The fragrance pen establishes a new promotional advertising opportunity for fragrance companies. The diverse design easily lends itself to colour coordinated representation of

a variety of existing fragrance names. It is aimed as a free give-away promotion to stretch the exposure potential of fragrance brands to encourage more people to try new scents. Sometimes an opinion takes a little

longer to sell and the fragrance pen provides the opportunity for people to sample a new fragrance in their own space and time, more than once. Fragrance stores are often

overwhelming and do not give a true representation of the scent. By combining the fragrance sample into a pen, there is a greater chance of promotional exposure as a pen is passed around and also forms a desirable function in its own right.

Fragrance is stored in an internal reservoir and dispensed through a polyester felt tip nib

Plastic Components (HDPE and ABS) Fragrance Filling and Nib

Branding Application Manufacturing Systems

Spring Costing

The volume of production currently stands at 100,000 units. This falls between the boundary line of high batch manufacture and mass production. As the fragrance pen is expected to be

used to promote a wealth of fragrance brands, batch production will be most suitable to cater for the required colours and fragrance filling from specific clients.

Although the components are geometrically identical, the colours and branding application will

be different for each order. By employing a batch production method, there will only be the required number of components produced in the required colour. This minimises the potential

of material waste and the need to store bulk quantities of components. Each colour will be unique to the brand so it is impractical to produce an amount of each component in a variety of

colours for “stock”.

The materials used fall under the “thermo-plastic” category which makes

injection moulding ideal. Initial tooling is expensive but once produced, can be used for any colour of material to produce the required components. The tooling for the hollow sections of the components must be designed with great attention to detail.

HDPE was used for the materials in direct contact with the fragrance due to its high chemical resistance properties. ABS was used for the mechanical components as the material has a great

level of dimensional accuracy making it durable for intricate mechanisms.

Once the components have been produced, a quantity of the fragrance will be supplied to the manufacturers to fill the reservoirs. The filling

process forms part of the assembly as the dispensing nib also seals in the liquid to the pen.

This is done on a moving production line as simplified by the diagram. One station fills the reservoir with the liquid fragrance and the next will insert the polyester felt nib into place. The nib will expand slightly as it absorbs the liquid

which will further reinforce the seal. The nib and other plastic components need to be manufactured before this process.

The spring starts life as a reel of stainless steel wire. The wire is fed into a machine which forces it through a

former which gives it its helical spiral shape. A cutting tool is stationed right next to the outlet for the formed spring and a timer controls the cutter to slide across to

create individual springs of a required length. The forming machine creates a continuous spiral of wire

and it is the responsibility of the timed cutter to dictate the length of the springs.

Automatic silk screen printing machines are commonly used to print onto curved surfaces. Each batch will require a different logo so a unique silk screen will be produced for each client to

apply their logo to the fragrance pens.

The silk screen printing process is able to do more than one colour in separate steps on a production line. The pens will be passed through each station to apply the ink colour. The Armani Sport Code logo for example has two colours

Material

HDPE

ABS

Stainless Steel Wire

Polyester Fibre

Ink Cartridges

Price

£0.56 per lb

£0.85 per lb

£1.31 per lb

£1.40 per lb

£0.01 each

A wholesaler called Alibaba supplies ink cartridges suitable for the fragrance pen for $0.03 each. The minimum order is 10,000 units which is perfect as the volume of production is 100,000 units.

so these would be printed on separate stations with individual silk screens. I

found a video on YouTube which demonstrates this process. (QR code)