The Ultimate Guide to Custom Packaging for Small Businesses

Customers are moving more and more to online sales, as e-commerce sales jumped 50% from 2019 to 2021. E-commerce is an extremely competitive market, with customer expectations set high and many options for potential customers. 

The market for e-commerce retailers requires that you do something to help your small business stand out. This can include using custom packaging. With product unboxing going viral, the packaging you use for your products can help you to build a better brand image and enhance your relationship with your customers.

What Is Custom Packaging?

An alternative to standard packaging, custom packaging can be used to create branded packaging that can incorporate your company’s logo, colors, or theme. Custom packaging can be a reflection of your business’s values as well. 

For example, if you are an eco-friendly company, using environmentally friendly customized packaging can show your customers that you take your mission seriously. Depending on your product, customized packaging can also ensure that it arrives to its delivery point safely and securely.

Custom packaging can include packing materials, shipping containers, filler, and printed inserts. Customers’ relationships with an e-commerce business are created through the initial contact (often the website). They can be further solidified through order fulfillment. Using custom packaging can enhance this relationship. 

Benefits of Custom Packaging

Custom packaging can give you an edge over your competition, helping your brand to stand out. A high-quality custom packing box is not merely a secure method of transporting your product. 

It can also help to make a better first impression, make your brand more memorable, increase the perception of the value of your product, make a statement about your brand, create better brand loyalty, and be more eco-friendly. Product packaging can be one of the most important factors influencing your customers’ purchase decisions.

Favorable First Impression

Aesthetics are a major factor in creating a good first impression, and using custom packaging can help you to make this first impression well. In a highly competitive marketplace, customers often make snap decisions about a business based on their first impression. With custom packaging, you can attract positive attention. 

Make Your Brand Memorable

A positive unboxing experience can help to make customers remember your brand better, creating a favorable impression that they are more likely to retain. This can be carried over onto social media as well in unboxing videos. Adding a hashtag to your custom packaging can also increase shares about your product and brand.

Increase the Perceived Value of Your Product

Using premium and custom packaging can make your product seem and feel more expensive. As a result, it can feel like it carries more value than it actually does. Premium packaging improves brand perception and can make customers more excited about your brand.

Make a Statement About Your Brand

With custom packaging, you can make a statement about what your business or brand stands for with messaging and the types of packaging used. This can be used to show and not just tell what your brand is about. This can help to create your brand’s personality and make it stand out against competitors.

Better Brand Loyalty

Repeat customers are a big part of your profit margin, with 65% of your business coming from existing customers, on average. With custom packaging, you can create better brand and customer loyalty, encouraging customers to continue to buy from you and to remember your brand when searching for new products.

Enhanced Product Protection

With custom packaging, you can create a solution that is designed specifically to protect your products in transit. This can mean using special inserts to secure your product and more durable boxes to send goods in. Custom packaging can fit your brand values and also be tailored to the needs of your product directly.

More Eco-Friendly Packaging

Customers are often looking for more eco-friendly options. Packaging that has less impact on the environment can be a way to align with your brand’s values while also making customers feel better about their purchases. Biodegradable and recyclable packaging can be customized for your brand.

Most Common Forms of Custom Packaging

There are a lot of different types of custom packaging to choose from. Your choice will depend on a variety of factors, from what type of product you are shipping to your budget for doing so. Custom packaging ranges from boxes to envelopes to mailers with some of the most common forms outlined here:

Corrugated Boxes

Also called regular slotted container boxes (RSC boxes), corrugated boxes are some of the most common types of shipping boxes used today. They are easy to construct and collapse. They are rugged and durable and can accommodate a variety of different product sizes.

Very little manufacturing waste is created in production. Corrugated boxes are economical with a uniformed finish.

Rigid Boxes 

These high-end boxes offer a high level of protection for luxury items as well as a positive unboxing experience for your customers. Rigid boxes will also often need a custom designed insert to keep your products in place, which can also enhance the unboxing experience and provide better brand recognition and loyalty.

