THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Shrink sleeves — if designed, printed and applied correctly — promise countless benefits to your brand: Product differentiation, 360-degree branding, improved appearance retention and maximum shelf impact.

While maximizing shelf impact is the primary value-driver shrink sleeves provide to your total packaging system, they also bolster your container walls (allowing for the use of lightweight product containers) and enable easy incorporation of tamper-evident elements.

And as technology matures and evolves, more and more premium beverage brands, personal care products and performance nutraceuticals are leveraging shrink sleeve bottle labels for enhanced shelf appeal.

If you’re a brand owner considering sleeves for one of your product lines, this guide is a good place to start.

It will answer questions like:

• Why are brands in so many markets switching to sleeves?

• What are some common applications?

• What factors impact shrink sleeve costs?

• How do I prevent graphics distortion on my shrink sleeves?

Let’s get started.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Why are brands in so many markets switching to sleeves? Right now, improvements in shrink sleeve technology are fueling popularity, and popularity is fueling research into further improving capabilities. That’s a big reason shrink sleeve labels are one of the fastest-growing segments of the labeling industry, boasting an estimated annual growth rate of 6.5% over the next five years.

Today, we’re able to engineer shrink sleeves to contour around almost any container shape, with enhanced abrasion, moisture and product resistance when compared to a surface printed label. And there’s great variety within the shrink sleeve category: Full-body sleeves with tamper-evident seals over the cap, sleeves wrapped around multiple products in a promotion, smaller bands and more.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

With shrink sleeves, there’s ample room for brands to test their creativity and customize their label to their product’s functional and branding needs.

Here are a couple of reasons food, beverage, home, personal care and nutraceutical brands have looked to shrink sleeves to differentiate their product bottles on the shelf.

360 degrees to tell your brand story and build consumer trust

Because shrink sleeves provide much more label real estate, you can communicate more on your label, from branding, product information, use instructions and regulatory information.

As transparency and trust are increasingly being tied to brand loyalty, shrink sleeves provide an opportunity to be transparent about your brand and product by communicating more information on your label.

Better label and product protection

Shrink sleeves are exceptionally good at withstanding wear during shipping and handling, as shrink films are naturally resistant to abrasions, the environment, water and the product itself. This, combined with the fact that the image is printed on the inside of the sleeve, protects the graphics from wear or fade throughout the product lifecycle.

Shrink sleeves can even protect the product by providing added strength to the bottle, in some cases allowing for packagers to reduce the wall thickness of plastic or glass bottles while still protecting the contents. And adding tamper-evident elements can help ensure your product remains in its intended state, protecting both the consumer and your brand image. Both of these innovations not only add value to the product’s label — they can sometimes reduce the total cost of your product’s packaging.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

These innovations in shrink sleeve labeling — surrounding functionality and safety — are cited as among the most important to consumers when making a purchasing decision, according to a study done by Packaging Matters. The study also linked innovative packaging with purchasing behavior: Consumers who are satisfied by a product’s packaging are more likely to buy it again.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Value-added applications for shrink sleevesShrink sleeves are used across container types (plastic, glass, metal) and markets (nutraceutical, home, personal care, food) because they allow you to add functionality, and therefore value, to your product packaging.

Here are a few potential ways shrink sleeves can add value to your total packaging system.

Incorporating tamper-evident features

As discussed earlier, tamper-evident features are a great way to protect your brand. Extending the shrink sleeve over the bottle cap (as with lip balms) or adding a shrink sleeve around only the cap (as with some nutraceutical bottles) allows you to make your package tamper-evident.

Incorporating a tamper-evident band into the sleeve itself simplifies your packaging operations when compared to similar solutions such as drop-band closures. Doing so allows you to avoid adding additional equipment and application steps into your process.

Making it easy for consumers to recycle product containers

Shrink sleeves need to be removed prior to recycling plastic containers. To make this easy for consumers, you can incorporate a “zipper” into your shrink sleeve. This zipper, comprised of one or two die-cut perforations that run up the side of the sleeve, allows the consumer to quickly rip off the sleeve before throwing it in the recycling bin.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

New innovations are in development that support effective container recycling as well. Two such examples include:

1. Shrink films which are designed to float during the recycling process, facilitating better label/material separation

2. Systems that support removal of ink from the label in the recycling stream

Maximizing the area for branding and regulatory information

As we mentioned, sleeves give you 360 degrees of real estate, making it easy to add regulatory to add regulatory information or maximize shelf impact by telling a compelling brand story.

Lightweighting your product container

Shrink sleeves can contribute to the strength and rigidity of your product’s packaging system, allowing you to reduce the wall thickness of the bottle or container. And lightweighting in this way is good for the environment — lighter packaging uses less material to make and less fuel to ship.

