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Trial-Size Beauty Products Are the Season’s Hottest Gift

Personal Care

For the second holiday season in a row, the COVID-19 pandemic is with us, and it has changed everything – from the way people celebrate to the way they shop for the perfect gifts. As a result, the retail industry, like so many others, has been forced to adapt its business practices and approaches.

The strategy for most retailers focuses on making their customers feel safe, whether they shop in-person or from their phones. For stores selling personal care and beauty offerings, this can include everything from offering disposable samples for in-store offerings to enhancing online purchasing options for customers who prefer to shop from the comfort of their own homes.

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, many specialty stores, and even big-box retailers, are stealing a page from popular e-commerce subscription box services like Birchbox and Ipsy by ramping up production of trial-size personal care and beauty products. Trial-size products can be packaged up into attractive, functional sample sizes for thematic holiday collections delivered straight to a customer’s door or purchased individually to allow consumers to sample a product at home before making a commitment to a full-size version.

This is extra important in today’s volatile economy where customers are facing economic uncertainty. Items such as skin care, cosmetics and hair care may be more difficult to include in personal budgets when money is tight. As such, the ability to sample a smaller, less expensive version is attractive, especially to those consumers that are increasingly wary of lingering in a retail setting.

The Benefits of Trial-Size Personal Care and Beauty Offerings

The good news is that offering product samples can benefit both brand and buyer by establishing relationships and creating opportunities to gain new customers. From a manufacturing perspective, trial-size products also enable production in smaller batches and shorter runs for filling and packaging more variations of a product. These can be used to efficiently test out new scents or formulations.

For brand owners looking to expand their trial-size offerings, it is important to ensure that their trial-size products function as well as their full-size counterparts. Not every product formulation is easily converted to trial size, as there may be fewer options for smaller packaging and dispensing components. An established aerosol and liquid formulation and contract filling partner can guide research and development, and help strategize the best ways to bring trial-size products to market.

Manufacturing Aerosol and Liquid Trial-Size Personal Care and Beauty Products

PLZ Personal Care offers a broad range of fill sizes ranging from 5 ml up to 250 ml, so we have the expertise to accommodate the complexity of small batches, fast changeovers and nimble production. Our product formulation and filling specialists understand that these smaller sizes require more accurate fill weights with much tighter tolerances. We have built specialized capabilities for developing unique aerosol and liquid formulations for a variety of high-growth products including hand sanitizer sprays, hair and dry shampoos, body sprays and beyond.

As a single-source partner, we can also fill and package variations more quickly and easily than larger fillers. We work with customers through formulation and package development, testing/validation, filling, packaging and delivery to bring high-quality trial-size aerosol and liquid products to market quickly and efficiently. We advise customers on how to select the right components and test for stability and compatibility. We also provide recommendations on factors such as the level and type of ingredients in the formulation, packaging and delivery aspects of the finished products.

Whether your company is launching a new product or looking to offer a lower-priced, trial-size version of an existing product, PLZ Personal Care stays ahead of industry innovations so that we can provide guidance to our customers for bringing their new personal care and beauty product ideas to life.

For additional information on PLZ Personal Care and how we help the top personal care products come to life, visit our personal care product webpage.

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