Craig Dubitsky, founder & CEO, Hello Products, likes to think way outside the Personal Care products box—and the traditional category tubes. Beauty Packaging’s editor Jamie Matusow recently caught up with the man who was just named to Advertising Age’s The Creativity 50 to learn why he traded in the brand’s unconventional packaging for a more traditional form, why he’s still obsessed with haptic response, and why he’s appealing to the eco-conscientious supplier community.

Jamie Matusow: A couple of years in, what have you noted as far as consumers’ acceptance of “out of the typical tube” packaging? Your upcoming launch has more of a traditional shape than the rounded, rigid containers you launched initially.

Craig Dubitsky: When we originally launched our paste, the idea was to create something unique to Hello that reflected our design sensibility and that would be really different for the category—something you couldn’t ignore on the shelf, and something that looked pretty enough to display at home. We went from concept to fully commercialized, completely custom product in six months, which is very, very fast, and in the end chose an elegant tottle. We went with this fully custom tottle for several reasons; we wanted something that would be visually disruptive and unique. We wanted to stay away from secondary packaging. We wanted a soft touch finish because I’m a sucker for soft touch, and I’m obsessed with haptic response—how the package and the material communicate back to the user when they touch and interact with it. We wanted something that was space-efficient, and that felt great in the hand. The tottle did a great job in these areas, and an important thing to note is that the formulation itself had a lot to do with the material selection for the pack. Apart from being free from triclosan, dyes, microbeads and artificial sweeteners, our toothpaste formulations are also free from preservatives. This meant that apart from looking modern and disruptive, the package also had to work in harmony with the formulations to maintain their integrity and efficacy throughout the product’s lifecycle. To achieve this, the tottle was comprised of six individual layers of material, including an EVOH barrier layer. All very cool stuff, but while consumers flipped for the brand and the flavors, they were having a hard time expressing everything out of the pack since it was fairly rigid. We also noticed that the white, soft touch tottle—which had no secondary packaging—was getting scuffed-up in transit to shelf. So while it was a great idea to do away with secondary packaging and design something that was super-space efficient, we weren’t optimizing our presence on the shelf.

So, why did we make this change to a more traditional form?

We made the change because we really listen, and we move really fast. People were telling us they loved the pastes. The only complaint we received was about not being able to get all of this paste out of the pack. The shape simply wasn’t as efficient. So we decided to go with an extruded tube that is fairly traditional in terms of its form, but is a bit different if you dig a bit deeper. The new tube is also made up of a multi-layer substrate that still allows us to make the formulations without the need of a preservative. The material still provides an awesome haptic response—the tubes are softer than most in terms of hand-feel, and they have some memory to them so they retain their nice shape. Best of all, people will have an easier time getting the maximum amount of paste out of these new tubes. In addition, they are brightly colored, highlighting the fun flavors, and they come in an equally hard-to-miss box that provides great shelf presence while providing a lot more real estate for us to tell our efficacy story in a very on-brand sort of way. We may come in a box now, but we’re not your grandfather’s toothpaste.
 
JM: How important have you found environmentally friendly packaging to be—on the consumer’s part? How difficult has it been to produce—finding suppliers and materials, etc?

CD: We spend a lot of time thinking about environmental impact. It guided our decision to forgo secondary packaging when it came to our original paste, and to create a super-space-efficient design. We made a decision to make our product domestically, which we feel also has an element of environmental responsibility to it, beyond our desire to make as much as we can right here in the USA. It’s been a challenge to find materials that contain a high degree of PCR that can work with toothpaste, and it’s also difficult to find eco-sensitive materials and manufacturing that can support an affordable price point that won’t make our finished goods so costly that we can’t get them to the largest amount of people possible. We find that there are smaller, very visionary producers and suppliers out there, but they need scale to really make some of their innovations affordable. What I can say to the eco-conscientious supplier community is this: If you’ve got a really innovative materials or manufacturing solution that is looking for a guinea pig to help you scale it up, please give us a call, asap!
 
JM: What’s next for the Hello brand?

CD: We’ve been asked about extending the brand into all sorts of categories, which is very flattering and certainly exciting. We feel that any category that is fear- and shamed-based is fair game for our friendly approach. That said, for the moment we’re deeply focused on the oral care category given its size and global reach, its relevance—there aren’t ready substitutes or alternatives when it comes to brushing your teeth and taking care of your mouth, and the fact that the category has seen fairly limited innovation and emotional relevance beyond basic clinical claims. We’re very excited about our brand new children’s toothpaste range that we are piloting exclusively with Target. It’s free from preservatives, dyes, microbeads, triclosan, and artificial sweeteners, and it features natural flavors like bubble gum, blue raspberry and green apple. We think kids are going to love how it tastes, and parents will be excited by the efficacy, the natural flavors, the xylitol and stevia, and the fact that it’s vegan, never tested on animals, and made in the USA like all of our products. We think compliance will be much higher given the incredible taste of these products, and we think parents will love that as much as the beautiful design, positive messaging, and lack of tacky cartoon characters on the pack. We are putting finishing touches on several new items which will take the brand into various adjacent categories where a dose of fun, fresh, beautiful design and highly natural formulations will make a big impact, and we are also exploring various partnerships that we think are going to really blow some minds. Stay tuned, we’re just getting started!

(Please see video of Dubitsky at BeautyPackaging.com. He will also be speaking at a Happi Magazine breakfast seminar on brand building on April 22; details at seminar.happi.com) •