Going It Alone In the Health and Beauty Market

David Rogers, owner and creative partner of brand and packaging design consultancy We Are Pure, believes that the perception of own-brand health and beauty products is changing.

For many years, big brands have dominated the health and beauty sector. Backed by multi-million pound marketing campaigns, sales have remained strong and there’s been little room for own-brand, and niche, new-to-market offerings.

However, the market is changing and tighter purse strings mean consumers are more willing to experiment with different products. This has opened up a great opportunity for own-brand and niche products that, up until recently, had a reputation as the ‘poor relation’.

Retailers are wise to the fact that own-brand in particular is where the money is, presenting them with lucrative margins to counteract falling sales across the high street.

Whereas own-brand offerings present an obvious financial opportunity, they, alongside niche lines, also open up a host of design options for consultancies like us.

Work on established, commercial brands tends to be more about tweaking rather than reinventing, making subtle changes as part of a gentle packaging evolution. As a design team, we live for, and thrive on, those projects where we’re given a relatively free reign—an opportunity that own and niche-brand NPD provides.

The challenge, particularly in the health and beauty market, is to work creatively to dispel the myth that own-brand is inferior quality, making sure that the finished product can hold its own on a shelf packed with household names.

Whereas the main brands tend to cater to the mass market, own-brand and niche products can afford to be slightly more targeted, presenting an opportunity for designers to be more daring and bespoke.

Without a doubt, this is a rapidly growing market. To put it into context, in one week alone, we received four inquiries about helping to launch own-brand health and beauty ranges.

So, how does it work in practice? Well, a perfect example is the project we’ve just completed for Pervoe Reshenie, one of Russia’s leading health and beauty manufacturers.

Having already created a number of the company’s brands, including Natura Siberica, Mama Kam Chat Ka and Organic Garden, we were tasked with launching a range of new stores in Moscow, simply called ‘Organic Shop’, to sell organic health and beauty products from Pervoe Reshenie’s own ranges.

We worked alongside the company to create the store concept, design the logo and interiors. We also handled all aspects of in-store design, from creating the POS and marketing video, to visualizing the staff uniforms and gift boxes.

In addition, we worked on the packaging for a unique Organic Shop health and beauty range. This included bottles and labels for an in-store hair-care pod, where shampoos and conditioners are mixed to suit an individual’s hair type.

This is one of those prime examples of own-brand and niche offerings presenting an opportunity for designers to create something quite personal and unique, with the end result allowing the in-store experts to personalize the label for each customer, depending on the mixture of ingredients within the product.

This whole project is an example of taking the design process to the extreme and creating a fully integrated own-brand offering. This is certainly the way that I see the market developing over the coming years, especially given the fact that it’s worked well for the likes of The Body Shop and Molton Brown in the UK. Pervoe Reshenie, for example, is already looking at adapting the concept for a western market, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be alone!

It obviously won’t spell the end of big brand dominance, but from both an economical and creative stance, it certainly can’t hurt to have some new contenders to the health and beauty crown.