French luxury clean beauty brand Kure Bazaar, which launched in 2012 with a range of eco-friendly nail polishes, is entering the lipstick segment with a sustainable approach to packaging.
“This next year is important for us as we work to reposition Kure Bazaar as a specialist in lip and nail color. Our best-selling nail polish shades now have matching lipstick shades,” Kure Bazaar president Christian David explains to Luxe Packaging Insight.
The brand’s 100% natural lipsticks debuted in February with 30 shades, and are housed in sleek metal cases engraved with the brand name. Once a lipstick is finished, consumers simply remove the lipstick bullet and clip in a new one.
David explains that the brand has always had eco-friendly conception at its heart, and while it is not technically possible to produce refillable nail polishes due to the volatility of the formula (Kure Bazaar’s nail polish formulas are produced by Fiabila) reloadable lipstick was a natural step.
“Each year, almost one billion lipsticks are thrown away after use,” highlights David. “So we wanted to develop our own reloadable packaging”. The challenge lay in creating a pack made from a material that is recyclable (the brand uses aluminum), but also resistant enough for the consumer to keep it and reload it ad infinitum. “It was also important to position the product at a price in-line with that of the market for luxury lipsticks.” Kure Bazaar’s lipsticks retail at €38 for the balms and satin finishes and €48 for the matte versions (more complicated to produce due to their high pigment content). A refill costs €28.
The project is Franco-Italian. Kure Bazaar worked with Italian company INCA to create the lipstick packaging and refills, while the logistics and filling is done in France. “We started by designing the object, drawn up with INCA’s packaging studio, and then developed a mold for the aluminum casing,” David explains. “We really started with a blank page and had two main priorities: the design, which we wanted to be very simple and elegant and in-line with Kure Bazaar’s luxury brand identity; and choosing a material that can be recycled over and over. Beyond the refill component (which is made from aluminum and contains a small amount of recyclable PET, needed to pour the bullet), the outer case also needed to be 100% recyclable.”
For the launch, Kure Bazaar also developed fabric sleeves to protect the lipstick cases. The textile comes from end-of-line denim sourced from clothing factories in Italy.
When it comes to marketing refillable lipsticks, David says that a pedagogical effort is required as consumers need to see exactly how the concept works. “There are consumers who are not necessarily looking for reloadable lipsticks, but once you present the idea to them and show them the reload they are quickly seduced by it,” he explains. “Young consumers, particularly in Nordic countries, are very interested in this eco-friendly concept.”
