How important is the packaging for your company?

[Liam Seager]

For 10 years i have ran a company called Wrapology where we produce packaging for retailers and brands. We preach the importance of having branded carrier bags and a packaging experience but from the retailers point of view, how important is it?

Obviously for big brands like Louis Vuitton, Harrods or Selfridges its a great marketing tool but for independent boutiques do they see it as this or is it just another expense to worry about - the cheaper the better?

It would be great to get your feedback

I'd also like to create a guide for new retailers or existing retailers who want to investigate improving their current packaging offering. Is there any particular information that you would like to know? E.G: What the total cost would be? How long it takes? How to make the packaging environmentally friendly?

 

[gr9ce]

Packaging? most customers now are ecological and say they don't need a bag.

Only bags we use are any going free from suppliers.

If we didn't have a bag we would blame it on saving polar bears

 

[fisicx]

Agree, bagging is less and less impoertant and even brand packaging has got blurred now the own barnds products look just like branded goods.

There is a boutique my partner uses that promotes green shopping and doesn't have posh bags anymore.

 

[Liam Seager]

But if you were selling handbags for £300 - £2000 you wouldn't to say to the customer "sorry we dont have any bags because we are saving Polar bears" - for luxury purchases surely you need to create something a bit more special.

 

[fisicx]

How do you know?

Have you actually tried selling £2000 handbags to see if people 'need' something special? Perhaps it's just that people have become used to posh carrier bags.

Maybe it's just women who care about these things. None of the men I've asked today can even remember if the bag they brought something in had any branding (other than Sainsbury bags being orange).

 

[mhall]

We use our own bags and find our customers like them - it's seen almost as a badge of honour for some of them which is quite nice (stupid I know, but nice)

What I have noticed lately is the prices of the bags are getting stupid and most printers have no concept on what a Retailer wants or needs and have no originality or desire to help us change the look or design - they just want print ready copy. For that I can go to China.

They also fail to see that Retailers do not understand or care about the printers "usual" terms As soon as I see a statement like "15% tolerance" on printing amounts, I move on. I don't care if it's "normal", I want to know what I am getting and paying for. I'm also never impressed by print farmers who seem to be everywhere.

Unless the whole industry wakes up they will price themselves out of the market, we laready have plan "B" that we are looking at - really clever packaging designed by our staff that we might actually be able to produce ourselves.

 

[Liam Seager]

I think it depends on the positioning of the brand and the type of customer they are selling to. I agree that most men are not as interested in having everything neatly packaged - they are more likely to buy into the quality of the product.

But i know (from experience) that (say) a Chanel perfume would not sell as well if it was not packaged in the way that it is.

It would be nice to hear from a luxury boutique selling womans fashion to see what they think.

 

[emmylou74]

I think bags are important - saying that I do not have my own branded bags......yet! Some of my customers say they would like it so they can help promote my shop while out and about.

The bags I have are the brown paper bags with twisted handles - sounds bad but I love them and they are so sturdy - sometimes we put a hangtag onto the handle so it looks like a bag charm but with my name on it.

For the doggy snack bar I use colourful bags normally used by sweet shops. But I would eventually like to have all bags branded and also have re-useable shopping bags as well.

 

[Nord20]

Packaging is paramount. Absolutely, categorically, paramount.

That ins't saying that you need to put the product, once purchased, in a diamond studded bag, but the packaging on the product will make or break the sale.

Look at Innocent smoothies. All they do is squash fruit and bottle it, like millions before them. Their success is entirely down to their really rather excellent branding and packaging. It's the branding that says 'this is a good thing, you'll enjoy this and it's made by pixies in lala land", not the product itself.

Unfortunately we are all inherently slaves to visual clues, it is the first sense we use to assess a situation, so unless you're offering flights to Mars (and you're the only one doing it, in which case you could paint 'Bob's Mars flights' on a piece of wood and it would work) you need to make your products/services stand out.

