Pretty Sticky Health and Beauty Labels

BEYOND GOOD LOOKS
Creating Picture-Perfect Labels for Cosmetic and Nutraceutical Industries. Lotions, creams, oils, washes, cakes, scrubs, powders. Bottles, boxes, bags, wraps, cans, jars. We could go on and on, because beauty, health, and nutraceutical products come in just about any form you can imagine. Which means they can have some incredibly varied packaging options – and some very specific labeling needs. Not to worry. If a product can be packaged and marketed as a beauty or nutraceutical product, Express Labels has the experience and expertise to help you and your customers make it’s packaging a truly lovely thing. Today, we hear from Express Labels Director of Prepress Kelly Cart about the wonderful world of labeling for beauty and health products.



BEAUTY IS AS BEAUTY DOES
Let’s face it — the most beautiful, carefully designed label in the world is utterly useless if it falls off the package. And it’s not much better if the ink runs or smears (especially onto the customer’s hands!). Since many beauty products contain oils and alcohol, or are used in damp environments like the shower or bath, choosing the right label stock and adhesive are paramount. Cart suggests guiding your customers toward durable stock, or at the very least adding durable finishes and varnishes to protect the labels.

One very smart durable stock choice is called “BOPP,” short for “Biaxially-Oriented Polypropylene.” It’s not vinyl, though it certainly acts like it. Available in white, silver metallic, or clear, BOPP is becoming very popular in the beverage industry (think about labels that have to survive coolers and ice buckets). BOPP accepts a variety of inks and varnishes, can be printed in sheets and on rolls, can be cut into shapes, and is an excellent option for wet environments. Cart says BOPP can also be printed as a clear label “with a heavy white backup (white ink background)” that allows shoppers to see both the package contents and read the label contents without getting into highly complicated layers or additional press passes.

Cart invites partners to call Express Labels to discuss BOPP and other options, especially when it comes to beauty products. “In the beauty market, you can spend a lot of money on labeling … a whole lot. But we may be able to help our customers spend less. We have a lot of new equipment, we’re always updating our knowledge base to offer new options to our partners … we’re always trying new things in-house on our own time just to stretch our capabilities.”

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
According to Cart, the beauty industry is much like the wine business in terms of the need for eye appeal. Retail shelves are packed with beauty products, each one trying to outdo the other with promises of quality, luxury, and results. Package shape, style, and the label design play a major role here. “There’s a ton of competition in the beauty industry,” Cart says. “So being eye-catching means a lot. You want to grab the customer’s attention and hold it long enough for them to want to pick the product off the shelf.” This means extra attention to label design. “The more color, the more eye-catching your design, the better chance your product has. In the label world, when a customer is labeling their product, nine times out of ten they want to have the most shelf appeal,” Cart says.

THE BEAUTY OF ADDED VALUE
It’s never too early to consult your label supplier. There are numerous ways customers can add significant shelf appeal to their products – in many cases, quite costeffectively – and Express Labels can always help. Cart gives the example, “One thing that always looks high-quality and attractive is a label that feels like it was embossed or printed on a letterpress. We can actually simulate that with inks and finishes, much less expensive – and on a much more durable label.” In particular, Express Labels’ new Domino n610i durable inkjet press adds significant color “POP.” And because it can actually layer inks, the Domino creates the feeling of raised lettering or artwork. Cart also mentioned the finishing department as an area where you can add significant style. “You can add varnishes in one or more textures, or multiple colors. Our flexo finishers can do embossing and cold-foiling, which gives a label a much more embellished look.” And as we mentioned, Express Labels is trying new things. Cart credits a new marketing effort to pushing more “outside the box” experimentation. “I can go outside what we’ve done before…I see something at a show, and we can now figure out ways to combine different textures and finishes and treatments to create truly one-of-a-kind labels. We’re bolder than we were.” The result? “Companies spend millions of dollars on product labels. We get those projects … but we’re also here to help the startup companies achieve similarly attractive qualities at an affordable cost. We can do these things at a cost that let our partners do products that look like multi-billion companies’ labels, even when they’re just starting out.”

Contact us to learn more about Health and Beauty Labels: