There currently exists a variety of absorbent articles that have been developed to improve the health and hygiene of the user. For example, infant diapers, training pants, adult incontinence articles, feminine care articles, and the like are commonly used to absorb urine, menses, and other bodily exudates. However, despite the useful nature of these products, some users desire greater discretion regarding their need for particular absorbent articles. This may be particularly relevant to some adult users with incontinence. As such, some users may obtain absorbent articles by home delivery to avoid the embarrassment or self-consciousness of shopping in a traditional grocery store or drug store.
However, even with home delivery, some users are concerned about the cases of branded product being seen by others during delivery, storage, and/or disposal. To address this need, some manufacturers of absorbent articles ship the products in cases having no visible branding. This addresses the need for discretion but can cause issues with some retailers that want to see the branding on the cases to ensure proper merchandise inventory, transfer, and/or stocking. In order to serve both needs, some manufactures have provided two different case designs to satisfy the needs of the two different customers (i.e., branded cases for the retailers and unbranded cases for home delivery). However, this solution creates logistical and economic inefficiencies by requiring the manufacturer of the absorbent articles to manage two different case designs for a single product code.
Other methods of addressing discretion have included manufactures of absorbent articles providing the same branded cases to both retailers and home delivery providers. In turn, some of the home delivery providers have emptied the cases, turned the cases inside out, and refilled the cases such that the brand is printed on the inside of the case. Transforming the cases in this way eliminates the need for two different case designs but requires additional labor and expense on the part of the home delivery providers. Furthermore, this solution does not address the need for discretion when storing or disposing of the branded case because the branding is still visible on the inner surface of the case.
In other situations when manufactures of absorbent articles provide the same branded cases to both retailers and home delivery providers, the home delivery providers remove the product from the branded cases and repack the product into unbranded cases. This solution addresses the need for discretion during receipt, storage, and disposal of the case but re-introduces the problem of having two different case designs (i.e., branded and unbranded). The only difference is that the expense has transferred from the manufacturer of the absorbent articles to the home delivery provider.
Thus, there exists a need for a single case design that meets the branding requirements of retailers and the discretion requirements of home delivery providers. There also exists a need for a method to use the single case design to satisfy the needs of all customers/retailers.