers for quick hydration, SPF in a lipstick, and highlighters in a concealer are just a few examples.

At Givaudan, we work with several different clients, including fashion brands, celebrities, and haircare brands that want to create a fragrance or fragrance that goes into a shampoo. For example, a celebrity asked for a fragrance that smelled like her baby.
The Brief of a Celebrity Baby
We agreed and set up a brief to understand what her baby smells like. When we asked what her baby smelled like, she replied, “Well, my baby smells like my baby.” The brief is used to obtain the specs for the fragrance.
However, it was tough to obtain the specs because we had no idea what her baby smelled like, nor would we likely meet her baby. We began pulling information from a client that wants a brief that smells like a baby.
How does the celebrity want to use this? Is this fragrance in a bottle? Or a lotion?
The Process of Cruelty-Free Beauty
How our perfumer builds that product will depend if the product is going to be a body lotion, which requires less amount of fragrance that must be mixed differently than a product in a bottle.
Typically, products in a bottle have an alcohol base, which requires a different concentration and different amounts of ingredients. She wanted the fragrance inside of a bottle, but she wants it to be very safe and very soft, stating, “You know, I want it to be cruelty-free.”
We went back and we pow-wowed. We figured what the baby smelled like by the only evidence she provided: it’s how it comes out of the bath. We made sure the norms or regulations went through the regulatory department that tells us what ingredients we can use to make the product cruelty-free.
By the way, all our ingredients are cruelty-free. Just to put that out there.
We considered that she may want it made vegan. Most ingredients in fragrance are vegan, but there are a couple that isn’t because, believe it or not, you can’t use beeswax. Beeswax isn’t vegan, right?
For example, many people say, “I want a honey fragrance, but I want it to be vegan.” To honor their requests—we use our pow-wow. For our celebrity, we found the regulatory pieces we want to hit, the ingredients that smelled like a baby coming out of the bathtub.
We also had to ask ourselves how much did she want to spend? How much fragrance do they want to put into the product and all the other regulator pieces? From there, our evaluator and our perfumer get together and talk about how they are going to build the fragrance. It is usually made through the computer.

When it comes time to formulate products, you can certainly hire someone to come up with your product concepts and a general ingredient brief to pass off to a chemist to formulate, but you don’t have to go that route.

To find a lab, you can Google contract manufacturers and cold call them to set up intro calls.

“We found the lab we launched our first four products with through an ingredient supplier who supplies some of the best natural and organic oils and extracts to labs around the world,” says one beauty product producer. “We said, ‘Listen, you work with all these labs. If you were creating your own product line, which lab would you partner with?’”

“I wasn’t looking to go to a big box lab that everybody uses, because then I was going to get formulas that everyone else has,” adds the producer.

Each lab has its own product brief form that includes the ingredients you want to use, the ingredients you don’t want to use, specifics about the percentages you want in your formula, marketing ingredient callouts, and the viscosity—whether you want it thin, like a serum, or whether you want it thick. The lab asks about the packaging components you’re going to be using for that formula because they can’t create a dense cream if it’s going to need to come out of a pump.

You’ll send the completed product brief to your chemist. Then, you’ll have a call with your chemist and you’ll pay a fee for the product development.

The fee is usually quite small. Labs aren’t charging $50,000 to formulate a product. They’re charging more like $1,500.

Where labs make their money is when you place your order for 10,000 units or 100,000 units or a million units, explains the producer.

“The one thing I found to be extremely helpful was having a contract right out of the gate with the lab that specifies formula ownership,” says the producer. “You want to own your formulas. Most brands don’t know this, so they launch their brand without owning their formulas. And if you don’t own your formula, the labs don’t ever give you the recipe.”

A lot of people have this idea that fashion, beauty and editorial is this hyper competitive industry, where stepping on people is the most strategic move to propel your career. When in actuality, that is one of the most detrimental things you can do to your career.

Sam Escobar, Digital Deputy Editor of Allure, says about workplace relationships, “People who are your interns, if you’re not very nice to them and you don’t facilitate them to learn more, they’re not going to like you later on. And maybe they won’t be your boss, but they might know somebody who might hire you and they might say something.”

That’s obviously not the only reason that you should be kind. In general, it’s bad for your career to think of everything as this huge competition. In business there is sometimes a belief that if someone else fails, you win. That’s not the case. Escobar explains, “If your team is winning, you are also winning. And that’s amazing.”

Escobar believes the key to success is being reliable, consistent and hardworking. “I think if you are very capable of being communicative and working on a team well, those are all things that are going to work so much better than if you gossip about people or devalue other people’s work. Because that’s not fair to them and it’s not fair to your team no matter what the ranking is seniority wise.”

Escobar advises everyone to develop relationships. Whether it’s in a workplace, internship, or even school, get to know the people you’re working with. “That way you can actually feel a connection to those people. And they will blossom into natural friendships, which is also wonderful. Because who doesn’t want to be able to commiserate at the end of a really long day with somebody who actually understands it?”

Like all other consumer-based industries in recent decades, the beauty industry has undergone an enormous change. There are a lot of reasons for this.

The internet has impacted every possible business on the globe. This is partly to blame for the changes within the beauty industry. But I think the beauty industry is also very cyclical.

It goes through periods when larger brands and corporations are very powerful. Then it switches to periods where small businesses dominate the industry.

Until around a decade ago, the beauty industry was all about the big companies. We’re all familiar with Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Avon, and Revlon. They’re the most well-known beauty brand across the world.

But we’re now at a point in the cycle where the beauty industry is much more consumer-driven and customers are much more excited about smaller businesses. And it’s not just the beauty industry. It’s also the fashion and food industries too. The small players aren’t faced with the same challenges that they use to be.

The Internet has enabled any business, no matter how big or small, to become global. They can create a stunning website and build their social media accounts to grow an audience quickly. The internet has given businesses the chance to grow but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will have the resources to keep up with this growth.

But this is much less challenging than it used to be. It’s less expensive and requires fewer resources. The barriers to entry are much smaller but you usually need a large volume of resources to keep your business going.

The biggest shift in the industry is the move towards smaller businesses. The second biggest shift is the shift in consumerism.

The beauty industry is now more personal and consumer involvement is tenfold what it was just 15-20 years ago.

The beauty business is quite competitive and fast-paced, but there are three important traits that will help you succeed. Jihan Thompson, the co-founder and CEO of Swivel Beauty, believes persistence is number one.

Persistence means not giving up, whether you’ve heard no a million times or you’ve tried and failed. Keep figuring out solutions, advance your online beauty education, hone your craft, and keep improving. This level of persistence and not taking no for an answer is incredibly important.

Number two, be a risk taker. Be willing to say yes when others say no. Be willing to put yourself out there, even if it feels a little bit scary. Your willingness to take risks helps get you to that next level in your beauty career. It will put you in a position for massive opportunities for growth. Put yourself out there.

Take those calculated risks. No matter how scary they are, those are the ones that are going to really help grow your career.

Lastly, Thompson says to focus on being business-minded. While the beauty industry can be such a creative field, it’s also super important to have business acumen. Think about how you’re going to strategically grow your business and invest in your ongoing beauty education. Contemplate how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to go, your dreams and goals, and the steps you’ll need to take to get there.

Don’t be afraid to think about the business side of things too at the start of your beauty career. When you put all of those traits together – you’re persistent, a risk taker, and understand the business side of what you’re doing – it creates a triple threat and helps you grow in your business.