Beauty Brands: Here’s What to Think About for Packaging in 2025
Right now, at the calm before the storm that is peak season, your packaging is your packaging. Perhaps you’ve nailed it and can’t wait for it to deliver that extra little something to customers. Or maybe you’re less than in love with it and want to make changes once the holidays are behind you. Wherever you fall within that spectrum, here’s what beauty brands should be thinking about when it comes to the packaging decisions in 2025…
Sustainability: Find the Balance
Consumers are increasingly supporting beauty brands that exhibit sustainable business practices. As a result, packaging made from recycled materials has become very en vogue. But what often gets forgotten in recycled packaging materials initiatives is durability. Shipping packaging that becomes too flimsy dents and crushes. Materials that are light colored (which recycled packaging materials often are) risk dirtying. Ultimately, brands need to find the middle ground: How can we be sustainable in our shipping and product packaging while still delivering the brand experience we want our customers to have?
Consider How Brand Decisions Impact Packaging and the Customer Experience
Matte packaging can help brands deliver a sense of luxury or exclusivity. It can also attract dust, creating pilling that communicates anything but luxury. With sheen packaging, individual products can scuff each other. Bottom line: Don’t forget about end-of-line fulfillment when making brand decisions.
Get That Wafer Seal
The wafer seal offers two benefits. Most obviously, it offers added product security. Oils stay in containers. Lip gloss stays in tubes. But the wafer seal also has a psychological value. It communicates to the customer that this product has never been opened. It’s theirs. That gives them comfort and increases brand affinity.
Rightsize Your Ship Packaging
Ever receive a big package only to open it up and find that crumpled paper occupies 90% of the space while your actual product is wedged in a corner? Thoughtful fulfillment partners won’t let small products ship in too much box. It’s financially and environmentally wasteful. At the same time, it’s cost prohibitive to carry and store an excessive amount of box sizes. The right approach involves the brand and the 3PL sitting down and planning out a shipping packaging strategy that strikes the right balance between accommodating and efficient.
Get Light
Secure product and secondary shipping are nonnegotiable. But as shipping costs rise, brands should strive to make their actual products as light as possible. Product container decisions become all that more important. Glass or hard plastic? A screwtop lid or pop-off? Every. Ounce. Matters.
Plain on the Outside
At the peak of the D2C subscription trend, brands were going all out on branding exterior packaging. What a delightful little box from my subscription service on my front porch! While well intentioned, this strategy opened up products to porch pirates and other nefarious forms of fraud. The solution: deliver the brand delight inside the exterior box. Simple.
Package for TikTok
In pursuit of becoming the next big influencer, younger generations of beauty product consumers are displaying their products at home, often in original packaging provided it has the right aesthetic. We’ve seen this in unboxing videos and other forms of consumer generated content.
Beauty brands can no longer assume their products live in dark cluttered drawers when not in use. They’re part of a whole vibe – that gets shared around the world.
Erin Sheeler is the Director of Onboarding at Capacity, a fulfillment provider serving some of the world’s most recognizable beauty brands.