Premium Beauty News - How would you describe your company’s contribution to the beauty industry?
Aptar - Offering brands means to stand out and satisfy their own customers involves innovation to give products value.
A number of products launched over the past five years have provided both consumers and brands with that all-important little extra in terms of gesture and application.
For example, in perfumery, Aptar endeavours to enhance the perfuming gesture in order to re-enchant it.
We have innovated to go beyond that traditional spray gesture and provide it with more sensoriality. We have also worked on alternative gestures, which resulted in new products like Precious, a long-time spray which creates a wrapping mist, and Note, a product which applies the perfume directly on the skin for an intimate feeling. What’s more, we modernized the glamorous balloon pump atomizer gesture with Eternelle.
In skincare, the Serumony intuitive pack offers a new gesture for serums for a perfectly accurate delivery.
There are also examples focused on formula and environmental protection.
At Aptar, we are much aware of these challenges, so we already meet our customers’ strong requirements in this field with sustainable solutions, like the GSA pump fully based on bio-resin derived from sugar cane, with a whole series of PCR references [1], and with systems that deliver a more accurate product quantity, as could be seen with the Yves Rocher I Love My Planet collection.
It is actually in our DNA to offer products that follow market trends, are adapted to formula changes, bring about change, and anticipate the future of beauty.
Premium Beauty News - What are the main transformations affecting your business today?
Aptar - The first transformation is that it all goes faster and faster. We need to go faster to make new products and deliver our customers, and consumers are increasingly more fickle and sought-after. To this aim, companies turn to dynamic organizations.
Then, digitalization is booming, in particular in distribution. Consumer experience is changing, and there are more and more impulse purchases. Within this context, the role of packaging is growing in importance.
Digital technologies represent a new type of media. Artificial Intelligence will help brands have hyper-personalized conversations with their customers. It will be tomorrow’s main transformation. We have actually already explored this with our connected sample, which makes it possible for brands to follow up the customer journey. In the future, samples will be perfectly targeted: customers will easily get the sample of their choice and be able to buy it immediately after testing it.
In addition, the development of e-commerce has an impact on our packaging, in particular in the field of Personal Care, where products feature no overpackaging. Aptar is already working in partnership with key players to provide range solutions in accordance with distributor standards. Digitalization has triggered a deep transformation. Industry 4.0 is one of the main challenges for the years to come.
Lastly, we need to deal with the sustainable development issue. It is now a huge, very concrete concern for our customers, and it involves a lot.
Premium Beauty News - What is your vision of beauty in 10 years? What will be your contribution to this beauty of the future?
Aptar - What has started to emerge will soon become widespread. Consumers will increasingly expect a more personal experience in their relationship with the product. For example, they will be able to design their own perfume individually according to multiple parameters, choose the best-adapted shampoo, or the most efficient cream depending on their environments, skins, and climates. Artificial Intelligence will help women consumers define what they actually want in any field, including packaging: size, decor, case. Increased personalization will have consequences: maybe smaller-scale series, smarter packs, and more renewal.
Thanks to social media, consumers will be better-educated, which should encourage brands to go beyond the usual advertizing messages. In this hyper-connected world, education and more and more in-depth knowledge of consumers will be fundamental and generate greater expectations. This may be conveyed by a search for more efficient and transparent compositions.
Brands will focus a lot on the packaging/formula couple to create an ideal marriage, for it to be a product as such.
The other prevailing issue is that beauty will be sustainable for good. Packs will be 100% recyclable or reusable for the better part of them. We have been making much progress in these fields.