For manufacturing business owners, product packaging is often an afterthought – something to wrap the product in once it’s made. However, custom packaging can be a powerful tool for scaling and growing a manufacturing business. The right packaging can boost brand recognition, increase perceived value, improve the unboxing experience, and even reduce shipping costs. Here are six ways savvy manufacturers can use custom packaging to package up profits.
Drive Brand Recognition
Unique, customized packaging instantly communicates your brand identity and can trigger brand recall for repeat purchases. When your packaging consistently reflects your logo, color scheme, and other brand visuals, customers will start to recognize your products at a glance. This brand recognition makes it easier to launch new products successfully, as customers already trust your brand.
Consider Coca-Cola – that signature red and white carries instant brand recognition across all of their products. Your custom packaging can achieve this same effect for your unique brand. Work with designers to create cohesive, recognizable packaging styles across your product lines.
Increase Perceived Value
The perceived value of your products can be significantly impacted by packaging design choices. Using premium materials like soft-touch finishes or foil stamping can increase the sense of luxury. Minimalist, sleek packaging communicates high-end contemporary quality. Vintage inspired packaging taps into nostalgia and authenticity.
Investing in state of the art banding machine to apply decorative banding and seals to packaging can also increase perceived value and brand appeal. Beautiful packaging implies a beautiful product inside, allowing you to command higher price points. It also makes your products more desirable as gifts, as the unboxing experience is part of the present. Investing in perceived value through packaging and professional finishing touches like banding can be a cost-effective way to increase profit margins.
Improve Unboxing Experience
For products being shipped direct to consumer, the unboxing experience is invaluable marketing. Custom packaging can be unboxed like a present, with the product nestled in custom molded trays or laid out in an eye-catching arrangement.
Details like pull tabs, lift lids, and unfolding box designs engage the customer and create excitement around your product. The unboxing experience also creates organic marketing opportunities, as customers will share “unboxing” videos and photos on social media.
Create specialized shipping packaging with the unboxing experience in mind. Use it as a tangible extension of your brand by conveying quality, thoughtfulness, and excitement.
Reduce Shipping Costs
Packaging is directly connected to shipping costs. The box dimensions and weight will determine the shipping rates and fuel surcharges applied to each package. Optimizing packaging can significantly reduce these shipping costs.
Work closely with packaging engineers and designers to right-size all packaging elements. Avoid oversized boxes, unnecessary inner packing materials, and other excesses driving up weight.
Use precision molding to fit products neatly into boxes without extra space. Swap expanded polystyrene foam peanuts for lightweight paper shreds. Eliminate unnecessary outer shrink wrap or coverings.
Every ounce trimmed from packaging equals savings on each shipment. Reduced dimensions may qualify shipments for lower dimensional weight tiers. All these small changes add up, saving big on shipping over time.
Protect Products and Increase Shelf Life
At its core, packaging protects your product and maintains quality from factory through delivery. Custom durability features prevent damage in transit, like partitioned interior compartments, air cell cushioning, and tear-resistant handles.
Packaging also protects products on shelves and extends shelf life. Opaque materials block UV light exposure. Sealed containers maintain controlled atmosphere and humidity levels. Antimicrobial coatings inhibit mold growth.
Invest in the highest grade packaging materials and protective features to preserve product integrity from manufacturing through use. This prevents revenues lost to damaged goods returns and improves customer satisfaction.
Simplify Inventory Management
Custom packaging innovations can significantly streamline manufacturing operations. Printed expiration dates and lot numbers right on packaging eliminates sticker application. Embedded RFID tags enable instant inventory scanning.
Sequential barcode labeling with product variations encoded helps automate order fulfillment. Seasonal sleeves or other changeable packaging elements reduce SKU proliferation.
Work with your packaging partners to implement labeling systems, encoded tagging, and changeable elements to simplify your manufacturing and inventory management processes. The cost savings from operational efficiencies will offset the minimal added packaging costs.
Stand Out on Shelves
When products will be sold in retail locations, custom packaging creates vital shelf appeal. Eye-catching shapes, textures, and colors attract consumer attention in crowded retail aisles. Clean, intuitive labeling quickly communicates product benefits.
Consider handles, visibility windows, or unique openings to allow customers to touch and interact with your packaging. The unboxing experience starts on the shelves. Unique packaging intrigues customers and drives those all-important impulse purchases.
Any custom packaging changes should undergo rigorous real-world shelf testing. See how the packaging attracts attention, intrigues customers, and positions your brand when surrounded by competitors. Fine tune the packaging with retailers to maximize shelf-presence.
Custom packaging requires upfront investment, but the potential profit benefits are staggering. Packaging protects product quality while conveying perceived value and brand identity. It provides marketing opportunities and immersive customer experiences. It streamlines manufacturing and distribution. And it drives sales through compelling retail shelf appeal. By proactively leveraging packaging in your strategy, manufacturing businesses can package up profits and scale with elegance.
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