Wholesale custom boxes: bulk pricing, and where the discount stops

Wholesale custom boxes get cheaper per box until about 500 to 1,000, and then they stop. A medium mailer with your logo in one colour is about $2.87 each at 100, $1.28 at 500, and $1.15 at 1,000, and it's still $1.15 at 2,500. Those are today's numbers from our own price model, and knowing where that curve goes flat is worth more than any bulk discount code.

This post is for a small US brand that has already sold through a first run of boxes, or is about to place a bigger order for a launch, a wholesale account, or a 3PL, and wants to know how much to buy without guessing.

Key takeaways

• The unit price stops falling around 500 to 1,000 boxes. Past that, you're paying for board, ink, and freight, which cost the same per box, no matter how many you buy.
• Order three to six months of stock, not a year. Custom boxes can't be returned or resold, and small brands change their packaging more often than they expect.
• Put the money where the customer looks. Full colour on the mailer they open, plain one colour on the carton a warehouse handles.
• There's no wholesale account to apply for. Bulk pricing is built into every quote, from 100 boxes up.

Wholesale custom boxes: prices at 100, 500, 1,000 and 2,500

Per box, medium size (roughly 6 to 10 inches on the longest side), printed outside, no laminate. Your own size will land a little on either side.

Look at the last two columns. They're the same on every row.

Those prices are for the lower 48 and the box only. Freight is quoted separately because it depends on where the boxes go and how many there are, and flat boxes pack much tighter than you'd think. For small parcels, carriers like FedEx (opens in a new tab) charge by dimensional weight, so a box cut to fit your product saves money on every order you ship, not just on the run.

Why bulk box pricing flattens out

A print run has two kinds of costs. Setup is the plates, the cutting die, and the time it takes to get the press running right, and it costs the same for 100 boxes as for 5,000. Then there's board, ink, and freight, which you pay for every single box.

At 100, setup is most of your bill. Spread it over 500, and it nearly disappears. After that, you're mostly paying for cardboard, and cardboard doesn't get cheaper because you bought a lot of it at once. That's why going from 1,000 to 2,500 mailers takes your bill from about $1,148 to about $2,870 with no change in the unit price at all.

So "order more to save" is true, right up until it isn't. We'd rather show you that point than sell you past it.

How many wholesale custom boxes should you actually order?

Our rule of thumb: order what you'll ship in three to six months, and not more.

Here's why. Custom boxes can't be returned, and they can't be sold to anybody else, because your logo is on them. Every box you don't use is money sitting in a corner. And small brands change things. A new product size, a tweak to the logo, a move from kraft to white. A first run can easily outlive the design printed on it.

Three questions settle it for most people:

1. How many orders did you ship last month? Multiply by four for a comfortable number.
2. Where will 2,500 flat boxes live? A 2,500 mailer order is several cartons, and often a pallet. If it's going in your spare room, count the space before you count the savings.
3. Is anything about the product going to change this year? If yes, stay near 500 and reorder.

Tip: Before a big run, measure your product properly. A box that's half an inch too high costs more to make, more to fill, and more to post, and at 2,500 boxes that half inch adds up fast.

If you're above 500 already, reordering is easy and costs no more than the first time. Your artwork and dieline stay on file, so a reorder is one email with a quantity and an address.

Wholesale boxes for Amazon, a 3PL or a retail account

Bigger orders usually come with somebody else's rules attached, and they're worth reading before the quote rather than after.

A 3PL or an Amazon warehouse cares about the outer carton more than the pretty box. They'll often want a plain shipping box with a label area, a set carton count, and a size that stacks on their pallet. That's the cheap row in the table above, and you shouldn't spend full colour money on a box that lives in a warehouse.

A retail or wholesale buyer usually wants the product box on the shelf to look right, and a case pack to ship it in. For that, we'd print a folding carton for the shelf and use a plain carton outside it. One printed run, not two.

A subscription or direct-to-consumer brand is the one case where the mailer is the product experience, so that's where full colour earns its price.

What we'd skip on a big order

The more boxes you buy, the more every add-on multiplies. A few worth thinking twice about:

• Soft touch or foil on thousands of mailers. It's lovely on a gift box. On a box that goes through a sorting machine and into the recycling, it's a cost you won't see again, and a laminate can stop it from being recyclable at all. How2Recycle (opens in a new tab) explains what a box has to be before it can carry a recycling label, and our eco packaging guide covers the rest.
• Printing the inside. It adds about 18 percent. On a mailer your customer opens, it can be worth it. On a shipper, it rarely is.
• Going straight to 5,000 on a box nobody has held. Get the free sample pack first ($9.95 flat shipping, taken off your first order) and check the board thickness in your hand.

Are we the cheapest for wholesale packaging?

On small and mid-sized runs, usually competitive because we don't run our own factory or a big sales team. On very large runs, honestly, no. A company that owns its own press will beat us once your order is big enough to fill it. We print through vetted US manufacturers, and if your quantity is at the point where going direct makes more sense, we'll say so.

What we do offer on every order, wholesale or not: a 100-box minimum, free design including on reorders, a digital proof before anything prints, and production of 5 working days from proof approval, with 3 to 5 of those on press. Everything ships to the lower 48.

The quickest way to price wholesale custom boxes

Open the trade price list, pick your box, and enter the quantity. It shows every step and where the discount stops. When you're ready, send a quote request with your size, quantity, and delivery address, and you'll get a real price back within one working day.

If this is your first bigger order, read first packaging order mistakes first, and if you're torn on the format, mailer box vs shipping box will help. Still at your first 100? Start with what custom boxes with logo cost for a small business, and if you're comparing suppliers for a bigger contract, use our questions to ask a packaging supplier. Your artwork will sit on a dieline, and you can browse every format in the shop.

Common questions