12.01.07
| MeadWestvaco's Evolution2 paperboard can be shipped flat. |
Gift sets need to immediately wow holiday shoppers beset with choices.
By Christine Espositio, Contributing Editor
Fragrance, makeup and skin care gift set sales in department stores topped $750 million in the fourth quarter of 2006 alone, according to Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group. It seems simple enough to get a piece of the action: Pick a few popular items, pack them in special decanters or dispensers, add an accessory item, toss it all into a carton adorned with bows and ribbon (or maybe some bling), and get it on the shelf in time for the holidays.
But gift sets should hardly be an afterthought; they can account for as much as 20% of a company’s total annual sales and can deliver a big end-of-the-year boost for the beauty business in general.
Yet these days, beauty companies are finding themselves in a much more competitive retail environment—one in which their coffrets are competing with clothing and MP3s and the much less personal, but ever-more-popular, gift card. In fact, sales of gift cards are expected to surge 25% this holiday season to $35 billion, according to a new study conducted by Stamford, CT-based Archstone Consulting.
The big question, of course, is how will this year pan out? “It’s so hard to say,” admits Grant.
The Art of Giving
Based on early feedback, gift-givers will be tempted with nicely presented sets featuring skin care products, added extras such as evening bags and holiday decanters. In addition, firms say they are building holiday sets with an eye toward shelf longevity and Earth-friendliness in an attempt to offset their impact on the environment—and lure green shoppers searching for that perfect present.
With anti-aging skin care one of the hottest sectors in the beauty business, companies are looking to ride the market’s coattails with gift sets that team their more functional products. One new example is Oriflame’s Time Reversing Christmas Set, which contains a 50ml Time Reversing Day Cream, a 15ml Time Reversing Eye and Lip Cream and a golden spatula. All three are packed in a gold carton box, produced by Wall BDA, part of the MeadWestvaco group.
| The This World is My World gift set from Cake Beauty. |
Offering a skin care regimen and seasonally themed fragrance packaging is a sound strategy, but Oriflame believes success at the holidays comes by appealing to all shoppers. “We offer gift sets on our most popular, giftable products for the Christmas season,” says Patricia Cas Medina, who is skin care category manager for Oriflame. “We also try to offer gifts for all our consumers within different brands and price points.”
For hair care company Joico, there were two goals for its holiday promotional efforts: Offer shoppers great gift options and build sets that would “have a strong shelf presence as well as longevity beyond the holiday period,” says Mary Freeth, senior director of marketing.
With the help of TK Spectrum, the Darien, CT-based hair care firm is offering Holiday Care Duos, a series of seven limited edition gift sets that pair products aimed at taming and treating tresses during the winter months. Joico is also touting the K-PAK Gift of Gold Trio, which teams retail-sized products and a cosmetics bag, and the K-PAK Night of Style Trio, which features travel-sized products and a free evening bag.
Holiday ‘Green’
With the green movement going full throttle in the cosmetics business, it was only a matter of time before companies incorporated these practices into their gift set endeavors. This season, Cake Beauty is offering Give Twice, which it contends is the first climate neutral, limited edition collection of holiday gift sets.
“We embrace this movement in the market,” says Allison Daisley, marketing and public relations manager for Cake Beauty, which worked with not-for-profit environmental organization Zerofootprint to offset the CO2 emissions generated during the making and shipping of the entire Give Twice collection.
Included in Cake’s Give Twice collection are the Mint Cashmere Cream Collection, which features Glistening Bath and Shower Froth, Glistening Supreme Body Mousse and a 100% soy, clean-burning candle; Have Our Cake, which brings together eight travel-sized products including bath products, hand crème and body glaze; and This is My World, which offers Glistening Bath and Shower Froth in four new scents.
For the latter’s presentation, the Toronto, Ontario company sought a circular tube—which would fit well with its love of things that resemble cakes—that was environmentally sensitive and would help accentuate the beauty of the products.
“We wanted the secondary packaging to self-merchandise and really showcase the fabulous colors and textures of the cake formulations, and felt that the clear PETG material did that very well, while also being both re-usable and recyclable,” notes Daisley.
To pull it together in time for the set’s late October debut, Cake worked with Vue-Craft, which specializes in clear packaging, and turned to graphic designer Hotsos Studios, which created the graphic inserts printed on recycled paperboard using vegetable-based inks. Clear PETG bottles were supplied by Salboro Bottle Co.
Executing the Plan
When it comes to retailing gift sets, there are three things to keep in mind: presentation, presentation and presentation. Yet while suppliers continue to roll out products that will improve a set’s shelf presence, work is also being done to reduce costs, making the business of building gift sets more economical despite the constraints.
| Cosifibel supplies materials for the Antonio Banderas gift set. |
“Seasonal gift box sets are usually manufactured on a tight timetable and within a tight budget,” notes Unifoil Corporation president and chief executive Joe Funicelli.
In addition, Funicelli pointed to the increasing desire to incorporate sustainable packaging materials that also help to differentiate their products and deliver a perception of quality. To that end, Unifoil offers recyclable UltraLustre and Holographic UltraLustre reflective, metallized, nonlaminated plastic substrates, including PLA. The new materials offer outstanding scuff resistance and durability that allow gift set boxes to be shipped without protective poly bags.
Building on its Evolution line of luxury folding cartons, MeadWestvaco recently unveiled Evolution2. This new paperboard package provides the same look as a rigid set box, but costs less to produce and can be shipped flat, allowing up to three times as many Evolution cartons to be shipped in a truck as compared to the same size set box. In addition, the packages require less warehouse space.
Like Evolution, Evolution2 features MeadWestvaco’s Printkote solid bleached sulfate (SBS) blanks joined to scored chipboard stiffeners, which create durable carton structures. The printing surface supports hot stamping, UV offset printing and gloss, semi-gloss, matte and UV specialty finishes. In addition, Evolution2’s SBS substrate masks the rough surface of the chipboard stiffener that often shows through a set box’s paper wrap and can spoil its appearance.
Finding a reliable supplier is imperative anytime of the year, but when it comes to the holiday season, only the best can help execute a project quickly and economically. Cosfibel has proved to be a go-to supplier for Puig in Spain, as it has been tapped for the third year in a row to create all Antonio Banderas brand promotional gift sets. Puig is using Cosfibel’s Smartbox, which, according to Stanislas Peronnet, general manager of Cosfibel Creative Packaging, offers a “unique platform for a precise budget.”
Presentation will remain paramount going forward—gift sets will need to become ever more sophisticated as the beauty companies continue to face stiff competition inside and outside the industry. This is no time to cut corners or wait to the last minute and rush products out the shipping dock, say industry experts.
“Unique products need a unique environment,” notes Peronnet. “Without a deep sense of the quality of the presentation, you may ruin a lot of effort made on a launch.”
