Samantha Miller: OK, so this is the real thing, and you'll notice that we had to be a little creative in the way that we designed the package because the FDA regulations don't allow packaging both OTC medicines and supplements together.
Liz Cuneo: Oh, interesting.
Miller: Otherwise, we would have just put them all in the same box, but the FDA wants us to have separate boxes. We can kit them together so that they can be used in parallel. So what we've done here is create two separate boxes. The orange one is our supplement box, and the purplish blue one is our drug device box.
Cuneo: OK.
Miller: The way we've kitted them together is that these two boxes are completely independent. They could be sold separately. They each have their own UPC codes, and those individual UPC codes are actually hidden between them right now. Then the final kit UPC code is on the bottom as a sticker.
What we've done is put a cover card on here describing the entire kit. The card has two sides, and it gives the packaging a cohesive look between the two boxes.
So it'll sit on the shelf looking like a kit, and then it's shrink-wrapped. So, I'm gonna open the shrink wrapping. The sticker on the bottom identifies the kit itself. Once you take off the shrink wrap and the card, it comes right off.
So here's the card, and on the back it has information about the components of the kit and how to use it.
Then we have two separate packages: the drug device package with the two OTC medicines and the test strips, and then the supplement drink mix.
There are two test strips, 12 of each OTC medicine, and four drink mixes. So, two a day for two days, and this is two days’ worth of medicine as well.
Cuneo: OK, you can test twice, retest. So when you started out on this journey, did you know that regulations were going to prevent you from putting everything in one box, or was that a new realization?
Miller: It was definitely an “oh” moment. I wasn’t aware of that law because I’d never tried to do that before.
Fortunately, we have excellent OTC regulatory consultants, and while we were discussing some of our pipeline ideas and our excitement about creating this kit, one of them explained to us that we couldn’t put everything in one box. These had to be totally separate, independent packages— each with its own UPC, supplement facts, drug facts, instructions for use, all of that.
So was it an easy pivot to think, “OK, here’s what we’ll do: take the two boxes, shrink-wrap them together, and create a cover card”? We had to come up with the idea of using a cover card and shrink wrap to make it work because we didn’t want it to feel confusing or cumbersome.
Cuneo: Are there other products on the market that combine products this way, or is this pretty unique?
Miller: We haven’t seen anything like this.
Cuneo: Yeah, that’s cool. So that was one challenge — having to pivot the packaging approach. Did anything else emerge during the process?
Miller: Yeah, another issue was that the package was too large at first.
It’s not just Walmart that’s our customer. We also specialize in selling to convenience stores. We think convenience stores are a very important place for urgent healthcare products and urgent women’s health products. We already sell our morning-after pill in convenience stores.
The package was too large, so we really had to work on making it smaller, especially the height.
Cuneo: Do you mean so it would fit comfortably on shelves or endcaps?
Miller: Exactly — on the shelf. It was originally over six inches tall because of the test strips, so we had to find smaller test strips to get it down to five inches.
Cuneo: OK, interesting.
Miller: We worked really hard to make it five inches tall and not any wider. We were very careful to configure it in a way that was acceptable for Walmart and convenience stores.
But we also wanted it to be easy to use because there are a lot of components.
When you open it, we have sleeves for each component. The sleeves make it very clear what each item is, and the instructions are printed right on them.
You can see we’ve got the pain reliever, and we repeated the drug facts label. Then we’ve got the infection-control product, again with the drug facts label.
So everything’s very clear. If you throw away the box, you still have all the information and haven’t lost anything important.
Cuneo: Is that a regulatory requirement, or was that more about making it user-friendly?
Miller: That’s not a regulatory requirement, but we wanted to make it really user-friendly and make sure everyone had all the information they needed.
We also included this booklet. It opens up and gives information about each of the three components in the drug device carton, and the other side has information about the drink mix.
There’s also information about how to speak with a healthcare professional if needed.
Cuneo: Awesome. Very cool.
Miller: So that’s the drug device box, and then the supplement box contains the four drink mixes.
Cuneo: Great. Very cool. How do you think the design reflects the goal or purpose of the product? How important is packaging design, and what role does it play?
Miller: Packaging has been incredibly important for this product because we needed to show how the products work together while still keeping them separate due to regulations.
Cuneo: Right. Even though there’s separation, it still looks cohesive and clearly communicates that it’s one kit. That’s definitely a strength of the packaging design.
Where did packaging come into the product-development process? I hear from a lot of companies that if you don’t think about packaging until the end, it becomes a huge problem. Especially with things like height restrictions and needing to find smaller test strips, would you say packaging was at the forefront of creating the kit?
Miller: Absolutely. We spent a lot of time on packaging right from the beginning.
Even with our other product, our morning-after pill, we put a lot of thought into packaging.
The packaging really needs to speak to the person standing in front of it on the shelf. We’re not there in person to sell the product, so the packaging has to do that job. Then, once the customer gets it home, the packaging also needs to be helpful and easy to use.
