The Future of Fragrance Packaging

2022/03/22

Fragrance packaging suppliers discuss innovations in bottles, caps and cartons, and more—and how fragrance brands can meet consumer demands.

Glass perfume bottles with sculptural curves, precisely molded corners, or glistening facets help lure consumers—but the most successful designs are connected to the juice, experts say.

Package designers often go to great lengths to ensure the consumer can “smell” what’s inside a bottle with their eyes.

“That’s visual communication,” says Marc Rosen of Marc Rosen Associates—and a member of Beauty Packaging’s Board of Advisors.

“The bottle is the silent salesman. The consumer sees it in an ad, online or on counter and it needs to speak to them so they think, ‘I want to touch that.”
–Marc Rosen

Rosen is known for mentoring fragrance packaging design students and raising funds for Pratt University’s Scholarship Fund at his annual Art of Packaging Gala.

Rosen describes how to accomplish this:

“If the edges look sharp in the glass, it has to feel sharp or the customer is disappointed and will put it down. If a bottle looks rounded and sinuous, it has to feel sexy when they pick it up. That’s what will make the customer want to smell it.”

Pair an elegant bottle with a luxurious cap, and consumers are even more enticed to try a spritz, marketers hope.

And the carton isn’t just an afterthought—it’s where every fragrance’s story begins.

“The carton that encloses a fragrance bottle is the very first part of the packaging that the consumer touches at home,” says Mitchell Kaneff, CEO, Arkay. “It’s your customer’s first interaction with your brand, so it’s an emotional connection—that has to be made in a fraction of a second.”

So how can a fragrance marketer use packaging to connect with consumers—and entice them to make a purchase?

Get all the details right, experts advise—and partner with the right packaging suppliers.

Every aspect of a fragrance package must be in sync, from the bottle, cap and pump to the carton.

Here, several of the foremost packaging suppliers in the fragrance industry describe their latest offerings—with a focus on sustainability.

Discussing Glass

Without glass, some of the most beautiful fragrance bottles in the world wouldn’t exist.

Although glass is traditionally an eco-friendly material, a package’s overall sustainability always depends on various factors. “There is no more sustainable component than glass,” says John Schofield, owner, vice president of sales and marketing, Screentech.

Decoration affects recyclability

“Our decoration techniques for spraying and printing on glass are organic, with few exceptions,” Schofield says, explaining that the inks they use are fully recyclable. Screentech’s expertise lies in decorating glass using spray techniques, hot-stamping, screen printing, tampo printing and labeling.

Screentech offers a spray process that allows for the spray coating of up to five colors in a single pass, and its customers say there’s no match for its hot-stamping-on-glass capabilities. “We are much sought after because of our color-matching ability, and we do this in-house, so it’s a quicker turnaround time, which offers brands more flexibility,” he explains.

Zignago, which has two divisions, Zignago Vetro and Zignago Brosse, has over a century of glassmaking experience. “Glass is 100% recyclable and lasts for an infinite number of uses,” says Kelly Gardi, vice president of sales & marketing, Zignago Glass USA.

Zignago Glass USA offers a wide range of sustainable, eco-friendly stock glass solutions.

“We implement the latest innovations to our production processes to enhance glass quality and bottle shapes,” says Gardi. “Our R&D team researches and tests new decoration techniques to respond to the fragrance market’s rapidly changing needs.”

A glass-making technique called ‘Up & Down’

Zignago’s latest innovative, patented glassmaking technique is called ‘Up and Down.’ “It enables bottles to be produced with thicker glass in the shoulder area and an impressive base glass distribution,” explains Gardi.

As for decoration, the supplier offers a stock collection and in-house custom decoration. Company capabilities include spraying, silk-screening, pad printing, hot stamping, sublimation, sandblasting, internal spraying and more.

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