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Why do small brands usually start with bottles/jars and not Tubes?
It seems that many (most?) small brands are using bottles or jars for their packaging (especially for new product launches). However tubes are often the better packaging choice for a particular product (especially with low preservative natural products which air exposure can drastically lessen the shelf life).
What is preventing these brands from using tubes for new product launches? is it the sealing of tubes? the decoration of tubes? Today there are now options in terms of decoration and sealing machinery that enable very low run sizes of tubes, but yet offer professional quality results.
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6 Replies
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Many small brands tend to retain the manufacturing and packaging in-house, even in many cases where they need to pivot to Sales and Marketing and outsource these functions. As such, jars are a more attractive option on the surface. They are more easily sourced, easier to fill with adapted equipment and can be more feasibly labeled by hand. Since many of these smaller lines are still evolving and are only just getting exposure to the mainstream market, they will defend these packaging options out of necessity.
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Tubes have poor visual appeal compared to a high quality jar or airless pump bottle with top quality labelling. There is simply more visual space. Also, tubes tend to have - in my opinion - a more downmarket image. Great for low cost products because it is a low cost package, but when I want to market a $50 Vitamin C cream it’s going in an airless pump with gold foil label, inside a cleverly designed box, with its own explanatory leaflet. Not a tube.
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I agree with what’s been said.
Another downside of tubes is that they don’t stand up when put on shelf. You lose a ton of visibility, especially compared to competitors who are using bottles. Then if you solve that problem by putting the tube in a box, your costs increase and the consumer has no easy way to store their tubes either.
When I worked for a corporation, tubes were good for specialty products or some promotion but not much else.
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On the flip side some products seem to do better in tube format, particularly thick sunscreen formulas, Neutrogena makes very attractive and extremely visible tube designs using beige contrasted with black/white/bright colors.
But you don’t see as many small brands do sunscreen due to the regulatory requirements and higher up front costs.
Some of the popular Amazon pseudo brands such as OZ Naturals also seem to have success with tubes.
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@Zink brings up a good point about the regulatory issue. Sunscreens have to pass stability testing looking at the interaction of the formulation with the packaging. Like it or not, a number of ingredients interact with the plastics/plasticizers in tubes. Many cosmetic companies have concerns about the interactions with plastics for their products as well - and glass is the closest thing to inert packaging we have.
Also, as Belassi said, it’s relatively easy to take a stock set of glass components and embellish them to look really upscale. The weight of the glass component is then an advantage over similar plastic components. It’s tough to get a tube to look upscale, and the margin for error is very small - imperfections don’t look charmingly handmade, they look sloppy and unprofessional.
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We are a small brand using amber bottles and some jars. A critical consideration for us was how the packaging projected our brand messaging. Tubes just didn’t hit the mark based on our own assessments and those coming out of our customer feedback.
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