Consumerism is all about impressions - the exact reason women do spend £2000 on a handbag, when a £20 bag will be just as efficient. You are buying the packaging/branding just as much as the product.

 

[amac]

Agree, bagging is less and less impoertant and even brand packaging has got blurred now the own barnds products look just like branded goods.

There is a boutique my partner uses that promotes green shopping and doesn't have posh bags anymore.

Agree with this. The future of packaging will probably be about being subtle i.e good for the environment/customer yet still providing brand recognition. Many of the goods I ship are packaged with only the necccessary protection required and paperless. (using online manuals/instructions for instance)

 

[PuddlePayroll]

Packaging is paramount. Absolutely, categorically, paramount.

Sometimes no packaging is paramount. Take Lush for example and their naked products enforce their ethics and brand.

 

[gr9ce]

I am so reminded of the 'gift wrap' scene in 'Love Actually' with Rowan Atkinson.

 

[Liam Seager]

"Sometimes no packaging is paramount" - Lush pay a lot of attention to the packaging and getting their brand across using packaging. They use boxes, bags and wrapping paper.

If they REALLY wanted to be environmentally friendly they could just recycle other brands carrier bags. But instead, they want to have their logo, design and branding on their bags so they can reinforce their "ethics".

Whether consumers or brands realise it - the packaging sends out a message about the brand; luxury, environmentally friendly, ethical, innovative etc. But the end result is the same - they are all using packaging to help sell their product or brand.

I doubt no successful brand is prepared to risk not producing any packaging at all.

 

[Esk247]

Brand is VERY important and brand awareness is part of that.

You should always have packaging that reflects your brand, not just with a logo slapped on it, but also think about the type of packaging, the durability, reusability etc.

Having said that, the costs of getting things printed these days are getting silly o clock now. I don't know if there's some kind of joint agreement by all printers and packaging suppliers but they have definitely raised prices and have become inflexible and slow to work with.

Some of the quotes I've had for packaging are silly. They won't talk unless the quantities are 50k of each type of package and even then we're talking 15p a unit...get lost!

 

[fisicx]

Yes brand is important but the thread began with a question about carrier bags.

My suggestion was that the carrier bag may be important to you as the seller but for most buyers it's just something to carry the goods home in. In fact it won't even be seem by most except on the walk from shop to car.

So you as the retailer have spent all that money on a posh bag that is going to be used to wrap up the kitty litter later on that day...

 

[Esk247]

Yes brand is important but the thread began with a question about carrier bags.

My suggestion was that the carrier bag may be important to you as the seller but for most buyers it's just something to carry the goods home in. In fact it won't even be seem by most except on the walk from shop to car.

So you as the retailer have spent all that money on a posh bag that is going to be used to wrap up the kitty litter later on that day...

Does it matter though? If you can afford to subsidise the carrier bag?

The more re-used the better. The more opportunity your brand has to be seen on the packaging.

Perhaps it's a female thing? Us blokes don't give a monkeys, shove it in any bag, shove it in tin foil we don't care, we'll grab it by its neck and drag it to the car. Women seem to like the whole indulgence of shopping and taking a big bag home that has a luxury label or quirky cartoon emblazoned over it..that's going to get your brand recognised.

It's especially useful in shopping centres and pedestrian shopping zones where people have to walk to the car or bus. Strong and powerful packaging on carrier bags perhaps even using eco-friendly materials is a sure fire winner for brand awareness.

If your shop is right next to the car park though I agree, it's probably futile and pointless as there's a nano second for the brand to be spotted.

 

[mhall]

We use around 80 reams of Tissue paper a year - according to Liams' website, they would work out at around £50 a ream printed. We can get luxury printed Tissue from the USA for less than half of that. Someone, somewhere is making too much money (I am not suggesting that is Liam)

 

[PuddlePayroll]

If they REALLY wanted to be environmentally friendly they could just recycle other brands carrier bags. But instead, they want to have their logo, design and branding on their bags so they can reinforce their "ethics".

