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ejuvenation of mind, body and soul is experienced in a number of ways — from a trip to the nearest day spa, to a jaunt across the country to a posh spa resort, or even to a trek half-way around the world to an exotic spa paradise. However, the real luxury for many consumers has become the ability to bring the indulgent spa experience right into the home, to be enjoyed whenever the spirit moves them.
According to The NPD Group, Inc., Port Washington, NY, cosmeceuticals and clinical/spa brands grew from a 2% dollar share of the luxury skin care products market in 1998 to a 7% percent dollar share in 2002.
“While the total skin care market grew by just 3% in dollar volume in 2002, cosmeceuticals and clinical/spa brands outpaced the market at a phenomenal rate of 62%,” the company observed.
Consumers who had partaken of spa services, “wanted to replicate some of the spa rituals on a more regular basis, and others who had not, still wanted to relax and pamper themselves,” according to the newly published report “The Market for Cosmetics & Toiletries in the USA, June 2004” Euromonitor International, Chicago.
Retail stores have carved out a growing portion of the professional skin care market, according to “The U.S. Professional Skin Care Market 2003 report from Kline & Company, Little Falls, NJ, and, the largest gains through 2008 are expected to be in that sector.
From Sea to Shining...Kitchens
Marine-based products remain popular choices for at-home spa product formulations, with seaweed, kelp and sea salts leading the way. Essential oil and aromatherapy benefits are also a popular mainstay, as is the use of plant extracts.
The latest and growing trend in the at-home spa products segment, however, according to Euromonitor’s report, is the incorporation of food ingredients and aromas into treatment products. “The ‘food’-themed personal care products bring luxury, hedonism and ‘warm, fuzzy’ feelings to the user,” the report indicated. “Americans can smell the delicious aroma of products and be reminded of the taste and aroma of home baked foods of their childhood, without gaining any calories. Facial masks are almost good enough to eat when you read the ingredient labels – e.g. papaya, pumpkin and mulberry.”
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| Origins’ Calm To Your Senses Lavender and Vanilla Collection is packaged in soothing, straightforward containers and colors. |
A Sensory Combination
Not at all limited to niche lines, many prestige department store brands have developed at-home spa lines. Origins recently launched Calm To Your Senses Lavender and Vanilla Collection. Among the line’s offering is a body smoother that combines white and brown sugars for buffing, while olive and jojoba oils hydrate and soften. The line’s glistening body powder features mica infused with silica, all housed within a powder puff. Olive, grape seed and apricot kernel oils merge in the line’s body souffle.
The entire Calm To Your Senses Lavender and Vanilla Collection is housed in an array of soothing, serene lavender-colored bottles and jars with clear and silver caps. Underscoring its natural ingredients, a long stem of purple and white flowers graces each package.
In addition to the calming line, Origins has added two spa masks. The No Puffery Cooling Mask for puffy eyes is packaged in a tube colored with fresh cool tint “to show off the gel texture of the product itself,” noted Lucy Cooper, executive director, Art and Design Worldwide, Origins. She added, “The color [a pale green] is a new one for us in skin care, but we feel it communicates sensory aspects of the product.”
You’re Getting Warmer Purifying clay mask is a self-heating mask that deep cleans pores while sea salts purify and exfoliate. Its package uses a warm color for the copy to better convey its great sensory effect, according to Cooper. She explained that although the product works well when dispensed from a tube, “we have had some filling issues with this product due to the density of the formula. The tube is filled to maximum, but within a day the product’s weight makes it settle and therefore appear underfilled.” She added that, due to this issue, Origins will be moving to a product-colored opaque tube in the future.
Last fall, Borghese Inc. joined the home spa trend with the release of eight At-Home Spa Kits. The kits were developed from the treatments of the famed Terme di Montecatini Spa in Tuscany, Italy, according to the company. All of Borghese’s spa products are formulated with the firm’s exclusive Acqua di Vita “Living Water” Complex.
Among the offerings from Borghese is the Spa Skin care Collection, Spa Mani for the hands, Spa Pedi for the feet and Spa Capelli for the hair. A restorative kit for tired eyes — Spa Occhi — is also part of the collection.
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| Clarins color-codes its spa products—blue for Relaxing, yellow for Tonic. The packages are clean and tailored; the gold band underscores quality. |
Long-known for its naturally based treatment products, Clarins added its Aroma Body Care collection to bring the spa into the home. The body polishers combine salt, beet sugar, hazelnut, shea butter and palm oil to exfoliate the skin, while the body balm features apple seed for after bath moisturizing.
Each product is available in two forms, Relaxing and Tonic. Relaxing Body Polisher is housed in a soothing blue jar, topped with a white cap with gold band. The Relaxing Body Balm is offered in a complementary blue tube.
