Clariant ColorWorks™ Gives Innersense A Strong Brand Using Stock Packaging

As experienced professionals in the beauty and wellness industry, the founders of Innersense Organic Beauty LLC had a clear vision of what they wanted their product line to say to the market. All natural, certified-organic and biodynamic, the Innersense collection would cleanse and nurture the hair and skin, and cultivate the mind and spirit as well.

As entrepreneurs, however, they acknowledged the business reality of the high cost of tooling and opted for stock containers. The question then became how to develop a unique market presence, one that encompasses prestige, purity and personal well-being, using standard packaging from almost a dozen different suppliers. The answer turned out to be a careful choice of both color and color supplier.

Organic consciousness

Based in Walnut Creek, CA, Innersense Organic Beauty was founded by Judie Maginn, Greg Starkman, and Joanne Starkman with a vision for a line of toxin-free, sulfate-free products that contain the highest level of certified organic and biodynamic ingredients. The Innersense products are a synthesis of carefully selected certified organic oils, extracts, and essences that are completely free of artificial fragrances, colors, sulfates, and petrochemicals.

"We think of Innersense as a consciousness and a culture," says Maginn. "Each product is accompanied by a simple 'self-care ritual' designed to calm and focus the user while he or she is using the product. The approach is truly holistic, because it not only addresses the physical side of hair and body care, it addresses psychological and spiritual aspects as well."

Targeted at professional salons and spas, aestheticians, and hairdressers, the Innersense line includes products for the skin and hair. The line also includes Emotional Bliss Environmental Spray, which is touted as a "mood-enhancing space changer." The designers were seeking a packaging look that was both professional and organic looking. Maginn explains: "Professional products have come to look more and more ordinary, falling into mass market themes, while packages used for natural/organic brands have fallen into a familiar pattern of greens, whites, and clears. We wanted to break out of both of these ruts and create a new look."

Maginn and her partners evaluated literally dozens of different package designs from several leading global design firms and finally settled on a rich amber accented with dark chocolate brown for the container and closure components. With its traditional apothecary appeal and lush earthy feel, amber was a natural fit. In fact, the Harmonic Healing Oil is packaged in a classic amber glass bottle with eye dropper. Other containers in the nine-product family are plastics, including conventional bottles and squeeze tubes, tottles, and a squat jar with screw-on lid. Despite the wide variety in materials, shapes, and sizes, Innersense wanted all the products in the line to share the same warm amber color scheme.

Amber in a new light

Amber glass bottles have been drug-store staples for centuries, but translating that simple beauty into seven or eight different plastic containers would prove to be quite a challenge. So Innersense turned to Clariant Masterbatches ColorWorks™ center in McHenry, IL, a design and technology resource established to help brand owners turn the most ambitious design concepts into plastic packaging realities. Clariant Masterbatches products are marketed under six global brand names—Remafin®, Renol®, Cesa®, Hydrocerol®, Omnicolor®, and Enigma™.

"Amber is a complex color space requiring an exact balance of several deep organic tones," explains Carolyn Sedgwick, ColorWorks business manager, consumer packaging. "Hit it wrong and you end up with something like green pea soup or mashed turnip." With the Innersense project there was an extra level of complexity, because Clariant needed to hold this specific color space across several different packages from multiple vendors. The different substrates—from transparent PET bottles to semi-opaque LDPE tubes and translucent PP caps—each respond differently to color.

ColorWorks gets to work

Maginn says the complexity is even heightened because Innersense doesn't use any artificial colors in their products. "So Clariant needed to adjust the color for each of the containers to achieve a uniform look, regardless of whether the product inside was clear or opaque, dark, or light," says Maginn.

Clariant's ColorWorks initiative has seven strategically located centers around the world. All are based on the same global platform of color design and science, but each center offers services tailored to the needs of its regional constituents. These needs can include color consultation, 3D prototypes, on-site molding, extrusion and compounding, and a variety of analysis and testing methods. The formulations can then transferred to any of more than 50 Clariant Masterbatches production facilities, speeding new products to market with consistency.

Part of the Innersense corporate philosophy states: "We believe in organic beauty - bringing out your inner beauty so that you can be, and look, your very best." The new Innersense packaging lets the organic beauty of the product family shine through. Even when the containers are sourced from multiple suppliers, using widely different processes and plastics materials, the consistent use of color creates a strong brand identity.