Beauty Packaging Consultant Danica VanBeek: ‘Ultimately the Brand is Responsible’

Small and mid-sized brands are inclined to rely on their suppliers to deliver packaging that meets specifications and is compatible with their product, but they should be mindful of where the responsibility ultimately lies, says Danica VanBeek of VanBeek Packaging.

Virtually anyone who uses beauty and personal care products will relate to this experience related by Danica VanBeek, founder of consultancy VanBeek Packaging.

“Just the other day I bought a product in a tube, and it was a gel, so it should come out of the tube fairly easily. But for whatever reason, I was squeezing this tube with all of my might and was getting hardly anything out. I was afraid the seal was going to burst,” she said.

VanBeek continued, “It’s such a horrible consumer experience. Instantly I was like, I don’t want to buy this product again, I’ll figure out something else. There has to be another form of it out there somewhere in the market instead of buying this particular one.”

VanBeek consults out of her home office in Southern California, offering technical packaging support to brands that don’t have the resources or need for a full-time packaging engineer.

She assists clients with package development and testing so they can avoid issues like the one described above and go to market with confidence. Her focus is predominantly beauty and personal care, drawing on experience she gained first as a Packaging Analyst at The Estee Lauder Companies, followed by two decades in packaging leadership roles at companies including Anastasia Beverly Hills, Johnson & Johnson, and Dermalogica.

VanBeek’s current work, combining sourcing and package development expertise with a regular dose of problem solving, bridges a gap between packaging suppliers and her clients’ marketing and operations teams. She compares samples against technical specifications, assesses fit and finish, and ensures visual harmony across product lines – a critical consideration in beauty packaging where aesthetics are as important as function.

“They’ll send me bottles, they’ll send me caps, and I’ll test them. I’ll do leak testing, I’ll check the application and removal torque. And then I’ll compare the drawings to make sure that the drawings match the components. I’ll call out things, like – compared with your old bottle, this one’s a little taller, it has a softer radius. Or this bottle is a little bit shorter. Make sure you check the dielines, because that might change. You might not be able to use the same label.”

Attention to such details can be the difference maker in reaching market and ensuring a positive consumer experience. “There are things that a buyer or someone in procurement may not necessarily notice. But Marketing will notice, or your Customer might notice,” she said.

While small and mid-sized brands are inclined to rely on their suppliers to deliver packaging according to specifications, VanBeek cautioned, “Ultimately the brand is responsible for making sure their product works with their package.”

Sourcing, Sustainability, And ‘What’s the Story Behind It?’

In recent months, sourcing has become a larger component of VanBeek’s work amid tariff impacts and supply chain disruptions.

“People come to me and say, this is what we’re thinking, can you help us find this shape? Or they’re looking for a family of components – that’s a little bit trickier. Finding a bottle and a cap, that’s easier. If they’re looking to source an entire line, that means finding packages from maybe three or four different suppliers that all look like they’re meant to be together.”

VanBeek also has clients pursuing more novel packaging designs. “It does come up occasionally where somebody really wants to do something special and their quantities and their budget support it. And I’m happy to do that – I love that work.”

She gave the example of a client determined to push an oil product through a click-pen traditionally designed for lip gloss. “They said, ‘We clicked it, and it’s just shooting out streams of oil, and we just want a tiny dot.’”

It took months of iteration to reengineer the package to work for the thin formula, testing dosage, click responsiveness, and user experience to get it right. “They didn’t know what they needed to check to make sure it was working,” she said.

In an era of mounting sustainability pressures, VanBeek is sought out increasingly by brands subject to new recycled content, recyclability and Extended Producer Responsibility laws and has an inside view on the challenges these present for brands.

Rebooting as more sustainable without compromising the aesthetic or cache of a brand can be a tall order. In one case, VanBeek recalled, “it completely redirected the brand – the entire packaging line changed. Not everything is available the way we want it to look. This happened to be more of a prestige, luxury brand. At first it was – the sustainability doesn’t matter, we just need to make sure it looks nice. And then – it does matter, but we still need it to look nice. How do you execute that? What’s the story behind it?”

VanBeek Packaging has been an IBA Member since 2023.

“For a brand, IBA gives them the opportunity to have basically a whole professional network, and it’s great for learning about new parts of the industry and connecting with the right people. There’s a lot of smart people out there,” VanBeek said.