No doubt being a small business owner has your work cut out for you. But even when you have major elements like payroll, marketing, and sales all figured out, you may often be surprised by seemingly smaller requirements. Product packaging is one such category.
While you can decide between design elements and merchandising setup, reducing packaging costs often falls on your shoulders. This is where you need to step up as a business owner and look for popular and creative ways to lower this essential expense.
To assist you on this challenging journey, here are a few tips for sourcing affordable packaging for small businesses.
Look Into Custom Packaging
Decreasing your packaging costs doesn’t mean that you turn your back on innovative packaging solutions. Instead, you can look into custom packaging to decrease your overall costs. This is possible by how custom packaging prevents the use of larger boxes than you require. In turn, this practice uses fewer materials and reduces costs compared to stock packaging.
At the same time, you can still meet standards like drop test processes to ensure that your products remain safe during shipping, handling, and distribution environments. This ensures you aren’t giving up your quality standards only to save a few bucks on packaging.
Shop Around for Different Vendors
Similar to using a discount app, you can reach out to local packaging vendors in your area to find the best prices on packaging materials. This process can seem a bit tedious at first, but all it takes is a quick web search and a few phone calls to the listings that come up.
Just like how you can inquire about e-commerce printing solutions from printing vendors, you can ask these vendors to give you some packaging recommendations. After shortlisting a few vendors by judging their prices and online reviews, you can determine how much money you can save on the type of packaging that you want.
Explore Recyclable Materials
Besides stock packaging and generic materials, you can also explore special packaging made from recyclable materials. These materials limit the burden on the planet but also remain more cost-effective in some cases. Let your audiences know about your dedication to being environmentally friendly to appeal to eco-conscious consumers.
As a result, this approach not only lets you shave off the costs of your packaging but also earns you brownie points from your target audience. This can help you make your way towards a compelling brand-building strategy, without it costing an arm and a leg.
Introduce Returnable Packaging Programs
Returnable packaging programs encourage your customers to return their packaging to your mailing address or to a point of pick-up. This allows you to clean and reuse the same packaging for multiple orders. This practice falls under environmentally friendly packaging ideas as well, while helping you save money on packaging materials.
You can let your audience know about running these types of programs through your marketing software. With that, you can further encourage the return of packaging items by introducing loyalty discounts or deals. Besides lowering your packaging costs, this practice can also improve customer retention in the long run. This especially applies to customers who live a sustainable lifestyle.
Ask For Discounted Prices
Whether you use an accounting app or delegate that task to an external service provider, you might be all too familiar with the power of discounts. Sometimes, you can harness this ability simply by asking packaging providers for better deals on packaging or associated items like packing tape.
While this might seem like an out-of-the-box idea, it works more often than not. Most local providers get these packaging supplies at discounted rates from wholesale vendors and remain happy to share their discounts with you. This can help your small business stand on its two feet and meet its needs while also supporting other businesses in your community.
With these tips, you can cut down on your costs for sourcing packaging materials while also improving your distribution quality. This can work wonders for your brand image and bottom line.
