Why You Should Consider Custom Product Boxes
If you have put a lot of sweat equity into your product, you don’t want your packaging to be an afterthought. Whether you’ve designed it, grown it, formulated it, or manufactured it, you have an investment and a responsibility to ensure your product gets to its recipient unscathed and at the best possible cost. Custom product boxes – transit packaging optimized for maximum cost-efficiency, increased protection, and often custom printing opportunities – can help you protect your investments and reduce risks.
Maximum cost-efficiency
Not all boxes are created equal. Keep in mind that cheaper doesn’t mean cost-efficient. Many factors contribute to higher packaging costs, including product damage, poor material choices, material waste, high shipping costs, and lost time. For example, some overseas suppliers can offer low unit pricing, but the corrugated tends to be of lower quality and tears easily, which leads to higher costs in the long run. Working with a reputable corrugated box manufacturer should ensure the materials used are high quality, but even so, there is room for greater cost-efficiency.
Additional savings can be found in right-sizing and lightweighting the packaging for the product. One way is through reduced shipping costs. If you ship via Fed Ex, UPS, or another shipper that charges by DIM weight, the packaging sized to your product will be smaller and, therefore, may cost less to ship. Less packaging material can also impact the overall product weight, which may result in lower costs from other shippers. If you unitize your packaging, you can have it designed for maximum boxes per pallet, which will fit more per truckload. If you have your own fleet, you can factor in reduced fuel costs from making fewer trips.
Another consideration that isn’t a direct cost but has the potential to damage your bottom line is customer satisfaction. Damaged products lead to unhappy customers, and unhappy customers may look for a new supplier, resulting in lost future sales. If your products are going direct to consumers, you have to worry about negative online reviews, which not only means you’ve lost one person for repeat sales it also means you can lose potential customers and future sales from people who have never used your product.
For more tips on reducing costs, download our eBook – Thinking Outside (and inside) the Box: A Practical Guide to reducing Corrugated Packaging Costs.
Increase Product Protection
By the time your corrugated box reaches its end user (e.g., consumer, industrial customer, retailer), it has had many touchpoints, which may include manufacturing, bundling, palletizing, shipping, unloading, putting into a case erector or hand assembling, filling with products, sealing, labeling, palletizing, wrapping and strapping, shipping, unloading, warehousing, and distribution (via truck, ship, train). Not all packaging will see all of these touchpoints, and some products like those shipped directly to consumers will have other hands on them, such as sorting at a depot. The point is that corrugated packaging is touched a lot before reaching the recipient. The packaging needs to withstand its journey to your packaging facility as well as have the structural integrity to protect your product through its journey.
Optimizing also entails ensuring your packaging can withstand any environment it will encounter (e.g., cold storage, excessive handling, weight from palletization). Even how your corrugated boxes are stored can impact how well your boxes hold up.
Using less packaging is better and can save you money but alone isn’t enough to ensure your product is protected. Providing greater protection with a smaller-sized box can be accomplished by changing the liner, flute sizes, liner board and medium combinations, and inner materials to balance product protection and cost effectiveness.
Custom Printing Opportunities
Saving money and protecting your product are great reasons to consider custom product boxes; however, a third reason is the opportunities for branding through custom printing. Corrugated boxes offer a blank canvas for your logo and artwork. From a direct-to-consumer perspective, brand recognition goes a long way. In fact, a consistent brand presentation has been reported to increase revenue growth by up to 33%. So why would you deviate with your packaging? Your artwork doesn’t have to be extravagant. Having just your logo on your custom packaging can increase brand recognition – look how recognizable the Amazon or Walmart logos have become.
Perhaps you don’t see the benefit if you are shipping to a warehouse, retailer, or industrial setting where the customer will not see or won’t care about artwork and logos. However, custom printing can increase efficiency and safety. Consider printing product codes and identifications on the boxes where they can be quickly seen by staff in a warehouse. Or consider color coding to differentiate between products for quick identification or to separate by departs in a retail store. You can even print warnings or hazards on the boxes that can enhance your safety protocols.
Work with a Custom Product Box Manufacturer You Can Trust
To see the greatest reward from your custom boxes, work with a manufacturer you can trust to deliver exactly what you need on time. Axis Corrugated Container is a privately held, American- owned and operated company. We will optimize your containers to protect your product, reduce material use, minimize wasteful fill-voids, and reduce DIM factors, ultimately helping you reduce costs.
In addition, we work to minimize production costs and speed job processing, bringing you additional savings. Not only are we cost-effective and efficient, but we also strive for the highest quality. Our robust quality system ensures your boxes will meet your standards every time.
Contact us to learn how we can help you.