Enhancing abrasion and product resistance

Because all graphics are printed on the inside of the sleeve, your shrink sleeve’s printed graphics will be inherently more resistant to wear, humidity and chemicals — which contributes to enhanced appearance retention throughout the product lifecycle.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

A comprehensive look at shrink sleeve costsIt’s important to frame any discussion about shrink sleeve costs in terms of potential value, rather than just dollars-and-cents costs. That’s because a simple price comparison between sleeves and traditional labels only tells half the story.

Generally speaking, shrink can be about 25% more expensive than pressure-sensitive labels — but sleeves offer nearly 150% more real estate for brands to tell their story or communicate regulatory information.

That’s 150% more space brand owners can use to establish a connection with their target consumer. And because it’s often cheaper to incorporate color and tamper-evident elements into a shrink sleeve than the container itself, sleeves can contribute to the value of your product’s total packaging system.

Both shrink sleeves and pressure-sensitive labels are great products — but depending on the goal of the rebrand and your go-to-market strategy, the value of product differentiation can far outweigh the incremental cost of the sleeve itself.

Factors affecting the cost of shrink sleeve labelsIt’s impossible to give an accurate price estimate for shrink sleeves without seeing your product’s container and understanding your brand vision. But there are certain factors that help frame any discussion of sleeve prices.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Run size

This is the most important factor impacting your per-sleeve costs. It takes a significant amount of time to set up the press between runs. Longer runs spread the setup cost over more sleeves, resulting in lower per-sleeve costs.

Printing method: Digital vs. flexographic

Shrink sleeves used to be limited to larger runs. Now brands have a lot of flexibility in run size and a choice between using a digital or flexographic printing press.

Digital printing allows for shorter runs, quicker turnarounds and sleeve-by-sleeve variation for promotional campaigns or flavor variations within a product line. While cost-prohibitive for shorter runs, flexo tends to be the best value for larger runs, providing standardized quality and great design versatility.

Material selection: PETG vs. PVC

While there are many shrink sleeve material options out there, the two most common are PVC and PETG. Which you choose will depend on budget, application and how much the material will need to shrink to wrap around your container.

While PVC is the cheaper option and performs well during product use, it has much lower shrinkage (~60%), making it ill-equipped to shrink around some highly contoured containers. Despite the higher cost, the market for PETG is growing faster than for PVC because it’s more environmentally friendly and offers greater clarity and shrinkage (~78%).

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Shape of your container: Common vs. custom

Shrink sleeves can be used on almost every container shape, but it’s easier to engineer sleeves for common containers. Depending on how mainstream (e.g., 12-oz. bottles or cans) or unique (e.g., completely custom trigger bottles) your container is, more label engineering may be required on the front end to make a sleeve work for your container, potentially increasing the final cost.

Level of decoration: Simple vs. complex

Complex branding and decoration can also increase the per-label costs of your shrink sleeves. But elements such as cold foil stamping, custom finishes and UV metallic inks also help to differentiate your product on the shelf — making the cost increase well worth it in many cases.

The value of shrink sleeve labels in building brand equity

Brands don’t choose to transition to shrink sleeves because they’re the cheapest labeling method — they choose them because they’re valuable in differentiating their product and establishing connections with consumers.

70% of brand decisions are made in the store. To engage in-store shoppers and influence their decisions, your brand’s product has to stand out among the competition. And few new product launches utilize shrink sleeves, making sleeves the perfect label option for a brand looking to differentiate their product.

Shrink sleeves drive sales. In fact, shrink sleeve packaging triples the desire to purchase among early adopters and women, according to a study by AC Nielsen. The study even revealed that buyers were willing to pay more for products with shrink sleeves.

Unsurprisingly, more and more companies are incorporating shrink sleeves into rebranding strategies to boost sales, revitalize their brand and engage with their consumers.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Ensuring proper shrink distortion Companies switching from labels to sleeves as part of a rebranding strategy need to plan for the primary challenge of shrink sleeve design: Accounting for shrink distortion in the artwork origination process.

As you know, your graphics are printed flat onto a film, which is then seamed and dropped over a bottle or container before going through a heat tunnel. The heat causes the film sleeve to shrink around the contours of your product’s container. This process presents a serious design obstacle — while the final product is 3D, the artwork is printed in 2D.

Your graphics will distort when shrunk around the curves and angles of your product’s container. To ensure that distortion results in crisp and clear graphics, label converters will pre-distort graphics to account for the shape of the container, the shrink potential of the material chosen (PVC, PETG, PLA or OPS) and the design of the heat shrink tunnel. The ultimate goal is to deliver the correct final brand image.

