1. 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

3. 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)