The Brand
Toast! Supplements makes science-backed functional gummies.
Sean started reading about how alcohol affects the body while trying to sort out a health scare of his own. He found there was real research behind it, and that none of the doctors he asked had heard of it. What he could not find was a version anyone would actually take. Everything on the market was pills and powders that looked and smelled like medicine, which is not what you want to hand someone on their way out for the night. So he made gummies instead.
The Challenge
The original structure did not. Loaded with pouches, the box tipped forward on the counter, which on a display piece is the difference between a placement and a returned one.
Two more constraints sat behind it. The carton had to run against the co-packer's equipment specifications, and any future roll film had to match their automatic filling line. The brand also had its own QA process that the finished packaging had to clear.
The Solution
The structure. Working on Sean's own physical assembly tests, we analyzed the actual thickness of the pouches, how they stack, and the space ten of them really needed. From that we set new carton depth and height and rebuilt the deadline. We moved the board to a rigid 24 pt SBS for the support a display tray needs, and set the tear perforation, so the front display lip comes away clean and the loaded carton stays upright.
The equipment. We updated the roll film dieline against the co-packer's specifications, so future roll film runs on their filling machinery without a second round of adjustment.
The catch. Sampling produced physical cartons and pouches, along with product photography, so Sean could check print, structure and shelf presence before committing. During assembly, our QC team found that a fold line partially covered the barcode, and that some artwork sat too close in tone to its background. We flagged both before mass production, worked with his designer to move the UPC and the brand graphics, then printed the updated dieline on paper, folded it by hand, and confirmed the barcode and artwork were still fully visible once assembled.
The Result
Toast! approved the samples and the final files and moved to production. We supplied a Certificate of Conformance to their QA process and shipped the finished cartons directly to their co-packer.
The carton works because it was checked the way a store would check it. We took those results and worked out the actual thickness of the pouches, how they stack, and the space ten of them needed, then rebuilt the dieline around that. When the barcode turned out to sit under a fold line, we printed the corrected dieline on paper, folded it by hand, and confirmed it was still scanned once assembled.
Sean started this company because the science was sitting in a form nobody would take. He solved that once by making it a gummy. On a retail counter, the question comes back in a different shape: a product only works if someone picks it up. The cartoon is what puts it at eye level, upright, with the barcode facing out, so the thing he spent years getting right gets its chance to be chosen.
“With Dylign taking care of the packaging details, we were able to put our energy into what we do best: developing the product.”
