Six things brands get wrong on a first packaging order

Packaging is unusual in that almost all of the expensive mistakes happen before anything is printed. Once a run is on press, it is on press. These are the six we see most, roughly in order of how much they cost.

1. Ordering far too many

The unit price at 2,000 looks so much better than the price at 250 that people talk themselves into it. Then the product changes, or the logo changes, or the size was slightly wrong, and there are 1,700 boxes in a spare room.

On a first run, buy the smallest quantity that lets you sell through in about three months. Yes, you pay more per box. You are buying the option to change your mind, and on a first order that option is worth more than the discount. We set our minimum at 100 for exactly this reason.

2. Designing the box before deciding the size

Artwork gets laid onto a dieline, and the dieline comes from the dimensions. Design first and you will be stretching a layout to fit a shape it was never drawn for, usually with the logo ending up half on a fold. Settle the size, get the dieline, then design. How to measure a box covers the sizing part.

3. Approving a proof on a screen

A digital proof tells you the artwork is in the right place. It tells you almost nothing about color, because your monitor is backlit and a box is not. If the color matters, ask for a physical proof or at minimum a printed sample on the actual board.

This matters most on kraft. Kraft board is brown, so every ink laid on it shifts warmer and duller. People approve a bright teal on screen and receive a muted sage, and they are not wrong to be disappointed. It was just never going to look like the screen.

4. Forgetting what goes on the box legally

Depending on what you sell, the box may need to carry ingredients, weight, country of origin, a batch code, allergen information, or a compliance panel. Food and CBD are the strict ones. Find this out before the layout is finalised, because retro fitting a legal panel into a finished design is how boxes end up looking cramped.

Leave physical space for a batch code too, even if you are hand stamping it at first.

5. Ignoring dimensional weight

Carriers bill on whichever is greater, actual weight or a volume calculation. A box that is two inches deeper than it needs to be costs you nothing extra to print and can cost real money on every single shipment.

Work it out before you commit. If you ship 500 orders a month and an oversized box pushes each one into the next rate band, that is a bigger annual number than your entire packaging spend. Shipping cost, not box cost, is usually the thing worth optimising.

6. Buying finishes that do not show

Soft touch lamination, spot gloss, foil and embossing all look wonderful, and they are wonderful on the right box. On a corrugated mailer that will be dragged across a delivery van floor, a lot of that money gets scuffed off before anyone sees it.

Our rule of thumb: spend on finish where the customer touches it in a calm moment. A rigid box, a sleeve, a carton inside a shipper. On the outer transit box, spend on structure instead. It is a less exciting sentence than most packaging companies will tell you.

The cheap insurance

Order a sample first. Not a swatch, an actual made box you can put your product into. It catches sizing errors, color surprises and finish decisions all at once, and it costs a fraction of a wasted run. Ours are free, which is not generosity so much as self interest: a sample stops both of us wasting a production run.

When you are ready, send us the details. We will tell you if we think you are ordering too many, and we will say so if a cheaper box would do the job.