What an exciting show it was! With more than 70,000 visitors, Natural Products Expo West is a must attend event if you’re in the natural food industry. Of course, IMS was there to meet clients and get to know other passionate natural product entrepreneurs. We have a “natural” for sleeved products.
We saw lots of new products at the show and spotted some best practices for sleeved bottles.
Natural products presented in a sleeved bottle
We noticed that many bottled products had an interesting form factor. Most producers didn’t settle for a standard rounded soda pop style shape. Texture, height, grip, lines and more tricks of the trade were evident in many cases
Also observed is the use of white sleeves, often opaque. For example, this bioactive aloes water by Detox Water from Brooklyn, New York.
A white sleeve offers a blank canvas. Detox Water’s design and logo come out strong and clean. They could have chosen to leave a clear section for the consumer to see the contents of the bottle, but in this case it wasn’t necessary. Also, the uniformity of the white sleeve makes for a powerful graphic statement.
Other manufacturers may choose completely white labeling but for other reasons. A white sleeve can also cover up the “imperfections” of a liquid that settles and separates or looks less tasty with time, such as drinks containing fruit pulp.
Another product at the show was a probiotic kefir smoothie by LifeWay Kefir Foods from Chicago, Illinois. In this case, the design is meant to look similar to other dairy category products offered in the refrigerated sections of grocery stores. Both in text and image, its sleeve clearly shows that it contains mixed berries. Covering a shaped white PET bottle, the opaque sleeve certainly offers the benefit of protecting vitamins and probiotics from deterioration by UV light.
To sum up, white sleeves are a perfect fit for natural product drinks. They adapt to form factors, are great real estate for good design. They also cover up pulp and fruit fragments floating in the liquid and can help protect the product.
So keep shrink sleeves in mind, and talk to pros like us about how beneficial they could be to your next product.
