Shipping supplies are often a “hidden” cost for a company or business, but they shouldn’t be.  If a business isn’t paying attention, they can wind up hemorrhaging precious resources  in this department. For companies that do a lot of shipping, and large shipments at that, hiring a logistics provide for to manage the ins and outs is definitely the best option.  Poor planning will waste so much time and money.

But for those of you who only do some smaller shipments some of the time, there are some tips that can help you save on your shipping costs and make better use of what your options:

Shipping Providers

Did you know that your shipping provider (United States Postal Service, FedEx, UPS…) has a business specialist that you can sit down with to get fees and services worked out?  Most companies and businesses don’t know about this service, and they wind up spending absurdly more trying to figure it all out on their own.  One crucial component is deciding when air shipping might be more beneficial than ground shipping.

Shipping Costs

Be clear to your customers when your company is going to pay for shipping and when they will need to.  For example, advertise that your company will cover three-day, standard shipping, but that they will need to pay for two-day or overnight shipping services.

Shipping Supplies

Use the shipping supplies that are available to you, and I’m not just talking about packaging tape and cardboard boxes.  Having your own hostage meter will make a world of difference.  What is a postage meter?  I’m glad you asked! A postage meter is a small machine (scale, if you will) that you can weight our packages on.  This way you don’t have “guesstimate” your shipping costs, and you don’t have to stand in line at your shipping providers to calculate shipping costs.

Shipping Smart

When you have “less than a truckload”, you can pair up with consolidation service that will find you other businesses that have “less than a truckload”.  The two of you, or however many companies, can consolidate your shipments and save on shipping.  Also, it is helpful to keep track of your service carriers performance (delivery time, customer service, costs…).  You can evaluate the performance levels and communicate with your service carriers about what should be improved upon and if fees can be adjusted.

Whatever happened to the days of simplicity?  Right?  Things used to just be plain Jane and now they are super decorated with all the bells and whistles.  Sometimes I think that I wouldn’t mind going back to a simpler time, but I do really appreciate all of the options for fun and creativity that we have in this current age.

Packaging supplies don’t have to be boring, right?  We don’t have to use plain paper and boxes anymore, do we?  When was the last time you bought something that was boring looking?  I’m not going to lie, I recently chose my new brand of shampoo and conditioner because they were the cutest ones on the shelf.  True story.  And I’m not ashamed of it!  The packaging is what distinguishes the different brands from one another.

If there was only one kind of shampoo it would be find to have a plain bottle sitting on the shelf with block letters reading “shampoo”.  But there are hundreds of kinds of shampoo, and that’s just not going to cut it!  From consumer packaging to distributor packaging, here are some tips how to make our packaging stand out amongst the rest and grab people’s attention:

• Patterns- packaging can be simply appealing with a simple pattern and invigorating color combination.

• Utilize- decorate the inside of your box with a pretty floral design, and the outside with a plain color that matches, maybe even a ribbon. This automatically increases the value of your item.

• KISS- okay, don’t get offended, I’m not calling you stupid, but I am encouraging you to embrace simplicity. Kraft brown is quintessential and matches with anything.

• Forethought- Imagine the person unwrapping your package. Are the packaging supplies appropriate for what you are selling?  Are you shipping shaving supplies all thrown together in a draw-string bag?
• Compliment- If possible, allow the customer to see what is inside of the packaging, and then design the packaging to compliment the product.
• Cute- Choose colors and themes that will interact with what you are selling. They are all sending a message that what is inside is good.
• Bold- we already mentioned patterns. The bolder the pattern the more aggressive you can be.  A bold pattern on a bag of coffee comes across well, giving the impression of strength and vitality!
• Different- if you are selling something that is already mass-produced by a ton of other companies, find a different, more appealing way to package your product.

The best way to do this is to try and design packaging supplies that serve a dual purpose (i.e. the honey container made out beeswax that you can turn over and use as a candle when it’s empty).

Shipping supplies, packing supplies, moving supplies… call them what you will, you need them to move and they don’t grow on trees.   Here’s the thing, even if you are moving for work and your place of employment is paying for the move, that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to wind up with a free move.  Something always needs to be paid for last minute, or in a pinch.  If you are paying for your own move you will realize how incredibly expensive it can be (moving out of state usually runs around five thousand dollars, and moving in state still winds up costing half that).  Shipping supplies alone, regardless of what you are using them for, really wind up adding up (a regular household can expect to use one hundred boxes during a move!).  But you don’t have to freak out.

There are ways and places to find deals.

BOXES

• Use Facebook. Everyone has boxes laying around because everyone is always moving, or even just from making purchases.  Everyone is also always on Facebook, or check it at least once a day.  You don’t have to be BFFs with someone for them to see your post and go, “hey, I’ve got some boxes”.  Then you say, “Awesome! When can I come grab them?”  Who knows, maybe the whole process will respark an old friendship.
• Use your community. Grocery stores and other retail stores are going through boxes on a continual basis.  Some of these boxes already come with packaging, or inserts if they held wine glasses or something like that.

TAPE

• Do not buy cheap tape. If a move doesn’t make you want to crawl under a rock, then cheap shipping supplies sure will.  Tape is just not one of those things you can afford to skimp on, and I’m talking about your mental and emotional resources here.  Read some reviews and decide which one people like the best.

