Nailing It

From salon to home use, nail care products are fun, functional and fashion-forward.

By Joanna Cosgrove
Online Editor

Thanks to an abundance of neighborhood nail salons and the proliferation of professional level nail care products at retail, well-manicured nails are relatively easy-to-maintain “accessories.” Makers of nail care products rely on packaging to showcase their colorful formulations and brand appeal, while providing a product that’s functionally stable and easy to use during application.  

For Butter London, the company’s signature packaging balances an edgy yet elegant design aesthetic. “Butter London’s look, brand and design inspiration is the buzzing, cosmopolitan city of London,” explains Sasha Muir, founder and CEO, and Nonie Creme, creative director. “All elements of our design are elegant, unique and extol everything British, fashionable, with a nod to rock and roll.”

Butter London’s brand of full-service manicures and pedicures are delivered via spa-kiosks, currently located in five U.S. airports, where manicures are billed to be speedy and stylish. In addition, the company also retails its line of 65 non-toxic lacquers and hand and nail treatments that are packaged in distinctive rectangular glass vessels. “We took our cues from high-end fragrances and cosmetics,” says Creme.  “In addition, our beautiful lacquer bottles are designed to be easy to use for the end consumer, and the chunky caps and short brush give more control when painting, allowing anyone to paint like a pro.”
 
Functionality was also a driving factor for Orly’s latest packaging innovation—a distinctive feature designed to make nail polish application easier for women striving to keep their fingernails fashion forward. “The most distinctive feature of our nail lacquer bottle is the patented Gripper Cap,” explains Stephanie Stearns, Orly’s art director. “This rubberized cap makes it easy to “Get a Grip,” providing ease of opening, with precise and flawless application.”

The company invested months of research and three years of development in Italy, before introducing the award-winning Gripper Cap in 2002. “The rubberized exterior, combined with easy-to-grip dimples, makes the bottle simple to open,” says Stearns. “The modernized shape of the cap and the rubberized gripper coating make it more comfortable to hold while your strokes are applied. She says the result is smoother, more even strokes—and simply perfect manicures every time. Plus, there is no more struggling to open an uncooperative bottle of lacquer. “The comments on the gripper cap have been resoundingly positive,” says Stearns. “And as Jeff Pink, Orly’s CEO and president says, ‘It showed the entire nail industry that we are listening to you.’ ”

Stearns adds that functionality, durability and ease of use are all staples of Orly packaging and that the company takes its packaging cues from the salon professionals using its products. “We listen to nail technicians and consumers who tell us their problems and we look to fix them,” says Stearns.  Most recently, the company updated its nail lacquer bottle with a sleek silver cap and screening, “modernizing our look and making the shades of our nail lacquer really pop off the shelf.”

For added shelf appeal, Orly also recently introduced Orly Gems, its Fall 2008 lacquer collection inspired by “rare and treasured jewels from all around the world.” Each nail lacquer in the collection features a free costume jewelry ring with coordinating gem on the cap.  

Captivating Color

Essie Weingartner, founder of Essie Cosmetics, Ltd. in Astoria, NY, has seen a variety of nail care trends come and go since her company launched its first collection of 12 nail polishes in 1981.

Color, she asserted, has always been the most important feature of a nail polish bottle. “Consumers are drawn to color,” she said. “Imagine a display … a world of color is revealed and customers fall in love with our array of colors at first glance. They can pick the color of their desire rather easily.”

Essie Cosmetics launches a new collection every 90 days in order to be on the pulse of fashion trends and “provide our loyal customers fresh and newness,” comments Weingartner. “I am always inspired by fashion designers, but also when I least expect, inspiration strikes.”

Since her company’s debut, nail color fads have come and gone, but Weingartner says her packaging has stood the test of time, changing only to include a clear, embossed Essie logo. “The Essie bottle was especially designed so that all of the polish can be used,” she says. “The bottle appears to be squared when one first looks at it—it actually has rounded edges inside so that all of the color can be used. The weight is evenly distributed, and this perfect square-shaped bottle fits comfortably in the palm of a nail tech’s hand. The best thing about the Essie bottle is that the straight, flat panels allow color lovers to truly see the color without distortion—color is at its truest!”

Back to Basics

With nail color, what goes on, must at some point, come off. Enter nail polish remover. One of the most venerable nail polish remover brands on the market, Cutex, underwent a redesign a few years ago to bring the bottle back to its original ideal, but with a modern twist.

“This new bottle is closer to the more standard nail polish remover designs with good label area and ribs,” said Scott Danheiser, Saddle Brook, NJ branch manager of St. Louis, MO-based TricorBraun, the company that supplied the bottle.

“TricorBraun was supplying us with the current package and has been an excellent partner for many of our recent projects,” adds Seth Barnett C.P.M., CPP, director of package development for Prestige Brands Inc., which owns Cutex. “We had a good idea of what we wanted and TricorBraun gave us technical assistance as well as performing the final engineering.”

The new bottles, made in 2-, 4- and 6-oz. sizes, were custom designed out of heavy walled HDPE in a natural color that allowed the product colors to show through. “The consumer recognizes the formula by color and for this reason, the bottles were run in natural polyethylene,” says Barnett.

The new bottle is purposefully reminiscent of the Classic Cutex bottle from the 1980s, but with modern updates. “The lines of the bottles were updated to match with a stock valve seal closure, and the dimensions were set to run efficiently on the filling lines,” says Barnett.

Well-manicured nails can be a girl’s most inexpensive and fashion-forward best friend. Nail care product marketers are using packaging to help women stay on the cutting edge of color trends, either by using color as a primary selling point or by using subtle packaging enhancements to help facilitate easy application—and removal.