At a recent international beauty show held in New York, consumer attendees were "overwhelmingly positive" about a two-piece brushed aluminum container holding a nail kit. The kit is marketed to professional salons by New York Nails for resale to customers. That's according to George Bedoya, director of operations for New York Nails, a Fort Lee, NJ-based maker of nail-care products. In March, NYN began selling its Personal Nail Care Collection(TM) kit in the friction-fit, two-piece container from CCL Container's Advanced Monobloc Aerosol Div. (Chappaqua, NY). CCL refers to the container as the Monopac. For NYN, the two-piece container sports a 53-mm (21/12") dia, and stands 190 mm (71/2") H. CCL makes the container parts via an impact extrusion process at a plant in Penetanguishene, Ontario, Canada. Raw aluminum slugs are punched, trimmed and cleaned. Next, they're automatically brushed and offset-printed in black and blue. The interior receives an epoxy/phenolic coating said to help combat bacteria and provide aesthetic appeal. An outer clear overvarnish offers abrasion resistance. The top of the bottom container half is necked in (after decorating and coating) to fit into the top half. The brushed aluminum permits NYN's logo to stand out on the container's front bottom. The logo shows a woman touching her face with her hand, showing off her well-manicured nails. She wears a New York skyline hat that covers her eyes. The back of the container provides information on the seven products within the container. The product name is printed in large blue script typeface on the top portion of the front of the container, then repeated in smaller blue script in several places on the back of the container. One-of-a-kind container "Anyone can put together a few files, call it a nail kit, and sell it in a box, bag or a vinyl pouch," Bedoya tells PW. "But we're a 'high-end' company and we wanted to take it a step further. No one else in the beauty industry has this type of nail-care package. By working with CCL, we were able to achieve a high-end package for our salon customers." The decision to use CCL's brushed aluminum container was based on NYN's satisfaction with a similar container from that supplier. "CCL did an incredible job with a brushed aluminum can that helped us introduce our Quick Glue Dry(TM) aerosol spray in May of '97," says Bedoya. "We fell in love with the package and came up with the idea of a nail kit. Its visual appeal and functionality far surpass carrying cases made from other materials." Besides its upscale visual appearance, the Monopac appeals to beauty salons and consumers for hygienic reasons. "The great thing about this type of kit is that many state laws [require] that each individual client must [receive a manicure] using a personal set of nail-care tools," says Bedoya. "This is an airtight container that can be washed, cleaned and sterilized. We have plastic bag prepacks with the nail-care products," he says, that can be placed into the container for another user if necessary. More often though, Bedoya says the salon can sell kits outright [at prices ranging from $15 to $30], add them into the price of the manicure or even give them away as gifts. Consumers can then buy a replacement nail-care prepack, or use the kit to store other items. Cases of container tops and cases of bottoms are placed on pallets and shipped to New York Nails. The container bottoms are hand-filled with the nail-care product collection, which includes a cuticle pusher/nail-prep scraper, blending/shaping file, reduction exfoliating file, three-way buffer with three files in one, a buffer block, wooden cuticle stick and personal nail brush. Most of these implements are packed into a plastic bag and heat-sealed on an L-bar sealer, then placed into the container. Filled containers are then packed 24 inside a corrugated case and shipped to professional beauty supply distributors nationwide, for sale to salons. Bedoya says NYN is starting to introduce the product to markets in Europe and South America, also based on positive response from international attendees at the New York beauty show held earlier this year. While it's a bit early to determine even the domestic success of the Personal Nail Care Collection in the U.S., Bedoya is extremely upbeat. "Consumers will request these from their salons," he predicts. "Distributors also love the product. We sold more than 1ꯠ pieces in the first two weeks." Backed by strong promotional efforts which are just underway, he says NYN is hoping to sell 100ꯠ units of the product in its first year. "Consumers and salons love the packaging as a concept," Bedoya notes. "It's a sleek-looking, innovative container that puts us at the forefront of our business."
