Saturday, May 31, 2008

New Soap Packaging Idea

I'm going through packaging woes right now. I was wrapping my soaps in craft gift wrapping paper. I was also labeling them with business card stock (which was totally a fluke and not something I wanted to continue). I was alright with that setup until a few problems presented themselves.

1) The soap sweats heavily in the paper. Sweating in the realm of soap means that the glycerin in the soap is coming out. This makes an ugly and very sticky bar of soap. Visually unappealing. The ideal is that I don't wrap the soap at all until it's ready to be sold. However I lack the space for that, unless I do some major reworking of closet space.

2) I can't keep using business card stock as labels. I need them for making business cards, so I need to use labels for labels. A person can get very creative with address labels, and other types of labels as well.

3) The visual appeal of my other products are taking a life of their own. My lotions and now my scrubs have a certain look to them, and the craft-wrapped soap doesn't jive with it. Not really. Here's my lotion and scrub:
And here's the new soap packaging. It's wrapped in tulle (that netty looking material):


I think it goes along with the other products better than the old one here:

The tulle is growing on me because it looks more gift ready and the tag sits better I think. It might attract more people to buy it wrapped in tulle than paper, because I don't think too many people really payed any attention to the paper wrap. The white gift looking soap might be more eye-catching. If your products aren't eye-catching then you need to rethink how it's being presented.

3 comments:

Josie said...

I'm redoing my soap packaging too for exactly the same reasons. I really like the packaging in the last picture but i imagine that would be pretty darn time consuming!

Josie

earthtonesbath said...

It ain't so bad on the time, but the sweating is unacceptable really. What does your packaging look like if you don't mind?

Josie said...

weeelll. It's currently evolving. I started with using fabric bands overlapping held with a sticker in the front. That worked well, but I can't really leave things alone :).

Last year I sold the bars unwrapped and then as they were purchased just slipped an ingredient label in the bag. Worked great - didn't have to worry about sweating (i do an outdoor market) BUT christmas sales took a major slide. So now I'm back to playing with paper / sticker again. I will post some pix on my farm blog maybe tomorrow if i get a chance. I also do a "luxury" bar which is in a heart shaped mold, wrapped with toulle - its been REALLY popular and one I've kept the packaging the same for the last 5 years. :) It looks similar to your idea except the toulle is bunched at the top instead of the middle.

Arg... not very good at explaining i guess! I'll have to take some pix.