Communicating energy, a bright yellow hue is used to color the packaging for Tonic Body Polisher and Body Balm.
Body Treatment Oil in Relax and Tonic has also been added to the collection, as well as Bath and Shower Concentrate in both versions. The Bath and Shower Concentrates are packaged in shades that match their corresponding products, while the Body Treatment Oils are both offered in a yellow tone.
Spa Treatment for the Mass Market
Inspired by the apothecary tradition, the Apothary line from Yardley of London, a division of Cosmopolitan Cosmetics, is “a complete line of bath and body products for mass market distribution that reinterpret time-honored remedies into modern treatments with distinct skin-benefiting properties,” the company reported.
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| The Apothary line from Yardley of London offers upscale formulas and packaging that shows off ingredients to the mass market. |
The Apothary line includes Citrus twist, Let it glow, Serves you bright and Softness by the sea body lotions. “When we introduced Apothary, we promised to bring innovation and excitement to bath with upscale formulas and unique concepts never seen before at mass, like our warming sugar body scrub, Turn Up the Heat, which offers an amazing burst of heat when activated by water,” commented Lisa Hershkowitz, marketing director, Cosmopolitan Cosmetics.
“We chose flask-inspired bottles with subtle metallic accents to evoke the idea of an English apothecary, from which the brand’s concept was derived,” explained Hershkowitz. “We offered a mason jar to bring this traditional charm to the line, but with a modern twist as our jar is plastic rather than glass. The packaging is all clear to let the products’ beauty shine through.
“Many of our scrubs are anhydrous, so we felt it was very important to place them in tubes rather than jars to protect active ingredients,” she continued.” An added bonus of this feature is that it make the product easier for our consumer to use.”
This summer, Yardley is adding the Brighton Beach line, a selection of products that can be used to moisturize and exfoliate after a day at the beach.
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| Frills’ cartons feature cute female characters and die-cut windows that show off the product to appeal to shoppers. |
Frills, another mass market line, is offered by New Cosmar Corporation as an at-home treatment line inspired by professional treatment products. Full treatment kits for specific body needs are offered, as well as single products and trial/travel sizes of single products.
The all-inclusive kits are designed to meet every essential hand, foot and nail care need, according to the company. Kits and individual products have clever names. Kits include: Manicure SEAcrets Hand & Nail Facial with essences of the sea; Hand Lift AHA & Collagen Kit; Calming Soy-ful Spa Pedicure and others. Individual spa-inspired items include Sole Revealer Loofah Lava Scrub, Soy-ful Ginger Soy Milk Foot Soak and “Hey, Sugar!” Pineapple Sugar Hand & Foot Scrub.
Each of the products, whether individual items or kits, is packaged in a multi-toned, blue cardboard carton that features a hip woman in various life situations. The front of the carton includes a window cut-out that showcases the products inside, which are packaged simply in plastic bottles with color coordinated labeling.
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| Spa Sciences designs its cartons to tell the products’ story. |
Spa Sciences, a newcomer to the mass market, offers nine core products that it promises are technologically advanced at affordable price points. Sold at Target stores, the line includes: Firming Intensive Toner, Anti-Aging Cellular Renewal Serum, Cell Rejuvenation Night Cream, Transdermal Collagen Beauty Mask, White Tea Bamboo Cloth Mask and Eye Patch Therapy.
The company was established in July 2003 and started shipping products just after the new year. It saw an opportunity to bring sought after medical-type treatment products to the mass market. “Women are looking for products that have a different application process, that are innovative with technology, but not just something trendy that doesn’t have the efficiency,” stated Barbara Ragon, vice president of marketing, Spa Sciences. “The ingredients used in these products are ingredients that you’ll find in a $100 cream that’s sold in a department store or a high-end beauty store. And, we use our ingredients at the highest level that they are clinically tested at, so that our consumers will get the highest level of efficiency and benefits.”
Spa Sciences’ best-selling item is an exfoliation kit that provides in-home microdermabrasion. The kit includes a patented exfoliation cream, a patent-pending exfoliation tool and a soothing botanical cream, all for $29.99.
Spa Sciences also offers three masks as adjuncts to its facials. “Our collagen beauty mask, retinol eye patch and lipopeptide eye patch all offer transdermal delivery systems,” stated Ragon.
In packaging the Spa Sciences’ products, Ragon stressed that the company wanted a very clean package design. “In looking at the package for the first time, we want it to be easily understood.”
Ragon said that Spa Sciences also wanted the products to stand out on the shelf, “but not stand out in a way that was just trendy or fashionable. We wanted to get our technology across and the point of difference between our product and whatever else is out there. “
On the outer carton of all the masks, the patches and the exfoliation kit, the company employs a visual of a woman using the product or with the product on her face. There is also a visual of the product.
