Just add water...
The workshop is finalized for this year's conference and is included in your conference registration fee. Kristin Heist of Continuum; Ryan Hood of the Shaklee Corporation and Jason Foster of Replenish Bottling will cover a broad range of considerations and opportunities for concentrates - from consumer scenarios to formulation, packaging and branding. They will look at how and why companies are innovating around products that ask people to "just add water."
Innovations in Concentrates Workshop at Cleaning Products 2011
The business and environmental benefits of concentrates are promising. Concentrates require less packaging and less energy to ship than ready-made products. Laundry care has recently shifted towards concentrated formulas. Spray cleaners, which are typically 95% water, are likely to follow suit. But, getting it right is not easy. Consumers are wary of old-fashioned powders and messy dosing systems. For scientists, allowing people to add their own water presents an intriguing formulation challenge.
Hour One:
The Future of Do-It-Yourself: Just Add Water
Kristin Heist, Senior Design Strategist, Continuum
Historically, negative consumer perceptions have kept concentrates from becoming a viable business choice when up against the convenience advantages of ready-made. However, looking forward, we see a bright future for concentrates. As part of Continuum's work in the US and emerging markets, we have identified 6 consumer trends that highlight opportunities to reinvent concentrates as the consumer preferred product form.
In this section, you will learn about:
- How broad trends support a future in concentrates
- Leveraging consumer values to deliver premium concentrate experiences
- Considerations and trade offs for innovation
- Functional and emotional design challenges of self-assembly
Hour Two:
The Plot Thickens: Concentrate Formulation Challenges
Ryan Hood, Senior Scientist, Household Product Development, Shaklee Corporation
In this section, you will learn about:
The challenges of formulating concentrates
- Considerations:
o Different applications
Laundry, Dish, Hard surface, etc. - Soils to be removed
Consumer/end-user experience - Where/how product is used
o Marketing factors
Positioning/branding
Fit within a product line
o Conventional vs Green
Balancing of factors: - Material sourcing
- Safety/toxicity
- Environmental fate
- Performance
o Costs and possible third-party requirements
o Phase stability
o Aesthetics (fragrance, viscosity, color)
o Lower solvent (i.e. water) levels
o Dispensing/dosing/equipment/packaging
o Making effective dilutions (diluent water quality)
Hour Three:
Not Your Grandparents Spray Bottle- Building a New Platform for Concentrates with Replenish.
Jason Foster, Founder & C.E.O., Replenish Bottling
Little has changed to the actual design of the spray bottle since Roger Drackett, the pioneer behind Windex, invented the first pump sprayer out of a new material derived from soybeans and fitted it to a glass bottle in 1943. As investment poured into this new material called "plastic", prices dropped so much that the entire spray bottle became plastic a new trend was born called "disposability".
Today we are striving to undo this "disposable culture" by using better materials, energy, manufacturing and reclamation practices, but the basic design, utility and purpose to the bottles and containers we buy every day hasn't changed. To move forward, we need to embrace new designs instead of trying to make old ones less bad.
Replenish has embraced this vision and created a new bottle and container platform that's not only built for REUSE but to easily mix concentrated product formulas in one functional, integrated design. By embracing REUSE and not shipping water, freight is reduced by 16-20 times and plastic consumption is cut by 90 percent. Replenish's goal is to take a billion bottles out of landfills, a billion supply miles off our roads and a billion pounds of chemicals from ever going into the environment.