Entering an already crowded baby care market with its signature black packaging is a risky move for the team behind Australian social enterprise Thankyou, but MD and co-founder Daniel Flynn believes there is room for a new design concept.
Thankyou has just launched a 14-strong range of baby body care, disposable and modern cloth reusable nappy products that will fund child and maternal health programs – in striking black packaging with monochrome prints.
The design-led range was developed by Thankyou’s in-house innovation team, as Flynn told PKN.
"It's a challenging industry, so for us it's a big move to place nappies on shelves that are predominantly made up of pink, blue, and purple products," he said.
"The heavy black conveys a premium message, and we've used monochrome prints on the product – essentially it's a design-led nappy.
"We figured babies are too young to appreciate the pictures of Winnie the Pooh and so on.
"We also believed that if we could nail the packaging design we could nail the market, as the packaging is something people are likely to share through social media channels."
The design also features catchy titles for the different-sized nappies such as Little Dreamer, Bundle of Joy, Go Getter, Mover & Shaker, Trailblazer, and Little Champion.
"Rather than just labelling babies as 'crawlers, walkers, toddlers' and so on, we thought we'd speak more positively about babies with these titles," Flynn said.
"On the bottom of the pack is a description of each of those names and stages, and there are technical drawings showing what the nappies do, with a humorous edge.
"Each pack also comes with a letter from our co-founder Justine, so there's a personal element to it as well."
There is also a baby care range which is dermatologically tested, pH balanced, and free from SLS, SLES, EDTA, and parabens.
Each product features the Track your Impact code Thankyou products are known for.
If the range does well, Flynn said, Thankyou could grow the amount given to global projects since 2008 from $4.7 million (as at July 2016) to over $10 million by the end of financial year 2018.
The new range was made possible after the group raised $1.4 million by asking supporters to pay what they wanted for a book earlier this year, with some of those funds going to Thankyou’s expansion into New Zealand.
“Right now, every 103 seconds a mother dies in pregnancy and childbirth, and globally 2.7 million babies don’t reach their first month of life because they don’t have access to basic health care,” Flynn said.
“At Thankyou we believe it’s possible to lower that statistic and quite literally save the lives of mothers and babies through this range.”
Thankyou’s complete FMCG range includes water, food, body care and baby goods.
Daniel Flynn will be speaking at our Breaking Boundaries LIVE event this Thursday in Sydney.
