Protection guidelines for hygienic and topical products
Product security has never been more important than it is today, because of the increased number of counterfeits, mostly associated with products purchased over the Internet. The protection of the product packaging and implicitly that of the end-user is of the utmost importance.
Online customers can return products within the return window if these do not meet their expectations. The returned products can only be resold as new if the seller can determine that the next customer will still perceive the purchased item as new and in pristine condition (i.e., neither opened, tried or used).
Protection guidelines for sealing and packaging of hygienic/topical items are intended to determine clearly during the customer return process if such a product has ever been opened and prevent unnecessarily moving to unsellable genuinely new/unopened customer returns.
What are hygienic and topical products?
- Hygienic products are the ones used on the human body, including sensitive areas (e.g., mouth, eyes, genital area), and could be returned with residual substances on them (e.g., saliva, hair). Examples for this category of products include shavers, oral care products, like toothbrushes, skin & nail care sets, massaging devices and others.
- Topical products are those that are applied to the body – e.g., creams, foams, gels, lotions and ointments intended to use on body surfaces such as the skin, scalp or the mouth.
Starting April 2021, Amazon UK will make all products identified as hygienic or topical returned by the customers unsellable if they do not have an intact factory seal ensuring they are brand new and unopened or used by a prior customer. The absence of a compliant factory seal will increase the amount of unsellable returned products requiring further removal or disposal option by the sellers.
What are the requirements of a safe factory seal to be used on such products?
- They are opaque either with the company logo/any logo that cannot be replicated by the customer;
- The seal leaves a sign of tampering on the product when broken;
- They should be of a different color and should not blend in with the surface of the product;
The seal should be sturdy and the only way to break it is with clear intent. This means no accidental breaking, like during transportation or usual packaging handling. The seal cannot be manipulated or copied.
ELTRONIS has made great progress in improving the product packaging security, due to our state-of-the-art equipment and materials.
We offer a wide array of tamper-evident security seals for product- and brand protection purposes, ranging from the simplest cost-effective construction and content to the more sophisticated seals, which can incorporate multiple security features, that even though come with a higher cost, they offer more protection, because some of the features are extremely hard to reproduce.
One such product is enseal™ our patent-pending, self-adhesive, tamper-evident seal with controlled tearing for primary packaging and shipping box protection. Since its time on the market, we have managed to successfully implement enseal™ for customers in different industry branches, as this ELTRONIS tamper-evident product packaging solution is not limited to one particular industry.
enseal™ can be supplied with engage™, our cloud-based security and brand engagement software solution to verify the unique code and serial number printed on the security seal.
All our security seals can be customized, adapting their shape, size and color, while also adding multiple security features (e.g., personalized holograms, security print, security cuts, etc.) to fit our customers’ requirements. We place great value on the safety our customers’ products, all the while ensuring user-friendly applications for their end-users.
