Glass Act

Decoration techniques can make glass packaging even more sophisticated and attractive.

By Christine Esposito, Contributing Editor

Nothing says luxury like glass packaging. Yet glass has serious drawbacks. It breaks. It’s heavy. While you know how good your glass-enclosed product will look and feel in the hands of a potential customer, odds are you’ll opt for another material.

Aside from fine fragrance, nail lacquer and the occasional skin treatment, glass packaging has taken a backseat to more practical plastic jars and bottles. According to The Freedonia Group, demand for glass containers in cosmetic and toiletry applications is forecast to increase less than 1% per year, reaching 1.3 billion units in 2009 —and that’s actually a modest improvement over numbers posted between 1999-2004 during a wave of conversions to plastic materials.

Bormioli supplied the bottles for this Bond fragrance.

But advances in glass technology have made it lighter in weight and more durable, and a bevy of decorating techniques and tools (see “Glass Decorating 101” p. 54) can further elevate this truly classy material. Of course, some of the technologies are more economical than others. For example, the cost of silkscreen far outweighs labeling techniques.  Yet if a company wants a truly luxurious package, it needs to weigh the pros and cons of more expensive technologies, say experts like Robert DeProspo, executive vice president, sales and marketing with USS Corp.

“There are so many pros and cons of going into glass decoration, but silkscreen always gives an upscale look,” says DeProspo, whose Newark, NJ-based glass decorating firm provided the silkscreening on Bond No. 9’s recently launched Saks Fifth Avenue for Him and Her fragrances.

Moving into the future, different technologies, including ultraviolet (UV) ink and coatings, will make it more cost-effective to decorate glass. According to Vonda Simon, president of SeaCliff Packaging, in the last three years, changes in UV cure ink have been dramatic. “We did not see any UV ink for glass two years ago that had good adhesion and durability.  Today there are several ink companies working in this area and offering inks that work well on flint glass.”

“UV cure materials for ink transfer and possibly for the spray coatings, will allow glass decorating to have better color distribution and be far less expensive and use much less energy,” adds Simon.

So just how can decorating techniques make glass even more appealing? Following are some new examples of beauty companies using decorating techniques to further rev up signature bottles, add line extensions quickly and at lower costs, mimic nature’s vibrant hues, and get personal with their customers during the holidays.

USS Corp did the silkscreening for this Bond scent.

Bond No. 9 Takes 5

Bond No. 9 is one company that takes decorating glass to new heights, and for its newest scent, the company is channeling iconic American pop artist Andy Warhol.  Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory, an “ambiguous male-female gender” fragrance, is the first in what will become a series of Warhol collectibles from Bond No. 9. It seems a natural pairing; the New York City-based fragrance house is as well-known for its artsy bottle designs as its perfumes.  Enhanced with a background of textured silver, the vivid graphics on the Bormioli-supplied Silver Factory bottle are inspired by Warhol’s famed Campbell’s Soup Can silkscreens, which were created in 1965.

Avon Extends the Streak

Riding high on the success of his first scent, Driven, Avon and Derek Jeter are teaming up once again to launch Derek Jeter Driven Black. For the flanker, Avon and the MLB All-Star wanted to create a look that would match the dramatic woody oriental juice, which includes notes of saffron and blood orange. When it debuts this month, Driven Black will be housed in the same bottle as Driven (a 145g flint bottle from Heinz Glass), but Avon has coated it with black translucent spray to give the new fragrance a dramatic appearance. According to JJ Chen, senior package engineer with Avon, using feeder black for Driven Black’s bottle would have been an extremely slow process and it wasn’t cost effective.

Avon is Driven.

“By using spray rather than feeder, we can achieve better control. It is important for Avon to continue finding better ways to achieve design at an affordable price,” says Chen.

At Oriflame, Purple Reigns

When a company picks world-renowned perfumers to create a special series of scents inspired by natural gemstones, the packaging needs to be as inspirational as the juice inside and the precious stone itself.

Amethyst Fatale eau de parfum, the first fragrance in Oriflame’s Gem Collection, is packaged in a “timelessly elegant colored glass bottle,” according to the Swedish direct seller, which tapped perfumer Jean Jacques as the nose. To achieve the intense, yet feminine violet color of amethyst in the packaging, Oriflame selected a Heinz Glass flint glass bottle, which has a single color screen around the sides (360°) and a single color spray at the bottom, according to Oriflame.

Heinz Glass capures this new scent from Oriflame.

Clinique Gets Personal

This holiday season, Clinique is giving fragrance gift-givers something to really smile about. The Estée Lauder division is putting a new twist on the packaging of a decade-old scent, selling personalized photo bottles of Happy, a multi-level floral fragrance.
   
Digital images can be uploaded to www.clinique.com, and Clinique will deliver Happy—with a photo label placed directly onto the bottle—in two weeks.  In a select number of doors, shoppers can get their customized Happy bottle made with a photo taken in the store, which is then transferred to the bottle via a die sublimation process. With the custom packaging, a 100ml EDT of Happy is $52—just $2.50 more than the same size bottle without the one-of-a-kind graphics.
   
And for each Happy personalized photo bottle purchased, Clinique will make a $1 donation to Big Brothers Big Sisters, up to $10,000.