“We had to bring waste down by about 20% and stop over-ordering labels we rarely used,” recalls Mira Tan, Operations Lead at Ayu & Co., a Singapore-based beauty and personal care startup selling across Southeast Asia. “At the same time, our packaging had to look premium on day one.” That’s when the team began exploring a digital path for labels and a new material stack. Early prototyping came together quickly with onlinelabels as a sourcing and design partner.
I spoke with Mira and with Rafiq Noor, the brand’s Sustainability Manager, to unpack what changed: print technology, materials, quality controls, and the hard choices they had to make. This isn’t a fairy tale—some trials failed, and price pressure never disappeared—but the outcome is a steadier process and a lighter footprint per label.
Here’s where it gets interesting: they didn’t just switch a press. They rethought substrates, inks, and finishing from the ground up, while asking simple questions like how to train staff who still google “how to create address labels in Word.” Their journey offers a practical, Asia-first view of sustainable labeling.
Company Overview and History
Ayu & Co. launched in 2019 with four hero products—facial oils and gentle cleansers—packaged in amber glass with paper labels. Today they manage 18 SKUs and ship to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Monthly label consumption sits around 70–90k pieces, spiking during e-commerce campaigns. Production happens in a humidity-prone environment, which matters for adhesives, liners, and curing behavior.
For the first two years, they ordered long runs of pre-printed labels using Offset Printing on coated paper with a film overlaminate. Over time, SKU fragmentation and seasonal promos made that model clunky. They’d keep stacks of obsolete labels on a shelf “just in case.” FPY hovered in the 82–85% range, and changeovers between variants could take 45 minutes. In Mira’s words: “It wasn’t broken, but it wasn’t nimble.”
The team culture is scrappy. Rafiq laughs about fielding basic process questions from new hires—like someone asking how to create address labels in Word for a returns batch. That spirit—learn fast, iterate—made the move to on-demand, Short-Run label production feasible. It also kept the focus on what counts: fewer piles of leftovers and a clear path to update copy when regulations shift.
Sustainability and Compliance Pressures
Two forces pushed Ayu & Co. toward change. First, consumer expectations: their buyers care about recyclability and avoid “unnecessary plastics” where possible. Second, retailer guidelines: several ASEAN marketplaces now nudge sellers toward paper-based, FSC-certified labelstock and away from mixed-material laminations that complicate recycling. The team set a target to cut CO₂ per label by 10–15% and reduce changeover waste by 3–5 percentage points.
Rafiq’s brief was crisp: move to FSC-certified paper labelstock with a water-based acrylic adhesive and a recyclable Glassine liner. Keep ΔE within 2–3 for brand-critical colors in at least 85% of runs. And keep costs within a 5–8% swing of the previous setup. Not a trivial balance. For finish, they swapped plastic lamination for a water-based matte varnish on most SKUs, accepting minor scuff risk to keep materials simpler for disposal streams. In Singapore and Johor, their recycler accepts Glassine and reports a 70–80% liner recovery rate when consolidated and baled properly.
There’s a human side to this, too. The marketing team was decluttering workflows—someone joked, “we need to get rid of Gmail labels to boost your email marketing creativegaming,” a cheeky line from a blog that stuck in the office. It reminds me that simplification pays off everywhere: in inboxes and on packaging lines. Minimal materials, fewer variants, better flow.
Technology Selection Rationale
The turning point came when Ayu & Co. piloted Digital Printing on FSC-certified paper Labelstock and dialed in a water-based varnish. They partnered with onlinelabels to source stock and to trial design updates in onlinelabels/maestro. In a single week, they tested 20 label variations—copy tweaks, barcode sizes, and a bolder brand mark—without ordering plates. With Die-Cutting in-line, small-batch kitting worked for their e-commerce rhythms.
On the press floor, color management set the tone. The team targeted ΔE ≤ 3 for logo reds and earthy greens and achieved that in roughly 85–90% of runs. FPY moved from 82–85% to around 90–92% after standardizing curing settings and running daily swatches. Changeovers dropped from 45 minutes to 25–30 minutes thanks to digital queues and fewer mechanical adjustments. Throughput during peak weeks climbed in the 18–22% range. These are not lab numbers; they reflect real, humid days and the occasional late-night sprint.
Materials matter. Paper-based labels with water-based Ink systems behaved well on glass, but the team still uses a clear PET label for shower products where water exposure and abrasion are tougher. Purists might balk, but sustainability is often about blended choices and honest trade-offs. They trialed transfer labels for limited-run merch and gift-with-purchase textiles; those transfer labels worked on cotton totes but weren’t a fit for curved glass where recyclability and clarity drove decisions.
Let me back up for a moment. Early tests weren’t perfect. A matte varnish batch showed scuffing after courier handling. The fix was a slightly higher coat weight and a tweak to curing energy—problem rate fell into a low single-digit range. Costs? Net unit cost stayed within the 5–8% band thanks to Short-Run agility and fewer obsolete rolls. Waste rate on version changes eased by about 3–4 points. Estimated payback period for the workflow revamp sits near 12–15 months, sensitive to promo volumes and SKU churn. For the pilot, the team even used an onlinelabels discount code to cover part of the R&D spins—small, but it helped unlock internal buy-in.