They don't use plastic carrier bags and their paper ones are made from recycled paper along with their papers and boxes. I think around 70% of their products are naked which is done achievement.

 

[Liam Seager]

Mhall but if you use 80 reams a year we would do it more like £19 a ream printed and i will do the plates FOC for you. Let me know if you want a sample pack.

Going back to the subject - a small boutique can get nice carrier bags for anywhere from £0.70 per bag upwards. I dont think that is much of an expense for them and i dont agree that it gets used for kitty litter at the end of the day. I know lots of woman that keep their bags and use them again and again. And think about all the people that will see the bag on the tube or bus home.

I was listening to 6music last night and the Dj was talking about how he finds local record stores - he did it by looking for people with record bags - this might have been a few years back but i still think its a completely missed opportunity by so many boutiques.

The cost-conscious owner simply jumps to conclusion about costs, minimums etc without actually taking the time to explore the options available to them and the benefits it could bring.

I bet that if we designed a very cool carrier bag with a extremely eye catching design for a boutique in a city centre we could increase the footfall to that shop.

 

[mhall]

To be honest Liam, the prices on your web site made me pass you buy the last time we ordered bags and tissue. Perhaps the site is designed in such a way as to dissuade the smaller business (we order bags at 5,000 a time three times a year, probably two this year unless things pick up :-(, because of our storage issues and reams at 40 reams a time again, because they take up so much space) and you only have one sort of bag price listed which is not the sort we need.

I fully agree that packaging is important, especially for our taget customers, but we need to strike a good balance between the profit we make on the sale and the amount the packaging costs for that sale. As I said, the packaging is a straight hit on our bottom line and until it is used, it's a dead investment just sitting there and with so many other things leaking our profit away it makes for a long and painful decision everytime the subject comes up. For that reason we have four types of bags - by far the most popular being similar to your "John Lewis" bags and a plastic (PPT?) version for when the weather doesn't like paper.

 

[Doodle-Noodle]

I think packaging is important - I'd love to have printed carrier bags but they are prohibitively expensive for us, we currently use nice quality but plastic carriers in plain black (for small bags) and plain red (for our bigger bags).

Lots of our customers are local and walk to our shop to they may well need something to carry their goods home in so it's always offered, just less than half our customers opt not to have a bag though.

Because we make/paint an awful lot of our own stock, I do buy a variety of boxes for things as (I think) it adds a touch of professionalism/luxury, especially if what is being bought is as a gift (makes it easier for people to giftwrap too).

My favourite find at the moment are the boxes I use for my hand painted wine glasses - they're actually cupcake boxes, plain white with an acetate window which just happens to fit the wine glasses perfectly, either on their own or in pairs. I can also get a mini bottle of wine in with a glass too which makes a great gift.

So yes, packaging is important in my view.

 

[puffin]

Been reading this thread with interest.

We're in the process of getting a commercial premises, and the idea of a 'cool looking' durable bag is of interest - pending on cost.

How much per unit are we talking for something like this:

One colour (pink) with a logo on.
More cardboard material, would prefer it to be 'green/eco friendly' - made from recycled blah blah.

Cheers

 

[Doodle-Noodle]

Just as a bit of an aside as I mentioned that only around 1/2 our customers want a bag ... last year as it was the jubilee, Olympics & Royal Wedding we ordered Union Flag bags which were more expensive than our usual bags, but we thought it would be nice to get into the spirit of things a bit.

Our customers LOVED them - I mean really loved them, our bag take-up shot up to nearly 100%, we had people coming in asking us just for a bag (we ended up charging £1 if they hadn't actually bought anything which we put in to the Poppy Appeal tin later in the year, about £60). We still have customers coming in who have continued to use the bags. We thought about sticking with them and nearly ordered them in for this year but decided against it as I really don't think it's cost effective.

