For beauty brands, product packaging can make or break a business. Packaging conveys the brand message, which engages customers. It’s also the first consumer touchpoint, which defines the brand.

At African Pride, a leading hair care product manufacturer with more than 30 years’ experience, we recognize that packaging is essential to brand strategy. That’s why we’ve designed our products and packaging with consumers in mind since the very beginning.

Today, we know consumers want information, along with a packaging experience before they can put the product to the test. Realizing that our original African Pride packing prevented consumers from that experiential component, we updated the packaging to showcase our products, formulations, and fragrances to provide consumers transparency and insight upfront.

Taking this experiential process a step further, we mirrored packaging with the ingredients found within our products – ingredients we also knew consumers were searching for. Within African Pride’s Moisture Miracle line, which caters to tightly-coiled hair, we used ingredients to address this specific hair type. The Pre-Shampoo showcases aloe for detangling extra curly hair, while the shampoo features honey to moisturize and penetrate deep within curls.

Product availability in multiple outlets is another element that brands must consider. Today, we live in a mobile/digital-first era, and with that comes a wealth of information, giving way to the recent boom in e-commerce.

Born out of the pandemic, we’ve seen digital skyrocket. African Pride’s wide-reaching e-commerce, coupled with mass distribution from our national/international wholesalers/retailers, enable us to make our product available at-scale. Wherever African Pride consumers shop, in-store or at home, our products are available to help address all beauty needs.

African Pride is a brand for women, by women. We innovate products consumers are asking for, and we’re able to meet those needs because we’re asking for them too. By executing CSR efforts, we’re further able to tap into the things our consumers (and we) care about. Our partnership with When We All Vote, which aims to raise awareness and empower the Black voter, is just one example of how brands can develop deeper relationships with existing customers, and attract new ones by accessing meaningful purpose-driven conversations outside the beauty landscape.

There is certainly no “one-size-fits-all” solution in beauty, however brands looking for 2021 growth must consider product packaging, availability and accessibility to pave a successful way forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Morrishane Collins is head of global distribution at African Pride.