Lightning Labels Blog

When consumers are buying products, there are typically two things they think about: brand and price. Even if a certain company produces more expensive products, shoppers may still go for that item because the business has a stronger brand.

Think of Apple as opposed to other smartphone producers, or food brands like Oreo against the store’s generic brand. It’s all about filling a role for consumers. If companies can show they understand their ideal customers better than any of their competitors, they will have an easier time capturing sales.

“If your company doesn’t connect with your target audience… Read the rest of Hop on the Brand Bandwagon with Better Labels

Lightning Labels offers several sustainable label materials, including BioStone. It is a stone paper that is fully compostable.

Celebrating Earth Day this Sunday? Great! We are, too — and every day — here at Lightning Labels. Just a few years ago, we unfortunately could not say this. There were very limited “eco-friendly” label material options available at that time, and those that existed did not meet our stringent guidelines for quality.

Today, though, we are proud to offer a full lineup of sustainable label materials. Check them out:

BioStone
Made from stone, not trees
Fully biodegradable and compostable
Strong and durable
Water resistant
Excellent ink adhesion properties… Read the rest of Make Earth Day Every Day: Choose Sustainable Materials for Your Product Labels

Creative lip balm packaging has become one of the most fail-proof ways to break into the heavily-saturated lip balm market. While unique lip balm packaging has been the standard for novelty items commonly flaunted by pre-teen girls, the following companies have quickly learned that creative packaging is also the key to winning over mature beauty buyers. Look at these unique products turning heads today:

TonyMoly Petite Bunny: Known for unique packaging, TonyMoly recently released six scents in these adorable bunny-shaped applicators. The bunnies’ unique facial expressions based… Read the rest of Creative Lip Balm Packaging

Creating an eye-catching label is important for many reasons, but one may be often overlooked. Have you thought of creating visually exciting can labels that are geared towards the visually impaired? The fact is people with vision problems often put down products that they have difficulty reading.

It’s not always the graphics that can have an impact on your potential customers; it just may be the style and size of your text. Let’s face it, the information you are displaying is just as important as the branding images you use. With the increased awareness of nutritional and ingredients in food people are looking for prominent displays of quality. There is a definite concern from people who wear glasses and have issues with small print on labels.

They look for those that are easier to read. I have even read a blog where the writer had expressed the desire to petition supermarkets to mandate more reader friendly text!  Some things to consider when designing your labels might be the positioning of the text, choosing a bright or flashy color, and most importantly the SIZE.… Read the rest of Designing Eye-Catching Labels for the Visually Impaired

This month’s Customer Spotlight is on Gettin’ Lippy, a company that makes lip balm tubes that snap apart to reveal multiple flavors. Lightning Labels conducted the following interview with company owner Bri Silver.

Gettin' Lippy's unique lip balm tubes snap apart to reveal multiple flavors.

Lightning Labels: There are a lot of lip balms on the market. What makes yours different?

Gettin’ Lippy: Ours has at least 2 flavor options in every tube. Most of our tubes offer three flavors in every tube, but we have also put more flavors than that in one tube. It just depends what our customer wants and needs!

How did your business get started?

I was tired of buying lip balms that didn’t work, meaning they would either make my lips worse or wouldn’t do anything for my lips to be smooth. I also hated that if I bought a lip balm and didn’t like the flavor, that I would throw the whole tube away. I wanted a tube with more than one flavor so that if you didn’t like one flavor, you could keep the tube since it had other ones. So you might use it up just to get to the next flavor, or you could snap that layer of flavor off and go onto the next flavor!

Where do you draw inspiration for your products?

I really like feedback from my customers. The flavors they ask for are flavors that I try to incorporate into my lip balm combinations. I also have two boys and they are very honest about what they think about the flavors I should put together. They help me out a lot!

Would you like to tell us a little bit about how your business operates?

Right now, I am the only one besides my sons that works at Gettin’ Lippy. I believe that will be changing very soon, but for now I do it all  — including packaging, taking orders, marketing, stocking supplies, and shipping!… Read the rest of Q&A with Lip Balm Maker Gettin' Lippy

Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals

Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are a significant health concern worldwide. The Internet is a principle outlet for sales of counterfeit medications, which offer significant savings over drug store prescriptions. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than half of the medications obtained from illegal websites that do not publish their physical addresses are counterfeit.

However, the problem is even more pervasive. Organized counterfeit pharmaceutical rings target impoverished people in emergent economies whose lives depend on medications that they cannot afford. Hot spots for distribution of illegal medicines include India, Africa and Latin America.

WHO identifies illicit medications as spurious/falsely-labeled/falsified/counterfeit (SFFC) substances. SFFC products range from therapeutics for life-threatening diseases to over-the-counter remedies such as antihistamines. They may contain no active ingredients or too many. In either case, they can be life-threatening so the pharmaceutical label must be thoroughly inspected.

The Dangers Associated with Illegitimate Medicines

According to Interpol, “criminal networks are attracted by the huge profits to be made through pharmaceutical crime.” However, this huge illicit gain means significant losses to legitimate drug companies in terms of reputation, revenue, and return on their investment in research and development.… Read the rest of High-Tech Pharmaceutical Labeling Best Hope for Combating Counterfeit Market