 

[Berkshire Business]

I personally think packaging is important to the business as branding your shop puts a stamp down on it, even if its as simple as a carrier bag.- It's also true that some people prefer not to have a bag, or just generally take their own but it helps promote the business and to have your logo on all your products makes the business better.

 

[fisicx]

You didn't give me a bag. And I spent nearly a pound!

 

[Doodle-Noodle]

You didn't give me a bag. And I spent nearly a pound!

Exactly. NEARLY a pound. And you paid in installments .....

 

[Liam Seager]

What i am understanding from this thread is that everyone would like a nice bag with their design on but that cost is the most prohibitive factor.

For a bag like All Saints, ordering 1000 of a size - the cost will probably be around £1.50 - £1.80 per bag, increase the order to 5k and the cost will drop to around £1.20 per bag.

MHALL - Your comments are very interesting. Our website is designed to appeal to large brands and make them feel confident, we want to discourage the very small customers who spend less than (say) £2k per order but we need to capture everyone else in the middle - and we are actually very good and competitive at this.

However, its very difficult to appeal to both sets of customers. I think we will take down our pricelists from the website and encourage people to call us for a chat instead about what we can do. Once we understand, we can help and we actually want to help.




cost is the most important factor here for smaller boutiques.

 

[emmylou74]

Our website is designed to appeal to large brands and make them feel confident, we want to discourage the very small customers who spend less than (say) £2k per order
.

then why the heck come here asking our opinions when most of us are the small people you try to discourage

think I have had a long day today

 

[Liam Seager]

I dont think most of the people here are small. Mhall is a good example.

 

[gr9ce]

Take down your prices? hmmm personally if I am searching and there are no prices I assume it is because the items are really expensive and I baulk at bothering to ask...

Same when in a shop...think 'Pretty Woman'... if you have to ask the price you cannot afford it...

£1.20 for a bag??? UK has lost its AAA rating....

 

[hg6591]

It is now over a year since here in Wales we have had to impose a bag charge (both plastic and paper although some retailers dont read the small print and think they only have to charge for plastic!)
We still have printed bags from a few years back which will now last us for many years to come as we now get through about 10% of the bags we used to, though as a giftware retailer we now get through considerably more bubble wrap than we used to!
We can no longer hope that customers to our shop who leave with a branded bag will encourage more visitors into the shop, however it has reduced our costs as from the charge we make (a minimum of 5p) we can take off the cost of the bags to us (and the VAT!!) and then give the remainder to a 'good cause' of our choice. The introduction of the charge has caused many raised eyebrows and occasionally heated arguments but I entirely agree with the environmental reasoning behind it, and only wish that retailers in our area would all adhere to the charge so that customers dont have the additional ammunition of 'I didnt get charged down the road'! Anyway, be aware guys that one day it will be rolled out over the whole of the UK and although I apologise for the length of this post, if anyone would like any pointers in this regard, please get back to me!

 

[Young Recruit]

Packaging is absolutely fundamental to a product.

Could you imagine spending lots of of money on an expensive piece of jewelry and then have it given to you in one of those plain blue plastic carrier bags!!

Kind of ruin the occasion wouldn't it?

JA

 

[Lentinus]

OP:

How important is the packaging for your company?

Interesting that you originally ask for feedback and input - but subsequently only "hear" what you want to and use it to promote your offering. Several people have mentioned issues and you have ignored them. If this is just an advertising opportunity then fair play, it seems to have worked, but if you are genuinely interested then why not have a valid exchange rather than just promoting/preaching your own agenda?

Back to the actual question - which I thought was not about bags at all but packaging. Then I have two observations,

1) Packaging to get stuff from A to B is a cost. So a £1.50 box to my co (that runs at a 10% NET profit) equals the first £15 of a sale - so a £10 product in that box loses money.

2) Packaging that is well done so that in reality it "is the product" and leaps from my retailers shelves into the customers basket (real or virtual) is an investment that I expect to get a quantitative ROI on. - Improve it and get more sales, make it worse and lose sales.

