SPOTLIGHT: Health & Beauty

Idealistic Principles Combine in a Revolutionary Skin/Hair System That Explores Its Mission with Ergonomic Style

Solavie asks, “What’s your enviro-type?” and recommends one of six lines of products to provide balance in your hair and skin care.

Spa owner Pamela Rae noticed that clients coming to her Solavie Spa Retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, from all over the world consistently had the same experience—their skin creams were inadequate at Sun Valley’s high altitude, and shampoos were too drying in the mountains. After many years, it became obvious: None of the creams or shampoos were ideal.

The reluctant Rae, spurred on by a nagging dream that just would not go away, felt compelled to develop skin and hair formulas that would actually work in the Sun Valley environment. Over three years in the making, the Solavie skin/hair care system now debuts with a high-impact bottle containing 30 different products—five products in each of six color-coded Enviro-Type® lines.

‘What’s your enviro-type?’

Rae developed a matrix of Solavie soaps, shampoos, lotions, and creams that incorporate nature’s evolved phyto-nutrients from within six major ecosystems—Mountains, Urban, Tropics, Shore, Plains, and Desert. Each of the six enviro-type lines includes a face wash, face nourish, body nourish, hair/body wash, and hair nourish/style.

Enviro-type products treat the body’s reaction to a specific environment, taking its cues—and ingredients—from plants. “When you’re out of balance, you’re going to have certain types of reactions,” Rae explains. Plants are adapted to their environments by the nutrients they produce to help them balance their living cells with the forces of the environment. Rae thought that humans could also achieve homeostasis, or balance, with their environments by using the same nutrients that plants use to achieve homeostasis.

Rae wanted Solavie to be environmentally friendly top to bottom, and the products have only natural ingredients in the formulas. Using natural ingredients from plants in an environment had an added bonus in the fragrance department: “It was very easy to come up with a formula that smelled like the environment,” Rae says. (Well, except for the Urban environment product line.)

‘Mutually engageable twin bottles, one inverted’

Every Solavie bottle is the same shape, and any two bottles (one inverted) snap together in a compact, sturdy, rectangular package.

Rae had an equally strong vision for the Solavie bottle as she had for the products inside. After several failed prototypes by U.S. companies, Rae found what she was looking for with bottle manufacturer Sung-do Tech out of South Korea, which now produces the uniquely shaped bottles.

The patent says “mutually engageable twin bottles, one inverted” to describe how the bottles snap together at the back. The products inside are unisex, but the bottles hook up in pairs. The conjoined bottles have a yin/yang unity, and do not “fight” with each other, instead forming a compact rectangular shape.

The heat-injection molded polyethylene and polypropylene bottles have flat, hinged closures that open at the bottom for ease of dispensing. The bottles are also translucent to display that there are definite differences in the products, and two spring water bubbles accent the front.

All these elements target world travelers, adventure-seekers, and outdoor enthusiasts both in functionality and shelf impact. The small, sturdy, and robust package pair will take the abuse of being stuffed in a backpack or jammed into an overhead compartment.

Rae also wanted the bottle to be ergonomic and technical feeling at the same time. The shape of each bottle (2" x 4" x 1") is similar to a cell phone, and fits nicely in anyone’s hand. If the geometric elements on the front of the bottle look familiar, rest assured that Rae has proof that her bottle design preceded the design of the iPod.

A complex and compact philosophy

Rae wanted to accomplish so many different objectives in the product presentation, she contacted HartungKemp, a Minneapolis-based design agency, to bring it all together. HartungKemp specializes in unearthing strategic insights and expressing them in a brand’s identity, product development, internal and external communication tools, and advertising.

“Pamela’s thinking about the product was very complex., with so many objectives,” remembers Stefan Hartung, creative director of HartungKemp. “Everything was there, and Pamela said: ‘Now put it all together.’”

HartungKemp set to work forging a comprehensive branding, advertising, and product launch strategy. All of these elements begin and end with the bottle. Each bottle has two eight-color translucent labels—front and back. The back of the package needed a label for listing all the many ingredients and supplying a visual explanation of Enviro-Type, with a globe map identifying the environments.

The color-coded label system helps guide the purchase process and makes the selection of the appropriate enviro-type easy for the consumer. The vibrant color images on the front began life as black and white nature photos taken at the bottom of a volcanic mountain in Sun Valley. The images were digitally remastered and colorized with deep and luminous hues.

Rae is still impressed with the final result given the range of her ambitions for the Solavie line. Though the Solavie website goes into long explanations, including a five part “Philosophy” section, the bottle itself conveys the Solavie philosophy succinctly with engaging shapes, images, and ergonomics. “The depth of our message had to be compact,” Rae says.