Eye Shadow Boxes.

Because a pressed pan cracks when the godet takes a knock, and a loose carton passes that knock straight into the powder. A snug cavity cut into a rigid insert holds the pan still and absorbs the impact instead. Breakage is the leading cause of returns in this category, so the insert is doing most of the protective work.

Dry matte shades crack first. Shimmers carry more binder and tend to survive a drop that would split a matte.

Three options: a fitted cavity in 2mm greyboard, a die-cut EVA foam insert, or a moulded pulp tray. Greyboard is the rigid standard and protects well when the cavity is cut tight. EVA foam is the most forgiving for fragile mattes because it cushions rather than holds. Moulded pulp keeps the whole pack single-material and recyclable, with real cushioning of its own.

We would go with foam for a matte-heavy quad and pulp for a range selling on sustainability.

Yes, we bond a ferrous sheet into the base so magnetic godets hold position and can be lifted out for depotting. Customers prise pans out to build their own palettes, and a steel liner means the pan comes away cleanly without tearing the board. Magnet strength has to be specified in the brief: strong enough to hold in transit, light enough to lift by hand.

The lid closure gets the same treatment if you want the palette to snap shut on its own.

Soft-touch lamination with a hot foil mark is the prestige default, because a palette is held open in the hand. A wide flat lid is also the best canvas in the cosmetic range for emboss and deboss, since relief reads properly on a flat plane. Spot UV over matte works as a pattern device across a lid large enough for the pattern to register.

Holographic foil suits shimmer and duochrome shade stories. On a matte-only range it tends to look out of place.

A single pan with a 26mm godet sits in a box about 2.2 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches, and a quad palette runs roughly 4 by 4 by 0.7 inches. Those are outside figures for the rigid build. Godet diameters vary by filler, so we cut the cavity to your actual pan rather than the nominal size.

Send filled pans and we'll drop-test a sample from one metre onto a hard surface before any tooling is committed.

The floor is 500 units per palette design, whether rigid or folding. That covers the insert tooling and the lid print, which are the two costs that don't scale down well. We'll run up to 100,000 on the same specification.

A shade range that shares one lid print and one insert counts as a single design for the minimum.

Allow 7 to 10 business days for production after you sign off the proof. Rush production runs 5 to 7 business days if the press schedule has room. A physical sample takes 5 to 7 business days and we recommend one for any rigid palette, because the cavity fit is what protects the pan.

Whatever the sample costs comes off the invoice for the bulk run.

A rigid palette with a moulded pulp insert and a paperboard shell recycles as paper, but a magnet or a steel liner has to come out first. If recyclability is part of the claim, we would keep the closure to a paper tab or a friction fit and skip the metal. Foam inserts also break the single-material stream.

Where the magnetic system is central to the product, say so and we'll note the separable parts on the pack.