Paperboard Boxes

These are lightweight boxes that are also strong and commonly made from recycled wastepaper. Paperboard boxes can be folded into boxes and cut into a range of shapes made to fit your product dimensions exactly.

Poly Bags

When shipping soft, non-fragile items, such as apparel, poly bags can offer an eco-friendly lightweight option. Poly bags are waterproof, tear and tamper resistant and the smooth exterior can easily be customized for your brand.

Paper Mailers

Another option for shipping apparel, as well as small products, paper mailers are an eco-friendly and lightweight option that can easily be customized in line with your brand’s aesthetics.

Plastic Mailers

Bio-based polyethylene plastic mailers are environmentally friendly and great for lightweight items. They are also waterproof, tear-resistant, and tamper-resistant.

Foil Sealed Bags 

Commonly used for food items, there are a variety of eco-friendly foil sealed bags that can be customized to fit your brand.

Dunnage Packages

Dunnage packaging is used when your product needs extra protection in transit. It can include a variety of products, including honeycomb craft paper and bubble wrap that are built into padded mailers. These products include an extra layer of padded cushioning that is sturdy enough to prevent bending. Dunnage packages are often made from recycled and biodegradable materials for an eco-friendly option.

Bottle & Cap Packages

When packaging liquids, bottle and cap packaging is typically ideal. Packing caps can include stoppers, corks, child-resistant caps, metal caps, and glass closures. Glass bottles offer an eco-friendly packaging option for liquids.

Jute Packages

For grains and dry foods, jute packages are an eco-friendly option. They are durable, offer natural ventilation, and help to prevent damage to packaged products.

How to Customize Your Packaging

Packaging can be customized from the inside out. For e-commerce businesses, the most common types of packaging are mailers and shippers. To customize your packaging, you can choose the following options:

• Printing on the exterior of the package: Digital printing is often used to imprint your brand’s logo, messaging, colors, or theme onto the outside of mailers and boxes. These can be created quickly and ordered in bulk.
• Filler: Tissue paper, filler, and custom inserts can be branded and printed with your desired coloring or information for custom packaging inside of the box.
• Promo materials: Insert cards and printed inserts can be used as promotional tools to promote your brand inside of your mailer or shipper.

Costs of Custom Packaging

Custom packaging can range in price from as low as 10 cents per box up to over $10 per box. Typically, the more items you buy at one time, the lower the price will be. Buying in bulk can save you money on custom packaging. 

Custom packaging can be an added expense that your business might not be ready to consider. Unbranded boxes and mailers can be less expensive when you are just starting out. 

Custom packaging has a lot of benefits when you are ready to go this route. The following factors can influence costs:

• Materials
• Size
• Ink coverage
• Tooling
• Quantity

What to Consider When Customizing Packaging

Aesthetics are not the only thing to consider when looking into custom packaging. You will also need to consider who your customers are, what types and shapes of products you are shipping, and how fragile the products are.

Your Customer Demographic

It is important to understand whom you are marketing and selling to when customizing packaging. The goal is to cater to your audience while fitting your brand’s purpose. 

Product Shape & Type

You will need to balance form with function when creating custom packaging to ensure that your items are properly and securely packaged. If you have oddly shaped items, it can take some trial and error to find the right packaging solution, for example. It’s worth the time investment to get this right.

Fragility of Your Product

It is incredibly important that your products arrive undamaged to your customers. This can mean that fragile items need additional protection and potentially custom inserts to keep them snug and protected in transit.

The size of the packaging and packing material should fit the item as well. Your cost will go up with larger packages, for example. Because of this, it is important to ensure that you are packing things in appropriately sized containers.

References

E-Commerce Sales Grew 50% to $870 Billion During the Pandemic. (February 2022). Forbes.

Effect of Product Packaging in Consumer Buying Decision. (December 2012). ResearchGate.

Customer Retention Statistics – The Ultimate Collection for Small Businesses. (January 2021). Small Business Trends.