Proper distortion of the 2D image will ensure your graphics display as intended when the sleeve is shrunk around the container. But getting the pre-distortion right is arguably the hardest part of transitioning to shrink sleeves — and the process for doing so has changed quite a bit in recent years.

Preventing shrink distortion: Then and now

Then: Manually preventing distortion through trial and error

In the past, pre-distortion was a manual process requiring many rounds of trial and, inevitably, error. Naturally, estimating shrink distortion by hand shrink led to long prepress, proof and approval cycles.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Now: Using 3D software to streamline the prepress process

Now, this process is made much simpler — and quicker — with the advent of 3D modeling technology for packaging. After receiving a sample of your packaging, your converter can render a 3D version of it. Using the artwork and the 3D rendering of the container, the converter can predict the level of expected shrink and distort the image accordingly.

This technology even allows you to simulate how the finished product packaging will appear on the shelf next to the competition. This will give you a clear idea of what the final product will look like before your shrink sleeve design ever hits the press.

Prepress virtualization programs have certainly streamlined the shrink sleeve design process. But it’s still important to have your converter run a sample sleeve to ensure the digitized artwork looks good on your physical container.

This is key: Anyone can buy the software, but there is no replacement for a converter’s experience with a wide range of sleeve applications.

Shrink sleeve design best practices Although your label converter will handle the pre-distortion, you can streamline the prepress process — and reduce your lead time — by ensuring your artwork is optimized for shrink sleeves when you hand it off.

Select the material best-suited for your container

As discussed, the two most common shrink sleeve materials are PVC and PETG. While PVC might be more cost-effective, it has much lower shrinkage and is ill-equipped for highly contoured containers. Despite the higher cost, PETG might be the better option if your container has a unique shape.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Pay attention to seam placement

It’s harder to prevent shrink distortion close to the seam. You can place your seam anywhere on the sleeve — just make sure you plan for seam placement when designing your artwork. Choose an area without small text or realistic imagery and avoid having continuous graphics go through the seam.

Orient barcodes correctly

Barcodes must be printed with a high level of accuracy to ensure they can be scanned. Orient your product’s barcode vertically rather than horizontally in your design to minimize the possibility of distortion.

Avoid small text, realistic imagery and intricate design in high-shrink areas

Even with new technology, replicating realistic imagery or geometric shapes in high-shrink areas (think grips on a trigger bottle or the neck of a soda bottle) is difficult. Instead, opt for abstract shapes in high-distortion areas — these shapes are more forgiving of a small degree of distortion.

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

The secret to avoiding distortion? Choosing the right converterWhile new 3D modeling technology has made it easier to get into the game, the proven expertise of your label converter is still key to the success of your transition to shrink — it’s the difference between having a label that looks good on the screen and a label that looks good on the shelf.

To ensure you choose the right converter, ask the right questions during your consultation: Look at their portfolio of custom sleeves, find out if they’ve done sleeves for your product segment and make them identify potential challenges in your product’s sleeve design. Only partner with a shrink sleeve labeler whose answers exhibit expertise in designing sleeves for your product segment and experience manufacturing sleeves similar in design to yours.

 

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THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

Let’s talk shrink sleevesAt Resource Label Group, we don’t just design, print and ship shrink sleeves. We take ownership for delivering sleeves that achieve your desired brand image when you shrink them around your container.

Our team of shrink sleeve experts has successfully delivered sleeves for a myriad of products in a variety of industries. We have the in-house capability to run sample shrink tests with your label on your sample product. And we take the parameters of your particular heat shrink tunnel into account when designing your sleeves — ensuring our sleeves will look as good on the shelf as they do on the screen.

Start a conversation with our team today. We’ll listen to your branding strategy and offer value-added labeling ideas to help differentiate your product from the competition. Our diligence during pre-press not only ensures your brand manager will love the way your products look on the shelf, but your packaging engineer will also sing your praises for taking everything from container shape to tunnel design into account.

16COPYRIGHT 2020 RESOURCE LABEL GROUP AND ALL SUBSIDIARIES

THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

MORE ABOUT RESOURCE LABEL GROUPAt Resource Label Group, we continually invest in the most innovative people, technology and processes to deliver the highest quality labels. Running state-of-the-art operations throughout North America, we combine full-scale label printing and design capabilities with hands-on, consultative service. Our goal? To provide you the solutions you need to achieve a perfect label for your brand, budget and product. It’s our mission to deliver a tangible return on your packaging investment and ensure a smooth, positive experience.

If you have any questions about labels, give us a call at 1-888-526-8177 or visit us at resourcelabel.com. We’ll point you in the right direction and find solutions for your label needs.

17COPYRIGHT 2020 RESOURCE LABEL GROUP AND ALL SUBSIDIARIES

THE BRAND OWNER’S GUIDE TO SHRINK SLEEVES

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