Why pouches are the perfect solution for your beauty samples

Cosmetic sampling is a practice which has gained significant momentum over the last few years as a way for cosmetic companies to stand out from the robust competition by placing their products in customers’ to try and entice them to make a purchase.

Pouches provide the perfect solution for packaging your samples as they offer a cost effective solution combined with high quality presentation. What’s more, they can be easily distributed within a busy retail environment, or even mailed out at a fairly low cost without compromising the integrity of the products.

Sampling as the key purchase influencer for cosmetics consumers

Product sampling remains an important step in the purchase path when it comes to cosmetics, despite the efforts of retailers in the industry to convince consumers to buy without trying. In fact, reseach shows that sampling comes fourth on the list of biggest influencing factors when making a purchase of a beauty product, preceded only by past experience and the recommendation of friends and family.

According to Euromonitor’s Annual Survey on Personal Appearance, nearly 40% of consumers selected free samples as one of the top influences when choosing a fragrance. This percentage is also high for colour cosmetic samples and skin care (>30%), as well as hair care (>25%).

Beauty product samples – the subscription model

Subscription beauty sites, whose popularity has grown over the last decade or so, are another testimony to the efficiency of samples as a way of distributing cosmetic products. With a business model based on sending out a selection of samples to customers for a monthly subscription fee, beauty subscription sites like Glossybox and Birchbox have gained popularity globally and evolved to include e-commerce, allowing customers to buy the full size products and review their purchases.

Holiday sample packaging – the growing popularity of cosmetic advent calendars

The rise in popularity of beauty product advent calendars during the Christmas holidays is another way samples have been capitalised upon and transformed from freebies to commercially profitable goods. In the past three or four years, beauty companies and retailers have increasingly started boosting their holiday product offering by including cosmetics advent calendars.

Despite the fact that they are a seasonal product, beauty advent calendars are a great example of how packaging your cosmetic samples attractively can be profitable for your business. This trend of businesses capitalising on the large amounts of samples they have, which have previously been accepted as a substantial write-off within the marketing spend, combined with customers desire to experiment with new beauty products is clearly embodied in the universal success of cosmetic advent calendars. Enquire now if you are looking to procure some samples in time to capitalise on the Christmas spending period.

Smarter cosmetics sampling

Beauty brands are increasingly demanding innovative cosmetic samples and deluxe, unit dose packaging designed to meet travel size requirements – these more effective types of beauty sampling are designed to target specific customer base and have proven to be very trendy.

Packaging beauty products in sample sizes is no longer a throw-away of budget – these days customers are actually willing to pay for deluxe samples and minis, which presents a fantastic business opportunity to cosmetic companies.

More and more types of products are being sampled – in addition to fragrances and colour items, these days sample packaging is also being requested for an increased number of treatment beauty products. The sizes of the sample packaging are also beginning to vary from the traditional one use to the now typical couple of applications.

Why are cosmetic samples so popular?

The main reason for the popularity of beauty product samples is the vastness of choice available in the skin care department – with so many new products constantly launching across the industry, it’s more important than ever to customers that they are able to sample the texture, smell and colour of products to make sure they are the right fit before paying the full price for the standard size products.

Packaging beauty products in sample sizes also has the added benefit of convenience – by making their product packaging smaller – i.e. travel sized, companies make them easier for consumers to use. This increase in travel size cosmetics samples and the ‘deluxe’ beauty product samples being distributed to niche target audiences are evidence to the versatility of sample packaging and the plethora of ‘smart’ uses for beauty samples.

Judge the sample by its package

A long way from the handing out of freebies on a street corner, the distribution of cosmetic product samples is becoming more targeted and efficient, and the perception of sample packaging is shifting from a money-hole to a profit generator, equal in its value to the full-sized beauty products companies offer.

With the increase in popularity of the trend for selling cosmetic samples comes an increase in the importance of how the sample package looks – they need to be attention grabbing in order to stand out in the crowded retail environment, and meticulously designed to communicate the branding and quality efficiently.

Flexible packaging is an ideal solution for beauty samples – plastic pouches are incredibly versatile, convenient for use and allow for bespoke printing to meet individual company requirements and ensure the sample packaging matches the look of the retail tube or bottle. The affordable prices of cosmetics packaging also mean that businesses of any size can afford to package their cosmetic samples and promote their new products.