18 PW JUN2022
FIRST PERSON
Emerging Brand Prioritizes Product Education on Package Annette Azan, the Founder and CEO of Nuudii System, has been an executive in the fashion business her entire career. More than 11 years ago, Azan got the opportunity to make a garment of her own. A couple of weeks before her wedding, she constructed a first-layer bra alternative to wear under her wedding dress, and the first Nuudii was created.
vending machine. The packaging was a critical part of the branding, though, because Nuudii will never be sold outside of a package or hanging on a hanger in a store. The packaging we have today took a year to develop because we couldn’t find anything that protected the product, that was sealed, and that allowed fine printing. We have printed photography and a size chart on the package. Because Nuudii is small, we needed to have the ability to fine print without losing quality.
Even though the Nuudii package is compact, you have detailed depictions of how it can be worn and an extensive size guide printed on the back. How important was it to have product education on the package? We had a lot of time to come to those conclusions of what should be on the packaging. We wanted to eliminate extra inserts in the package. Originally, we had an insert that showed you the ways of wearing it, but I wanted all this information on the outside of the package. What we are doing here with “boobwear” is different, and it’s a grab-andgo product. We knew including these graphics was essential for the customer and the understanding of what they were getting inside the package.
Nuudii System offers grab-and-go “boobwear,” or a bra alternative, that gives women an option between wearing a bra and going braless. Nuudiis are hardware-free and made of 73% nylon and 27% spandex. Since the product is compact and only weighs 1.5 oz., it’s not sold or displayed in retail like typical bras. Instead, Nuudiis are sold packaged and sealed on retail shelves, online, and in special vending machines found in airports, spas, and other likely spaces. Given the product’s unique shape and retail goals, Annette Azan, Founder and CEO, realized the company needed to come up with a package that lent itself well to the places Nuudii wanted to sell into, all the while prioritizing sustainability and user experience.
Packaging World:
When you’re planning to sell a product in a retail setting like a vending machine, how do you create effective branding to make sure it stands out to customers without being handled and inspected like it would be on a retail shelf?
Annette Azan: The beauty of a vending machine is that you’ve got a digital advertising component, which can also be your educational component for the product. The product shows well on digital advertising, which is included on the outside or interface of the
When you created this product, was sustainable packaging something that was important to you? It took years from the inception concept that happened to development, but we did a test site before we went to Kickstarter, and from that moment, we had plant-based packaging, but it was really simple. Our bags were made from corn originally, but they were non-branded. We just launched a new package that’s made of sugar cane. It’s 100% recyclable and printed with non-toxic inks. There’s also a bonus to the production of it that for every one of these bags made by our supplier, they remove the equivalent weight and plastic from the oceans.
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