Jerome Fraillon, global director, package development, for Smashbox Cosmetics, got his start in the beauty industry while following his father, Patrick Fraillon—a 30-year industry veteran—around the Augros beauty packaging injection molding plant in Villiers-le-Bel, France.
 
Jerome started his more formal career as an intern at Calvin Klein and Avon, and then got a full-time position at Victoria’s Secret Beauty where he was in charge of the color line. When he wanted to move on to a larger company, he spent more than three years at Coty, where he worked on Kenneth Cole, Marc Jacobs, Adidas, Roots and many other brands.
 
New York had been very good to Jerome, but he wanted to test the waters of the West Coast, so he moved to San Francisco to work for Bare Escentuals. Under Jing Zhu, he learned about timeline management, price negotiations, and supplier relations. Together, they launched the Click Lock Go jar, which dramatically reduced the mess of BE’s loose powder. Now at Smashbox, which was acquired by Estée Lauder in July 2010, Jerome was hired as the brand’s first packaging developer. His role is to launch beautiful, innovative packages while improving the consumer experience.

Beauty Packaging recently caught up with Jerome to ask him a few questions.

BP: How did you aspire to your current position?
 
JF: While I was in high school, I studied economics and sociology. It was really interesting, but I was always more of an engineer. When the time came to go to college, my father recommended I look at RIT. Within the first quarter, I was hooked. I’m now in my 11th year in beauty packaging, and in my sixth month at Smashbox, where I’m more challenged than ever. We are moving very quickly, and developing beautiful packaging at the same time.

BP: What key elements define the packaging at Smashbox?

JF: Smashbox is a very young, trendy and creative company. It breathes dynamism. Packaging has been a representation of the company. They were the first to come out with the powder grinder, Halo. They were also ahead of their time with products like O-Glow, which adapts to the user’s skin tone. We remain a brand that continually innovates. We want to be first on the market with innovative packaging or brand new formulas.

BP: When does packaging enter the whole product development picture?

JF: When developing a new product, the packaging must be considered as early as possible. More and more packages are being developed specifically for one purpose: to give the customer an outstanding product experience. Take for example a new liquid foundation. As soon as an early submission of the product is evaluated, the packaging should be evaluated. How do we want the product to be dispensed? A pump, a pour, or a tube? Would a pump affect the formula? What is our cost objective? In beauty, packaging is equally important to the formulation. The customer’s very first impression of the product is the package. If it doesn’t look good, if it doesn’t perform well, the customer will not like the formula even if it’s absolutely the best.

BP: How do you typically approach a new packaging design?

JF: As Paul Szabo, one of the talented designers I worked with at Coty Prestige, would say: “Necessity is the mother of all invention.” When tackling a new packaging project, I listen to the customer’s (marketing teams, product development, or R&D) feedback. While at Bare Escentuals, the feedback was: Powder is messy. While developing a mascara, the feedback could be: It is clumpy or it doesn’t give me enough volume. These inputs give the packaging developers and engineers a need… a necessity. With that information, we can start investigating solutions. If we’re creating a completely custom package, we work toward filling a void in the market. For example, a powder component that contains the mess. If we’re taking an existing package like a mascara, we work to tailor it to our customers’ feedback.
 
I love to create a new package by free-handing a drawing and showing it to my product development or marketing team. A freehand drawing is very loose and it helps our customers see where our minds are heading. It can be endlessly revised quickly, without involving a whole team of engineers and experts.
 
Once the freehand drawing looks like a possible good direction, the designer or developer can get the engineers involved to really work on the nuts and bolts of the design with minor revisions.

BP: How much attention is given to packaging during a product launch?

JF: Packaging and Product are the two pillars of a development. Milestones revolve around these two parts of a new product launch. As most of us in the packaging industry know, a package has seven seconds to sell itself to a customer. During those seven seconds, the customer may not even touch the product.
 
Marketing teams are aware the package is the very first interaction a customer will have with a product. For that reason, the beauty industry revolves so strongly around packaging. If we were in electronic packaging, the main purpose would be to protect the hardware we’re selling. In our industry, we sell a complete experience. The price of the package in the cost of goods (COGs) shows how much emphasis is placed on the containers. On some projects, more than 65% of the COGs is spent on the packaging. This also translates in far more time spent talking about the package than the product during a development.

BP: Any advice for up-and-coming packaging designers?

JF: Up-and-coming packaging designers and engineers are in a great industry. Beauty packaging is ever-changing. We follow fashion trends, reinvent, improve upon and constantly innovate. The important part of their job is to stay creative not only within their brand, but to keep looking around the industry. Many of us end up so focused on our day-to-day duties, we forget there are hundreds of other beauty companies on the market who come out with innovations ever year. Designers should shop around at department stores and boutiques in order to keep on top of industry trends. If possible, a trip to Europe and Asia always brings brand new ideas back to the office.