Packaging
Lovely packaging on a small budget
Custom boxes need big orders. A rubber stamp, a roll of stickers and a paper band can do the same job for pennies.
Custom boxes are wonderful. They are also sold in minimum orders of five thousand, which is awkward when you sell forty candles a month.
Plenty of our favourite packaging cost almost nothing to make. It works because somebody chose one good idea and repeated it.
Start with stock, then make it yours
Buy the plainest carton, bag or jar your supplier already carries. Then add a single layer that belongs to you.
Instead of | Try | Rough cost |
|---|---|---|
Printed boxes | A rubber stamp | One-off, under £40 |
Custom tissue | A printed sticker | Pennies each |
Foil labels | One-colour labels | Pennies each |
Branded tape | A paper belly band | Pennies each |
Three tools that do most of the work
You can build an entire system from this short shopping list.
A rubber stamp
Your logo in one colour of ink, on anything that stays still. Slightly uneven prints look hand-made, because they are.
A roll of stickers
One size, one design, used to seal tissue, close bags and label jars.
A belly band
A strip of printed paper wrapped round a plain box. It turns a stock carton into a product for the price of a sheet of A4.
Where not to save
Never economise on whatever protects the product. A beautiful stamp on a crushed parcel is still a crushed parcel.
How Hello Plant Co. ships a fern
Hello Plant Co. post living plants, which is hard on cardboard and on nerves. Their parcels are plain, stock-size cartons with a green stamp on the lid and a care card tucked in the soil.
The only printed extra is a belly band reading “This way up. I’m alive in here.” Couriers, it turns out, are gentler with boxes that talk.
“We spent more on the stamp than on the first hundred boxes. Two years on, we’re still using the same stamp.”
Lena Voss, owner of Hello Plant Co.
Grow into custom later
Stock and stamps aren’t a compromise; they’re a stage. You’ll know it’s time for a printed box when:
You reorder the same carton every single month.
Stamping has started to slow down the packing table.
Customers recognise your parcel before they read the label.
Until then, keep to a single ink, a single sticker and a single idea. Need help choosing the idea? Say hello.