I am not in business to give printers/designers/programmers or anyone else a living, I want to make a profit!

 

[Liam Seager]

Lentinus - Totally agree with your observations (not the promoting agenda/ignoring people/not being interested rant though).

Can I suggest a third observation?

If you were trying to build a brand then packaging could be viewed as a marketing expense and that becomes very difficult to quantify. So for example, if you had an online business selling (say) jewellery and a customer makes a purchase, the items get sent out and everything is beautifully packaged when it arrived. Now that customer might have not made a small purchase (£10 and the packaging cost £1.50 so you have made a loss by your observations and therefore its a loss leading product) but the experience of buying from your company was a positive one so that they are more likely to buy from you again or recommend you to others, tweet or blog about and buy more expensive items.

I know that might sound like dreamy, wishy-washy, marketing, bulls@*t - but i think successful brands or shops need to surprise and add value wherever possible.

Im not saying i disagree with you or im not listening to what your saying - but i do not think it depends on what type of business you are in and what your business goals are (long or short term). If profit is the main goal then packaging costs need to be as low as possible, but if you want to build a brand or a name for your business then it is a marketing cost.

 

[mhall]

The sad thing is that most suppliers consider the Retail packaging to be a cost that Retailers foot the bill for. A few give us free bags but none worth mentioning. If the suppliers thought about it, they would:

a) Get a much better price than us at the printers, bringing the cost down considerably. THen give the Retailer "free"

b) If they then practiced decent exclusive areas around each store they would be pushing their own brand at minimum cost.

C) The Retailer would be happy doing it knowing that they would be seen as "the place to go" for Brand X and would be getting "free" bags

d) If and when the Retailers closed down, the supplier gets no negative feedback and customers would still be looking for Brand X

I actually think that having our own bags is a bad thing - it might push our image but it does little for the suppliers we work with and, as we have gone from 1 shop to 12 shops and then down to 2 and back to 4 I know more than most that anything could happen in the next two years.

 

[gr9ce]

The first person to simply wrap a product in old newspaper with a smart sticker saying 'Saving the planet for future generations is the best brand out there' could be admired?

 

[fisicx]

We use Abel & Cole for our vegetables and other things.

All their boxes are reused again and again until they fall apart. It's a great system and fits with their ethos.

We were in London on Friday and Michelle brought a posh bag from a small trader. The retailer used old wrapping paper and an old carrier bag but sealed them closed with stickers which had their contact details on it.

Note: when I say Michelle brought it I really mean she said 'I like that bag' and just stood there until I paid for it.

 

[Liam Seager]

I'm thinking that we (as a company) should create an image gallery of packaging ideas or examples used by companies that are low cost and easy to implement - like the Abel & Cole example or the other examples sited in this thread.

That way, although we cant supply the products themselves, we can at least offer ideas or a source of inspiration from all the examples we have seen or heard about.

Do you think that would be helpful?

 

[naturalinthemaking]

Going back to the subject - a small boutique can get nice carrier bags for anywhere from £0.70 per bag upwards. I dont think that is much of an expense for them and i dont agree that it gets used for kitty litter at the end of the day. I know lots of woman that keep their bags and use them again and again. And think about all the people that will see the bag on the tube or bus home.


Agree with this, when I was at school i bought from the shops that I needed the carrier bag to look cool, ie, new look, etam.
Then when I was at college and into my early twenties I shopped at Jane Norman just for their bags to use for my college books and transporting my clubbing clothing to friends houses to get ready, each season they changed the bag therefore each season I had to shop there again to get the latest bag!

Now I am setting up a small boutique I am planning on eco friendly bags that can be used over, I will not brand the actual bag but I will add a bag tag that will go round the handle to name my boutique

 

[andrew12]

Packaging? most customers now are ecological and say they don't need a bag.

Only bags we use are any going free from suppliers.