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Amway expands use of unique dispensing system

In bringing out a new skin care line called Artistry Signature Select, Amway is among the first to leverage the unique advantages of the Vessl nitrogen-pressurized dispensing system.

Closure Subassemblies—each in a puck and each already filled with liquid amplifier—enter the Nuspark system and are immediately pushed from a white conveyor belt and into a station where four mechanical grippers (A in photo) orient them four at a time. The pucks are then pushed to the next position (B in photo), where four Casing Subassemblies come down from above and are placed in the four Closure Subassemblies. Then the four pucks are pushed back onto the white conveyor belt, which takes them to the next station.
Closure Subassemblies—each in a puck and each already filled with liquid amplifier—enter the Nuspark system and are immediately pushed from a white conveyor belt and into a station where four mechanical grippers (A in photo) orient them four at a time. The pucks are then pushed to the next position (B in photo), where four Casing Subassemblies come down from above and are placed in the four Closure Subassemblies. Then the four pucks are pushed back onto the white conveyor belt, which takes them to the next station.

With the launch of Artistry Signature Select™ Personalized Serum, Amway is among the first brand owners to capitalize on an innovative nitrogen-pressurized product-dispensing system from Vessl Inc. This innovative new product is sold exclusively through Amway’s network of independent business owners.

Ada, MI-based Amway saw the Vessl Dispensing System—which is threaded so that it screws onto a container just as a closure would—as a suitable format because it includes an oxygen-depleted and nitrogen-pressurized tank designed to hold a precise volume of concentrated ingredients that are released automatically when the consumer twists the Dispensing System open. The whole idea is to keep concentrated ingredients fresh and protect them from oxidation and harmful exposure to UV light. In doing so, key ingredients like antioxidants, organic botanicals, vitamins, or natural flavors remain at peak potency. All it takes is a twist of the threaded Dispensing System to release the concentrated ingredients into the base liquid.

Artistry Signature Select products are filled right in Amway’s Ada plant on equipment that is pretty much custom-built for the purpose. The liquid filling equipment is from Hibar, while nitrogen-gassing, assembly of the Dispensing System’s two main sub-assemblies, and sealing are done on equipment from Nuspark.

So what is the Vessl Dispensing System all about? The answer is not a short one, as readers may recall if they happened to read the story about Tea of a Kind that appeared in the February 2018 issue of Packaging World. Rather than repeat what was presented there, we refer you to that story and video at pwgo.to/3933. Also helpful is this animation: pwgo.to/3368.

The driver behind this new Artistry Signature Select line is personalization. “It’s everywhere you look these days,” says Mary Jasch, Brand Manager of Artistry Skincare. “Your beverage, your car, your jeans—they can all be personalized in some way. So we thought why not skincare? Why not offer consumers something that is uniquely theirs? But we also wanted to provide a special experience. We saw that by permitting consumers to mix it themselves, we’d be providing a kind of a wow factor.

“As we evaluated the packaging technologies we might use for this new launch, Vessl quickly became a front runner. Not only is this technology new and fun, it had never been done before in skincare. So we set out to co-develop this particular application together with Vessl. Applying it in skincare was a very different thing than for a beverage, which is where this technology has been used in the past. Formulas and viscosities are miles apart. So it required many rounds of testing to get where we wanted, and throughout the process, Vessl was a great partner to have.”

Innovation hatchery
“We did what we call an innovation hatchery session,” says Walter Apodaca, Vessl Founder and CEO. “Along with a cross-functional team of Amway people in a day-long off-site setting, we started with a blank white board and a series of questions. What is it we’re trying to accomplish? What does the Vessl system offer? How do we deliver on personalization? We left the meeting with two ideas, and one of them was the one that hit the market.

“During this development process we also took a good look at other offerings in the marketplace, some of which were a bit crude, like where the customer uses small droppers or pipettes to customize her skin care product. The thing about today’s anti-aging serums is that they are really effective, but only if they are in the highest state of potency. That means either you have to load them up with preservatives—not something consumers are interested in these days—or you have to keep them refrigerated to have any kind of shelf life. One product out there today comes with a tiny little refrigerator you keep in the bathroom in which to store the serum.”

What Amway and Vessl came up with is a base serum and five “amplifiers.” The base serum is in a 30-mL (1-oz) bottle injection-stretch-blow-molded of PET. Decoration includes both silver metallic vignette and clear UV spray coatings, along with foil hot stamp and screen printing. The five amplifiers are contained in 2-mL (.06-oz) Vessl Product Dispensers. The consumer can add to the base serum as many as three amplifiers based on the benefits she is after: hydration, brightening, firming, spot removal, or anti-wrinkle treatment. That’s where the personalization comes in. You create a skincare treatment that is just for you by selecting the amplifiers you want.

When it came to picking the means by which the amplifiers would be added to the serum, Vessl technology was deemed perfect. The ingredients in the amplifiers are protected from oxygen until the consumer is ready to fire the amplifier into the serum, so maximum potency is assured. Just as important is the experience that comes with the act of twisting a nitrogen gas-infused container of amplifier onto the bottle of serum and firing in its contents. “You wouldn’t believe the unexpected delight that’s part of this process,” says Jasch. “This packaging format absolutely nails the wow factor.”

Once the desired amplifiers have been fired into the serum, all that’s left is insertion of the dispensing pump and a little shaking to combine the ingredients. Then the skincare treatment is pumped into the hands and applied to face or neck.

According to Apodaca, extensive testing was necessary before the product could be launched, especially where the amplifiers are concerned. “There’s five of them, and they don’t all behave the same way,” he points out. “An oil-based substance behaves very differently than a propylene glycol or gel-based substance or water-based substance. We needed to dial in the right amount of nitrogen pressure combined with the right orifice size. Stability testing was important, too, to make sure we didn’t have any negative material interactions or degradation that we didn’t foresee.”

The package was named the winner of the 2018 IoPP AmeriStar Design Excellence Award. The Amway press release announcing that honor describes the package this way: “It features the Power Infused Technology, which is the first and only in the beauty industry. This innovative packaging technology protects the highly concentrated formulas in five different amplifiers until they are infused with the Base Serum, ensuring the ultimate potency of the ingredients. Customers simply twist the amplifier on the Base Serum bottle, then slowly twist off to activate it. With a visual surge and audible ‘whoosh’ the easy, mess-free activation is an experience in itself for a completely personalized serum.”

The components
The Vessl Dispensing System, which comes from RPC under a co-manufacturing arrangement with Vessl, is shipped from RPC in two sub-assemblies. One is the Casing Sub-Assembly, which consists of an injection-molded PP Casing and an injection-molded polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) Spike that are both snapped together. The other sub-assembly is the Closure Sub-Assembly, which is made up of four parts: an injection-molded PP Closure is overmolded over a PBT Tank, and it’s this tank that holds the liquid amplifier. The remaining two pieces of the Closure Sub-Assembly are the Seal and the Skeleton. The Seal, made of rubber nitrile, plays the essential role of hermetically sealing the liquid concentrate and the nitrogen gas inside the Tank. The injection-molded PP Skeleton and the rubber nitrile Seal are snapped together, inserted into the Closure/Tank component, and ultrasonically welded in place.