The Silgan Dispensing brand promise of being your partner for the new marketplace to help you deliver better experiences to your customers isn’t just a hollow tagline that we espouse when it suits us. We take our brand promise seriously, and our organization is well-positioned to deliver on that brand promise in large part through our customer insights.

The development of Melodie Pirouette, which gives brand owners the ability to offer refillable solutions, was created out of thoughtful consideration and a careful study of consumer attitudes toward sustainability. We know sustainability is at the forefront of a lot of end consumers’ minds, but would that be enough to drive the purchase of a refillable fragrance solution?

What we found
With that question in mind, we set out to understand consumers’ knowledge and desire about refillable and recyclable fragrance products. We conducted a global survey of about 1,200 women ages 18-54 from countries around the globe including Brazil, China, France, Germany the UK and United States. Our objectives were to gauge awareness and interest in sustainable packaging for fragrance, determine whether there is a gap in expectations and availability of sustainable fragrance packaging and verify whether consumers’ opinions of a brand would improve if it offered sustainable fragrance packaging.

The results of our study painted a clear picture:
• Globally, 75% of respondents favored a sustainable solution for their fragrance packaging and were very interested in refillable or recyclable solutions
• Only 39% of respondents say their current fragrance packaging could be described as eco-friendly
• Refilling and recycling initiatives would result in a greatly improved opinion of the brand
• Consumers would be encouraged to purchase/repurchase sustainable fragrance packaging if there were financial incentives

While the results showed us a clear desire for sustainable fragrance packaging, there also were clear consumer concerns that the packaging would need to address, including:

• Concerns of leakage and performance
• Potential mixing of scents and loss of quality

What we developed
Taking those insights back to our team, we worked to develop a solution that not only would deliver on the sustainability factor that the consumers desired, but also address the concerns that were uncovered from the study.

Melodie Pirouette holds true to traditional luxury aesthetics but was designed to offer eco-conscious brands and consumers the possibility to refill and recycle the packaging. A removable plastic threaded ferrule pump separates the pump from the glass bottle and allows for recycling of the glass. The pump also is reusable to allow for replacement on the bottle after refilling.

We also were able to reduce the risk of detached or spinning collars, thanks to high retention between the plastic and metal, and for brand owners, the risk of breakage on filling lines is diminished as the inner plastic part is more flexible than metal threaded ferrules.

Of course, despite consumer demand for such a product, we know that offering a sustainable solution has to be cost-effective for our customers to implement. Our design strikes a balance between sustainability, quality, performance and security while replacements to the pump closure (swapping out the expensive metal screw ferrule with a plastic screw ferrule) make this an affordable solution to our customers.

After all, being a good partner doesn’t just mean delivering the consumer insights to help your brand stay competitive; it also means providing solutions to put those insights into action.