The 5 ml stick: a sample that sells rather than being given away
A single-dose format looks like a footnote, yet it solves three shelf problems at once. We look at the economics of the stick and what to clarify with the factory before ordering.
A five-millilitre stick is easy to mistake for a footnote at the end of a price list. In fact it is a separate product with its own economics, and in scalp care it solves a problem a bottle cannot: it lets the customer try the product before spending money on five hundred millilitres.
Three different roles for one format
The first is a sample that sells. A set of ten sticks costs money and brings revenue, unlike a sachet given away for free. A customer who has paid for a trial treats it more attentively and comes back for the full size more often.
The second is the salon and the clinic, where single-dose hygiene and precise dosing matter. The third is travel and marketplace: compact packaging, a low entry price, easy shipping. At SANTE both hair items of the Azulene Soother line, the shampoo and the treatment, also come as five-millilitre sticks, ten to a set.
The economics of the format
Cost per unit of volume in a small fill is always higher: packaging for fifty millilitres costs more in total than one five-hundred-millilitre bottle. In exchange the entry price for the customer is lower, and that opens a channel a bottle cannot enter on price.
What has to be calculated is not the margin on the stick but the probability of moving up to the full size. If three out of ten buyers of a set come back for a bottle, the format pays for itself even at zero margin on the stick itself.
Labelling a small pack
The main technical difficulty of the format is surface. There is physically little room on a stick, and the mandatory information does not shrink to match: ingredients, volume, expiry, manufacturer, warnings. Most markets allow part of it to move to an outer carton or a leaflet, but the rules differ and this has to be settled before printing.
The second point is shelf life. A small fill behaves differently from a bottle: the surface-to-volume ratio is not the same. Stability data has to be requested specifically for the stick rather than carried over from the large format.
What to ask the factory
The minimum order quantity for sticks separately: it often differs from the bottle run. The unit cost at different order volumes. Requirements for the outer packaging of the set. Stability data and shelf life for the small fill. The permitted way of relocating mandatory information for your market. And the option of assembling a mixed set from different items of the line.
The last point is often overlooked, and it should not be: a set of shampoo plus treatment sells the whole line, while a set of ten identical sticks sells one item.