As a business owner, you already know that cutting small costs can add up to substantial savings. But have you considered how much you can cut down your expenses by reevaluating your packaging methods?
Cutting Down Packaging Costs Guide:
1. Consider Alternative Packaging Options
Most small business owners still use boxes as packaging for their products. While boxes could be the best type of packaging to use, there are alternative options available, so you should explore each option to find the most cost-effective solution.
Look at different types of boxes as well as other packaging methods to cut down your packaging costs.
For instance, you could use woven polypropylene, which is strong, durable, provides products with complete protection, and can be less expensive than other packaging options.
For smaller products, plastic mailers are a great option. The plastic envelopes are flexible, durable, and water-resistant, and you could significantly cut down on your packaging costs.
Pouches are another available option.
2. Use Stickers or Pouches with Custom-cut Labels
In order to grow brand awareness, you should add your logo and another branding to your packaging. However, adding prints directly onto boxes and other forms of packaging can be costly.
An alternative idea is to use stickers. However, if you’re adding stickers to packaging yourself, you need to consider the amount of time it will take to apply them to determine whether it’s a cost-effective method.
Also, sometimes, the end results can be less than perfect. You could end up with misaligned labels.
A better option is to create custom labels that are printed and automatically applied to packaging pouches. At StickerYou, you can have customized labels printed onto flat pouches or stand-up pouches to save money and give your packaging a sleek and modern feel.
Related Resource: 5 Ways Packaging Is Affecting Your Brand Image
3. Minimize the Filling You Use
To save costs on your product packaging, you need to consider the interior of the package as much as the exterior.
Sure, to ensure your products remain stable and arrive in excellent condition you’ll often need to use void fillers. But by looking at different options for void fillers, you can find the least expensive option.
Shredded paper, cardboard, bubble wrap, and packing peanuts are some of the most commonly used packaging fillers.
4. Keep Packages as Small as Possible
When looking at different types of packaging, you should use a solution that ends up making your package as small as possible.
Costs will be less when you use less material for the exterior and interior packaging. For instance, if you’re selling T-shirts, you don’t need to place them flat inboxes. You could roll them up in plastic mailers instead.
By keeping your packages as small as possible, you can significantly reduce the costs for both the packaging and the postage.
5. Assess the Time it Takes to Pack
It’s not only the cost of the packaging materials and postage that you need to consider in order to cut down costs. You also need to reassess the time it takes to pack your products.
Labor costs can quickly mount up, so the more organized and efficient your packaging production line is, whether you pack items yourself or outsource the packing, the more you can reduce your expenses.
Standardizing your packaging is one way of lowering labor costs. For instance, if you sell products that are not too dissimilar in size, start using just one or two box variations instead of different sized boxes, or other packaging types, for each individual product.
That will simplify the process of picking and packing, meaning labor costs can be substantially cut.
If you’re using automated packaging machines, calculate how much time different equipment takes to complete packing items so that you can use the most cost-effective equipment.
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