Creams are featured in frosted jars with silver caps, while the serum products are housed in Italian airless pump-type containers. “They’re very clean and upscale looking, and they’re easy to use,” reported Ragon.
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| Avon’s Planet Spa line is made up of five groups, each featuring ingredients from a particular region in the world. |
Mary Kay’s Private Spa line includes four fragrances, each designed for a certain mood or emotion. |
Nu Skin’s Galvanic Spa System II includes products designed to be used with a special instrument. |
Direct Sales Go Around the World and Back
Direct marketing companies are also grabbing a piece of the home-spa pie, with exotic and technologically advanced offerings for customers.
With the development of its Planet Spa collection, Avon is looking to become a strong global player in the home spa market segment. The collection now boasts five separate lines, with more planned. “The impact of the brand is around the story of delivering spa experiences from different areas of the world,” reported Kathleen Kordowski, vice president, Global Package Development, Avon Products.
Each collection incorporates ingredients from the region it is named for. Avon is planning to grow the Planet Spa line with additions from two other areas of the world — Brazilian Rainforest and Secrets of India.
As a global brand, packaging for Planet Spa had to be not only affordable but also accessible to all global markets in order to maintain brand consistency, according to the company. “We chose high quality PET bottles and jars as well as tubes,” reported Kordowski.
“Design, marketing, product development and R&D worked closely to develop the look of the product since it becomes part of the design in clear packaging. We pay close attention to the stability of colors and any other aesthetic element that may be initially visible to the consumer.” Kordowski explained.
The key focus of the packaging is a unique brand icon that is in the shape of a globe that represents the Planet Spa story. “Three- to four-color silk-screened graphics on tubes or PET bottles make up most of Planet Spa. PET jars feature labels on the cap,” continued Kordowski.
“The consistent layout of Planet Spa offers itself naturally to adapting the design through colors only for each flavor. With a muted color palette for each ingredient story and unique product descriptors along with product aesthetic, the overall look of Planet Spa is a modern take for Avon on a natural benefit driven story that takes you to your desired destination,” concluded Kordowski.
Mary Kay’s Private Spa Collection consists of four offerings: Embrace Harmony, Embrace Dreams, Embrace Happiness and Embrace Today. Each is scented to respond to a woman’s mood, according to the company. Embrace Harmony seeks to calm the mind, while Embrace Dreams is a relaxing scent designed to prepare the user for a restful night. Embrace Happiness is designed to energize, and Embrace Today aims to help maintain an energetic mood all day long. Each scent comes in a body wash, moisture lotion and sheer fragrance mist.
Packaging colors are designed to coincide with the effects of each of the fragrances. Embrace Harmony is offered in a calm blue tone, while Embrace Dreams is a soothing pink. Embrace Happiness is, characteristically, in a sunny yellow, and, Embrace Today, an upbeat, optimistic orange.
Provo, UT-based Nu Skin International, also a direct marketer, launched Nu Skin Polishing Peel at its convention in February 2004. Polishing Peel is a non-abrasive skin refinisher formulated with pumpkin enzymes and bentonite clay said to deliver at home equivalent to a professional microdermabrasion session, according to the company.
“The tube was chosen to basically deliver the product to the customer in an easy fashion, and a unit carton allows for more information to be conveyed about the product. The carton can also contain an insert,” said R.D. Rex, packaging production engineer manager, Nu Skin International. “The tube also features a flip-top closure to accentuate the ease of use.”
Also introduced in February, the Galvanic Spa System II is a multi-purpose treatment system that allows the user to enjoy a full-body spa experience at home, according to Nu Skin. An update of the company’s Galvanic Spa System, the instrument featured in the kit now offers three interchangeable conductors for the face, body and scalp instead of just one for the face. Products have also been developed that are designed to work directly with the instrument, including Pre-Treatment and Treatment Gels for the face, Body Shaping Gel for smoothing cellulite and skin, and Nutriol HairFitness for the scalp.
The Galvanic Spa Body Shaping Gel comes in a glaminate tube that was selected to match the technological image of the Galvanic Spa, according to Rex. “Both feature a kind of high-tech look. It’s a way to join the appearance of a cosmetic product with electronics, to a certain extent,” he noted.
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| Buroland packages its Black Sea Salt in glass for practical and aesthetic reasons. The salt does not scratch the glass and it has a prestige look. |
Specialty Lines Seek Something Unique
Buroland Production Inc., is the only importer of Black Sea Pink Salt into the U.S., according to Viktor Burovsky, its chief executive. Sold through boutiques and specialty stores, as well as catalogs and online, Black Sea Pink Salt Exfoliating Body Buff and Relaxing Foot Scrub offers salt crystals combined with such natural ingredients as laurel, chamomile, eucalyptus, linden blossom, rosemary and green tea.
