Dr. Miracle`s company in New York City, USA, in the development of a regular-shape ultra-strength carton for its No Lye Relaxer (black hair care product), found that the biggest challenge was to maintain the brand's natural image. It is also necessary to display the glorious and beautiful image of African American women. Ollie Johnson, executive vice president/co-founder of Dr. Miracle`s, said: “We feel we need something completely different from the one-color and two-color cartons we produced before.â€
Finally, Dr. Miracle`s adopted the advice of an independent vendor representative, Frank Altomare, and chose MeadWestvaco`s Kraftak(R), a .022/63# natural brown primary fiberboard. Altomare said: “Competitors are using native SBS and advanced four-color designs. The cartons we need need a natural look, just like other products from Dr. Miracle`s, but we must also use high quality printed color inks. ."
“Kraftpak is an ideal paperboard solution. It is uniform and provides excellent printability, is similar to SBS with no coating, and is cleaner when passing through the press. In addition, high-level patterns are printed directly at the edges that will eventually be folded. It is required that the cardboard like Kraftpak does not have cracks at the folds.
In order to achieve the eye-catching results that Dr. Miracle`s wants, the carton uses Great Northern's StrataGraph(R) printing method, which is a UV-curable dry overprint ink printing method. Don Schroeder, President of Great Northern's StrataGraph Business, explained: “Usually, sheetfed printing methods (wet embossing) can hardly keep the printed pattern on the uncoated substrate. Our current printing method can be preceded by a color. (this time it is white) Print the outline of the graphic on the uncoated cardboard, and then print the other colors on it at once so that we can make the product pattern with shiny white and realistic skin color."
Dr. Miracle`s was very satisfied with the final production of the carton and even felt that the same underlying and printing methods were used to produce its point-of-sale advertising and shelf card. The product is now available at Wal-Mart, Walgreen`s and more than 5,000 beauty product stores.
Source: Packaging Expo