Make Waves Anti-perspirant Shows Why Refill Has to Earn the Repeat Purchase

Refillable packaging can be a great reason to try a product, but is it enough to make you keep buying it?

Wild was one of the first refill systems I got excited about. I jumped into it without really considering one fairly important detail: I wanted an antiperspirant. The refillable packaging attracted me to the product, but ultimately it wasn’t enough to make me stick with something that wasn’t right for me.

I’ve recently switched to Make Waves, which also uses a refillable format. It turns out the brand was featured in the Innovation Zone back in January, before I joined the team in March, so I’d completely missed it until recently.

Since switching, a couple of aspects of the Make Waves packaging have particularly stood out to me.

Explaining the choice of recycled plastic

After my first order, Make Waves sent me an email explaining why its refills are made from 100% recycled plastic and why the company had chosen this material over fibre-based alternatives. You can see their article on this subject here.

I liked that they took the time to explain the thinking behind the material choice rather than assuming that moving away from plastic is automatically better.

For me, it was a nice example of consumer education around packaging. Material choices aren’t always straightforward, and giving customers some context about why a particular format has been selected can help them better understand the decisions behind the pack.

It also shows that refill systems don’t necessarily have to be built around avoiding plastic altogether. The material, the amount used, how the refill system works and what happens to the packaging afterwards all form part of the wider picture.

Right-sizing the e-commerce packaging

The secondary packaging also caught my attention. My three refills arrived in a box that was pretty much exactly the size it needed to be, with very little unnecessary space.

It was also small enough to fit through the letterbox, which is a simple but useful feature for a product designed to be reordered regularly.

The state of the box after opening is entirely down to me, by the way. I’ve never opened anything elegantly in my life.

Right-sizing might not be the most visually exciting packaging innovation, but seeing a compact delivery box alongside a refill system reinforced how different elements of the packaging experience can work together.

Refill only works if consumers want to come back

Trying both systems has made me think more about one of the fundamental challenges with refillable packaging: refill will only scale if the product is worth coming back for.

A durable case is designed around the assumption that you’ll return and buy another refill. That means the product inside still has to be something you genuinely want to keep buying. In my case, the Wild system initially attracted me because of its packaging, but the product itself wasn’t the right fit for what I wanted.

Thankfully, the Make Waves formula suits me much better, so the refill model makes more sense for me as a repeat customer.

There’s an interesting lesson here for refill systems more broadly. Packaging can encourage trial and provide a reason to choose one product over another, but repeat purchasing ultimately relies on the complete proposition working for the consumer.

There is, however, one consequence of switching: I’m now left with my old Wild case and need to work out how to reuse it. I’m thinking it could store small items when travelling, perhaps hair bands or hair clips. Ideas are welcome!

My experience has certainly taught me one thing: do your research before committing to a refillable product. A reusable pack is most useful when the product inside is one you’ll actually want to refill.