Glass jars hold the products, a conscious choice by the company. “We were looking for glass because it gives a very rich look to the package,” stated Burovsky. The use of glass was also important, he added, because salt can scratch a plastic container. “Over the long term if you put the product on the retail shelf and it stays for a while, the look of the product can be damaged if you use plastic.”
Buroland has launched a new line, Spa Essence, a variety of exfoliators. “We have Olive Leaf, Rosemary, Lavender, Sea Kelp, Coffee Beans and Chocolate,” Burovsky explained. The exfoliators also incorporate Black Sea Pink Salt, along with their primary ingredients and other natural products. “For example, in the lavender exfoliator, we grind the flowers of the lavender,” he said.
“The exfoliators are packaged in very nice looking, low profile jars with aluminum caps,” he explained. Polypropylene labels are colored in ingredient coordinated colors, such as brown for the chocolate exfoliator. “We also have small pictures of cocoa beans, sea kelp, lavender flower, rosemary and the others,” he added. “That way, people can just look at the label and know what it is.”
Archipelago Botanicals, an upscale marketer of aromatherapy candles that has expanded into skin care and spa-type products, launched its Sugar Collection last summer to tap into the desire of harried Americans to pamper themselves with upscale, home-spa treatments. “The natural antioxidants and alpha hydroxyl acids found in sugar and the additives (eg mango extract) promise well-published benefits to damaged or aging skin,” said David Klass, Archipelago Botanicals’ owner.
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| Archipelago Botanicals’ Sugar Collection is packaged to serve easily as a gift—whether for the shopper or someone else. |
Healing Waters has been repackaged in clear, shatter-proof PET to show off formulas and be safe in baths and showers. Label colors reflect the shades of the sea and the color the bath salts turn bath water. |
The packaging was developed to appeal to the upscale consumer, overwhelmingly female, who make up the company’s demographic. “The sugar cane closure device, coupled with the color coordinated sugar graphics that were created specifically for the packaging, were chosen to instantly attract our customers, who are already interested in sugar-based products,” Klass explained.
He added that the gusseted box creates almost a giftable item that the company’s consumers can buy for themselves. “Unique tapered boxes used for the packaging of products in tubes help give unique style lines on shelf, and avoid the chronic problem of tapered tubes that rattle around in conventional, rectangle boxes,” he remarked.
Healing Waters is the spa offering from herbal therapy company Aromafloria. Sold through specialty stores, Healing Waters brings together marine essences with therapeutic plant extracts and essential oils, according to the company. Targeted care products include: Tighten & Tone Treatment Gel for cellulite; Spa Scrub Smoothing Body Polish; Mineral Soak; Firming Lotion; and Mineral Mud.
“When it came to the label design for Healing Waters, we were looking for a calm/flowing feeling,” commented Sharon K. Christie, founder, Aromafloria. “The result is curves that move across the label. Pale sea foam green and white also reflect the purity and calm of water,” she added. “This captures the elements of making the bath with Healing Waters crystals, which turns water a pale green cast.”
Though the original jars and bottles in the line were made of glass, there has been a concerted effort to now use PET. The new PET jars and bottles are duplicates of the original glass, incorporating a wave design, complete with ripples to reinforce the flowing motif.
“The Treatment Gel is a very functional package design, where the cap is the applicator,” Christie pointed out. “It gives the sense of rollers used to massage and smooth the skin. It’s particularly good for someone who’s using liposuction to smooth an area.”
Wilma Schumann, which calls itself “the Clinical Skin Care Line,” distributes its various products through prestige spas and salons as well as online. It offers two new masks — Azulene and Camphor — for the treatment of dry, sensitive skin and oily, acne-prone skin, respectively. The Azulene and Camphor masks were originally introduced in 2000 and packaged in 4 oz. jars. The masks were re-launched in late 2003 with 4 oz. tottle packaging. “This new packaging allows for flexible manufacturing as well as an attractive look for our masks in our signature blue and gold colors,” said Pedro Ortega, president, Wilma Schumann.
The blue 4 oz. tottle was selected for several reasons, including its attractive looks, ease of product filling and dispensing, flexible manufacturing features, larger printable area and local manufacturer, Ortega explained. “The tottle fits nicely in the palm of the hand and also provides a user friendly feel that allowed the consumer to apply the masks very easily. We selected a black flip-top cap as our closure. This cap seals the product after every use and protects the product from drying.”
The products have experienced considerable sales increases that can be attributed to the change in packaging. “Azulene increased by 36% and Camphor by 12% since the packaging change,” Ortega noted.
For consumers who want to replicate the spa experience at home, rejuvenation is just a shopping trip away.
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