“We had to hit premium shelf presence and EU compliance while keeping our lines moving,” said Marta, Operations Director at Rivela Beauty, a mid-sized cosmetics brand in Milan. “Our rigid boxes looked great in photos, but rework and color drift were chewing up time.”
The team partnered with packola to rebuild the packaging process around tighter color control, sustainable materials, and predictable changeovers. We didn’t chase fancy features first. We started with the numbers.
It wasn’t a straight path. We tested different board calipers, swapped adhesives, and argued over how much foil was too much. Still, once the data started lining up, the decision became easy.
Company Overview and History
Rivela Beauty sells across Italy, France, and Germany through retail and DTC. The portfolio spans 120–150 active SKUs, with seasonal kits pushing that higher every winter. Monthly finished box output sits around 80k–110k units, split between premium rigid sets for retail and e-commerce packs heading to regional 3PLs.
Packaging had grown organically. Legacy vendors supplied greyboard boxes with mixed adhesives and finishes, while a small in-house team managed artwork. The look was on-brand—soft-touch wraps, delicate foil accents—but production variance crept in as volumes rose.
The turning point came when a holiday run shipped late after color approvals ping-ponged for a week. Finance asked for a plan. Operations asked for data.
Quality and Consistency Issues
Baseline audits showed ΔE drift hovering around 3–5 across SKUs during multi-shift runs, mainly on soft-touch wrapped panels. First Pass Yield was stuck near 86%, and changeovers ran 28–30 minutes on average. None of this was catastrophic, but the compounding effect under peak demand hurt OEE and morale.
We also flagged recyclability concerns: magnetic closures and heavy foil areas made disposal tricky. EU 2023/2006 (GMP) paperwork was fine, but our sustainability team kept asking the same thing: how to ensure the eco-friendliness of custom cosmetic rigid boxes?
Solution Design and Configuration
We re-centered the process around Offset Printing for wrapped papers, calibrated to Fogra PSD, and specified water-based inks with low-migration profiles for cosmetics. Substrate stack: FSC-certified greyboard at 1.5–2.0 mm with FSC wrap paper; water-based adhesive for lamination; soft-touch coating tuned for rub resistance. We limited foil stamping to small brand marks, aiming to keep metallized area under 5% of the panel.
For closures, we phased out embedded magnets and piloted a paper-based mechanical tab. It felt premium enough and simplified recycling. To keep SKU chaos in check, we introduced GS1 DataMatrix on inside flaps for traceability. In parallel, e-commerce teams standardized outer protection with a family of custom designed shipping boxes, color-matched to retail boxes without overdoing ink laydown.
Holiday gift sets introduced one exception: decorative custom lock boxes for in-store displays. We kept them paper-first with reinforced board corners and a tuck-lock design—no metal hardware—so the sets still met our recyclability guardrails.
Pilot Production and Validation
We ran eight pilot lots over four weeks across Milan and a partner plant in Veneto. Targets: ΔE ≤ 2 after changeovers, adhesive cure stability at 23°C/50% RH, and drop/stack tests that mirrored 3PL reality. The first two lots exposed a cure-time issue on humid days; we extended open time and tightened pressroom climate control. Once stabilized, color approvals stopped bouncing around.
The team did their homework—yes, they skimmed packola reviews—and even asked if a packola coupon code would help on the first order. In the end, decisions leaned on specifications and run data, not discounts. Pilot sign-off covered EU 1935/2004 material contact requirements, FSC chain-of-custody, and a short life cycle assessment to benchmark CO₂/pack.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Waste fell by about 22% across the first three full campaigns. That wasn’t a single lever—tighter calibration, adhesive tuning, and smaller foil zones all played a part. Throughput rose by roughly 12–15% during peak weeks, largely from steadier approvals and fewer reprints.
Color stability landed where we needed it: average ΔE tracked under 2 during multi-SKU days, and First Pass Yield moved into the 93–95% range. Changeovers came down to 18–20 minutes on the lines that received revised setup sheets, though the oldest equipment didn’t always hit that window.
The LCA estimate showed CO₂/pack trending 10–14% lower compared to the prior spec, thanks to FSC board, water-based ink systems, and removing magnets. Finance modeled a payback period of about 12–14 months. It’s a model, not gospel, but it passed the sniff test.
Lessons Learned
Two surprises. First, soft-touch isn’t one recipe. A variant that felt perfect in the lab scuffed too easily on the line. We swapped to a slightly different soft-touch coating and added a small varnish band near edges. Second, operator training mattered more than we planned. The new setup sheets looked obvious to engineering, less so at 2 a.m. on a Saturday.
We kept the system flexible for seasonal spikes. Retail gets the premium rigid presentation; DTC uses color-aligned custom designed shipping boxes that ship flat and assemble fast. Decorative in-store sets still use the paper-first approach—even for those custom lock boxes—so recycling instructions stay simple. It’s not perfect, but it’s consistent. And that consistency is why we’ll keep closing the loop with packola.
