As the festive season approaches, candle brands have an exceptional opportunity to capture the market with Christmas-themed products. The blend of warm scents, flickering lights, and holiday cheer creates the perfect environment for candles to shine.
As you prepare your festive product range, we are here to support your candle label strategy, helping you meet regulatory standards while enhancing your brand's presence in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In this comprehensive guide, we'll dive deeper into the nuanced requirements for candle labelling in the UK and EU and explore ways to strengthen your brand by using your labels as dynamic elements of your holiday marketing strategy.
Labelling for regulatory compliance
Key elements for CLP labels:
- Hazard pictograms: Consistently applied symbols indicating risks, from flammability to potential skin irritation.
- Signal words: 'Warning' or 'Danger' to signify the severity.
- Hazard and precautionary statements: Detailed descriptions and advice on how to handle the product safely.
- Supplier information: Accurate and up-to-date business contact details.
- UFI Code (EU Only): A Unique Formula Identifier, which is critical for tracking in case of health-related issues. A helpful guide on UFI is listed Here.
General Product Safety Regulations
General product safety pictograms
In addition to CLP regulations, it’s essential to include General Product Safety pictograms on your labels, which are required for candles sold in both the UK and EU markets. These pictograms provide customers with clear and concise guidance on safe candle usage, such as reminders to keep candles away from children, not to leave burning candles unattended, and to trim the wick before lighting.
Incorporating these safety symbols not only ensures compliance with the General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR) in the UK and the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD) in the EU but also reinforces your commitment to consumer safety. For a comprehensive overview of the mandatory pictograms and how to implement them effectively, visit our detailed guide here.
Creating safety CLP labels
Streamline this process with Candle Shack CLP labelling tool. This one-stop shop tool will automatically pull all the elements required for your specific fragrance and concentration and turn them into a compliant CLP label design, saving you time and giving you peace of mind.
If you need to make custom CLP safety labels for your products with fragrance content not currently available on the CLP tool, you can also find all of the information you will need for your CLP safety label directly on the SDS for each fragrance on their product pages. A detailed guide to CLP can be found Here.
When designing your CLP safety labels, we would also recommend Ensure seamless integration between the two by coordinating elements like complementary colour palettes or consistent fonts, allowing even the compliance label to feel like a cohesive part of your brand's aesthetic.
Balancing Compliance with Design
Separate Yet Harmonious: Keep CLP and branding labels distinct, but ensure their coexistence doesn’t feel disjointed. For example, maintain a consistent margin or border around both labels for a unified look.
Placement of CLP safety labels
As the CLP safety label needs to be visible at every point of sale, particularly if using gift boxes or additional packaging, adding the CLP safety information on the exterior packaging as well as on the product itself will informs customers before purchase and during its use. This not only meets regulatory requirements but reassures your customers that you prioritise their safety. We recommend affixing the CLP label where it won’t be immediately obvious but remains easy to find, such as the base of the box or the side flap, in addition to the base of the product.
Theme building
Choosing an aspect of the holiday season and turning it into a coherent theme that runs across your entire collection can be a powerful way to keep your range cohesive, ignite your customers’ imagination, and guide your product development. We recommend picking a theme that fits with your brand identity and building a narrative around it to amplify your message. This can then inform your aesthetic and drive your entire seasonal visual identity, while remaining true to your brand’s look.
Logo variations
Consider adapting your logo with subtle holiday elements or colour schemes, such as adding a sprig of holly, a gold snowflake, or incorporating cheerful red and green accents. This is an excellent way to refresh your branding and create a feeling of exclusivity and trendiness in your customers while keeping true to your brand’s visual identity.
Typography and colour palette adjustments
You can also subtly tweak fonts and colour palettes for the holiday season - perhaps a slight golden embellishment or bolder version of your typical font -, choosing a complementary style to your evergreen brand guidelines, and keeping the style constant across your festive product range maintain brand consistency while embracing your chosen festive theme. This also gives you an opportunity to turn your festive range into limited editions to drive demand.
Materials and Finishes
A change to your labels material or finish fitting your chosen seasonal theme also allows you to further embrace your chosen festive theme, creating a truly visual and tactile unique experience for your customers. While offering a consistent quality throughout the year, a seasonal shift in material and finishes with different looks and textures is a subtle but powerful way in which to separate your festive range from your evergreen products and to align all elements of your theme, from the visual to the tactile to the olfactory.
Finishing Touches
Incorporating interactive elements into your seasonal candle labels can significantly enhance their gift appeal and make them more engaging for customers. Adding a 'To/From' section directly on the label transforms your candle into a ready-to-gift item, saving customers time and making the product more convenient and personal. Alternatively, consider including a peel-off section with a holiday message, which can feature festive greetings or warm wishes, adding a thoughtful touch. Not only will these finishing touches increase the perceived value of your product, but they will also contribute to a personalised unboxing experience and enhanced customer relationship with your brand, making them the perfect holiday gift.
