Pacific Perfumes: The smell of success

Kate JasonSmith, left, presenter and model Lady Emmy and Francesca Brice. Photo / Supplied

Winning a green packaging award ahead of several global cosmetics giants is opening doors for a small Wellington perfume company.

Pacific Perfumes beat competition such as the Estee Lauder subsidiary Aveda to take the green category in the HBA International Package Design Awards this month.

Pacific Perfumes founders Kate JasonSmith and Francesca Brice went to New York for the ceremony. "We realised that even being in the finals, it was too good an opportunity to miss," JasonSmith said.

Pacific Perfumes has now been picked up by a New York distributor of what the Americans call "clean products".

While the company had been exporting for several years it had not previously broken into the US market. The award had also led to inquiries from South Africa, Australia and the UK. "It's just blown everything open for us," she said.

The winning packaging is for the company's new Artisan range of pure botanical cream perfumes. The product comes in pots made from sustainably harvested beech - a new tree is planted for every one logged in New Zealand.

It also comes with a wooden cutout nikau palm.

The outer packaging is made from recycled biodegradable cardboard, using no glue and vegetable-based inks.

Pacific Perfumes donates $1 from each sale of the Artisan range to the New Zealand Forest and Bird Society.

JasonSmith and Brice set up the boutique manufacturer in 2003 and sell about 30,000 pots of cream perfume annually. Half of their production goes overseas, mainly to the tourist markets in Fiji and Hawaii but also to various stores in Canada and Australia, and to online retailers.

Marketed as a souvenir of the Pacific, the company's Originals range has names such as Pacific Goddess, Akaroa Rose and Tui Loves Kowhai.

It launched the higherend Artisan range last year. Most other perfumes include synthetic ingredients and there was a growing group of consumers who didn't want that, JasonSmith said.

Pure botanical scents also "evolve" on the wearer's skin. "It's like the difference between going to a live concert and having the recording."

Because the partners were creating a more expensive product they needed packaging that reflected that, so they sought the help of the design school at Massey University's Wellington campus. The project was given to the students as an assignment.

While that made the process slower it resulted in creative ideas, and Mike Peters' chosen design "ticked all the boxes".

The founders are the company's only fulltime staff at present but they are set up to cope with as much as a tenfold increase in production, JasonSmith said.

The Originals sell for about $25-$28 a pot, while the Artisan range is priced at $50-$55.