Perfect Design, OPs Heartbreak
It happens more often than we care to admit … promising Designs, over Function
However, a customer sent us some photos and bottle samples to provide our thoughts on some initial design flaws as well as let us in on some of their filling operation hurdles they had been dealing with and evidently creating just huge amounts of scrap. Also, even worse, it created missed shipments to retailers and eventually a near complete disappearance of their product from store shelves.
The product itself was highly effective and worked well … what happened?! Consumers couldn’t get to the product.
We sent a representative to the fill location and immediately saw multiple concerns in the filling process based on bottle material, deco application as well as design. Now, SkyQ ourselves do not have a design arm, capabilities or function just yet but we can review and evaluate and provide recommendations or even manufacturer or 3rd party support to get your product in the right design you can actually manufacturer.
First opportunity we saw was choice of PET bottle material and oval shape: the PET bottles were sticking to each other on the line causing two extra laborers on the floor to constantly be present ($$$) to ensure the bottles continually moved on their conveyor belt from descrambler to filler to capper to pressure sensitive labeler and through to reshipper packout. A combination of bottle material and oval shape of the bottle (lacking certain design features … more later) were the culprit.
Second concern, the bottle itself was light for the fluid oz fill size of the product and the bottle had thin walls in crucial points for label application.
Last customer described concern, the neck finish area and gap between their new trigger sprayer closure and utilizing the same existing neck finish/shoulder area design as a previous cap used. Didn’t really impact their filling headaches but since we are at — let’s fix this too!
Problem well documented … now SkyQ got to work …
Certain additives can certainly help specific to PET materials and be the quickest fix but this won’t be touched on here as this increases piece pricing as well as the Customer has new ownership, new capital and was hell bent on a similar but newer look to change the direction of this great product and brand to take it from it from its present state of 400,000 to 600,000 units per SKU annual back up to it’s initial glory days of 10,000,000+ units per SKU annual!
PET material for recyclability and Oval Shape were considered must haves to keep brand, on-shelf identity.
From a manufacturing standpoint, we worked with the Customer and two separate manufacturer’s to keep it competitive at decision time for a supplier and came to a final design solution:
Oval Shape kept — however, we flattened the sides or “hips” of the oval at the widest width of the bottle as well as added a 24-grit texture to the flat surface. This provided a solution without additive upcharge at the piece price level as this was all done within the production mold. The flattened “hips” take away the irregularity in interaction between bottles on their conveyor systems causing bottle necks and stickiness to each other.
Existing Front & Back Label Application Changed to a PET Shrink Sleeve Application — this not only gave the customer a top to bottom, 360 degree billboard per se or more space for some eye popping marketing and graphics — it provided a no-brainer solution at the filler who had existing shrink sleeving capabilities.
Neck Finish & Gap Removal — Customers current solution was a two-stage ISBM PET blow molding application requiring a carrier ring for the blow molding process only. Did not support the filler needs or was it desirable for the look of the final production or trigger sprayer application. We provided two manufacturer’s specializing in single stage PET with existing preform tooling to work with their new designed bottle as well as keep their overall capital investment to blow cavities only. Better yet, a last minute discussion point and “oh yeah” throw in from someone who joined our collaborative meeting late … neck carrier ring and final design gap eliminated!
SkyQ by no means has seen it all but our decades worth of packaging experience is at your disposal to provide quick, more efficient, value add discussions and decision making FOR YOU AND YOUR BRANDS!
