Tubes Hit their Target
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Market needs encourage the development of a unique yet affordable
tube that offers dispensing precision.
(As seen in Tube News, The Magazine of The Tube Council) –
When launching a new product, beauty companies have to target market
needs. Mary Kay Inc., one of the largest direct sellers of skin
care and color cosmetics, was planning a key launch in both the
United States and Latin America of its highly effective TimeWise®
Targeted-Action™ Line Reducer. The product targets  areas
of the face, including the eyes and forehead. The firm was developing
a silicone-tip click-pen package for the U.S. marketplace, based
on its domestic retail price point. But click pens are expensive.
For the Latin American version of the product to be a success, it
would have to be offered at a more affordable price. Creating an
aesthetically appealing package, with the high functionality of
a click pen that was economical to produce, presented a unique challenge.
Mary Kay had worked with World Wide Packaging (WWP; Florham Park,
NJ) before and asked the packaging technology supplier to help find
a solution. “We chose World Wide Packaging primarily based
on its competitive pricing and its promise to deliver a quality
custom product within our aggressive project timeline,” says
Randy Moeggenberg, Mary Kay’s manager, package engineering.
“They had also successfully completed some quick tooling for
us in the past, so we decided to reward them with another opportunity.”
Moeggenberg says that Mary Kay’s “primary package requirement
was the ability to deliver a user-controlled dosage with the precision
appropriate to the eye area in a soft-feeling application. Additionally,
we needed a package that delivered on quality and aesthetics and
stayed within our cost targets. A custom shaped silicone tip incorporated
into a tube seemed like the ideal solution, but to our knowledge,
it had never been done before. As a result, the silicone-tip tube
had to be built from the ground up.”
The applicator tips that are typically found on tubes are made of
high density polyethylene and injection molded to the sleeve. Such
tips are fine for lip applications, but are much too rigid to be
used on the delicate eye area, reports World Wide Packaging. The
company claims that the silicone-tip applicator is soft and precise.
It’s ideal for the sensitive skin around the eyes and enables
the user to easily target small problem areas. But until now, silicone
tips were only attached to click pens.
Colin Clasen, World Wide Packaging’s vice president of sales,
says, “The silicone applicator itself was not the innovation.
The innovation – and the biggest challenge - was attaching
the silicone tip securely to the small 16-mm tube, without it coming
loose or leaking. We knew the key to the success of this package
would be quick development, while ensuring that we could meet Mary
Kay’s high quality standards. We’d never seen anyone
who had thought to combine a high end cosmetic component –
the silicone tip - with a traditional plastic tube. We did and came
up with a whole new concept in packaging.”
WWP developed a collar to secure the silicone tip to the head of
the tube. It used a five layer co-extruded tube sleeve to prevent
product loss. A custom molded and sprayed cap was developed. It
incorporated a beefed up pintel seal to further prevent product
from escaping out of the silicone tip’s orifice. A valve actuator
just below the tip regulates the amount of product dispensed for
greater control and ease of application.
The silicone-tip tube is a joint creation of World Wide Packaging
and Mary Kay. Moeggenberg says, “Although the design process
was done almost exclusively via e-mail, we had unit-cavity samples
for testing less than 30 days later. The whole process was surprisingly
smooth, from the design to the engineering to the production. It
was really a testament to World Wide Packaging’s development
capabilities.”
World Wide Packaging’s Clasen says, “Developing this
custom package with Mary Kay was a challenge, but one that came
with great rewards. With the successful completion of taking this
hybrid tube/component combination from concept to production, we
now have an entirely new, high end package to offer to the marketplace.”
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