Lemi Shine Grows In Mass Market

TricorBraun partnered with Envirocon Technologies, makers of Lemi Shine cleaning products, to understand, explore and engineer a package that is unlike any other in its category, it contends. Envirocon came to TricorBraun's Custom Package Design and Engineering team with some secondary and primary research that revealed consumers today want to squirt a little dish soap, wash, rinse and put their kitchen items in the drying rack. One-handed use, controlled dispensing and ease of evacuation are all critical.

Once a prototype was ready, Lemi Shine was able to validate all of the functionality and the aesthetic appeal with consumers first hand and its sales force was also able to land an agreement with Walmart and Kmart that began in January. Currently, they are in 1,000 of their store locations. In March, the company also landed HEB. With just a few months of sales, the number of retail commitments has increased to 17 major retailers. The Target launch is in September.

The design was used for three SKUs including liquid dish concentrate, dish and hand soap and gentle on hands with aloe and vitamin E formulas. Design engineering objectives were developed around the following ideas: an invertible bottle that was sturdy, a leak-proof closure with a lock-back feature, practical one-hand control, a more sustainable cap, control of flow, full evacuation, a counter-worthy design and a clear bottle.

According to TricorBraun Design Engineer Jonathan Bolda, “Designing the whole custom closure was a welcome engineering challenge because it involved more creativity than most engineering projects and customer feedback was quick so the process was smooth – they knew what they wanted.”