PACKAGING

• Use what you have! Newspaper, towels, and old phone books make awesome packaging.  Newspaper may be kind of messy, but it doesn’t stain and it does the job well.  Do you have a shredder?  A couple times a year I let my kids shred everything that has been accumulated for that purpose, and we wind up with a massive pile.  This provides awesome protection for valuables and breakables.
• Use what you get! Do you order stuff from Amazon?  More than likely it comes wrapped in one of three things: bubble wrap, butcher paper, or air pillows.  They usually use way more than they need to, and it won’t take long to accumulate a nice little cache.

My favorite type of packaging supplies are the kind you use for wrapping gifts.  This is because tape isn’t just tape, and paper isn’t just paper.  Oh, sure, it still has all of the components that make tape what we call tape, but there’s even more!  Like awesome designs and super fun colors.  Have you ever heard of Washi tape?  Hands down my favorite of all packaging supplies.  If you know any pre-teens, Washi tape is the most appreciated, easily-obtained gift you could possible give them.  Kids put it on everything from their shoes to their notebooks.  And this is why it’s great for giftwrapping!  Here are a few of my favorite gift combinations of gift-wrapping packaging supplies:

 Washi Tape and Kraft Paper

We’ve already talked about Washi tape. You can use brown, Kraft paper to wrap you gift in any season or for any occasion.  Then, you can use your Washi tape to decorate your package according to the occasion.  If you don’t think you are creative enough to come up with some good ideas, take a look at the internet.  It’s pretty hard to mess up with Washi tape.

Office Supplies

Granted, you might not think of office supplies as packaging supplies, but it’s really fun to be able to incorporate random things when in the process of gorgeously gift-wrapping.

Cloth Items

If you aren’t too keen on using disposable items, there are still options. And one’s that will be duly appreciated, because they will wind up being a bonus gift as well.  Wrap your gifts in scarfs, or cloth sacks, or just any type of leftover cloth that you might have from a previous project.

Nature Accents

I will try not to mention Kraft paper too many times, but it really is the best for wrapping gifts. You can do literally anything to it.  Sometimes I like to just use it plain, and tie some string around it.  Then I tuck some twigs and sprigs of berries or dried flowers in the knot.  If I’m feeling extra inspired I might include a nature-inspired picture as a backdrop behind the accents.  In my experience, this method of gift-wrapping tends to be the most appreciated.

DIY All the Way

Quite simply, you can buy any type of plain gift bag or wrapping paper and decorate it with just about anything. Make cutouts, use stamps, sprinkle pompoms.  Or you can elaborately decorate the gift tag by embroidering it, or hand-pressing a design into it.

The internet is a strange and wondrous thing.  If you haven’t gone to college to learn about all of the fancy words and sayings (like algorithm, optimization, canonical tags…) than the actual internet probably makes very little sense.  People like me see the 2D version of the internet, completely unaware of everything that goes on behind the scenes.  It turns out that the World Wide Wide is a complex system consisting of codes and equations and it takes a special set of people to be able to navigate it.  Like astronauts going to outer space.  Or explorers going deep under the surface of the earth.  The rest of us are certainly grateful for this “special set”, even if we don’t really know it, because they are the ones that make internet searches yield the appropriate results.  If it wasn’t for them, if we try to do a search for “packaging supplies” we might wind up getting results for trampolines, or Wal-Mart.  Basically, not what we are looking for.

The internet has revolutionized marketing and advertising for businesses.  You’ve still got your Mad Men type crew, the ones who draw up the ads and sell them to companies and all that jazz.  But things have gone further into the great unknown with the presence of the internet, and there are now people who don’t do any drawing whatsoever when it comes to advertising and marketing.  These are the people that know the difference between a 301 and a 302 and when it’s appropriate to use which, what and RSS feed is, and can readily decipher the meanings behind SERP and mozRank and CSS.  These are the people that type in codes and do some crazy magic so that when you type in “packaging supplies” you get results for packaging supplies, and local ones too, if need be!

It isn’t necessary to know everything when you start a company.  There is not a single business owner out there who can single-handedly keep the books, organize the stock, manage personnel, handle marketing, and design a website.  No way!  They are going to hire an accountant, and a marketing and advertising team, a website design company, and an SEO company.  All of it works together for the success of the company.  Missing out on search engine optimization simply because you don’t know how to do it is just a bad excuse.  Most of the business companies receive winds up coming in through the internet, so maximize it!

There are some people that are just plain hard to buy gifts for.  They usually have everything, or they don’t know how to enjoy what they already have.  Or they are blind, like my father-in-law, which makes 95% of what I would normally consider buying him completely obsolete.  It’s incredibly difficult to buy presents for a blind person.  Or boyfriends.  Boyfriends are really hard to buy gifts for because they aren’t quite men but they aren’t quite boys, so what do you get them?

This is when I think candy boxes has all the answers.  Because everyone eats candy, blind, young, old, rich, or poor.  They just do.

I have these three nephews, and they are fabulous little people but they are all boy!  They don’t actually play with toys because they are too busy fighting one another, and anything you do buy them winds up getting broken or sold for a fraction of the price in some middle-school black market.  My go-to gift idea for these delightful little fiends is a tackle box chock full of candy.  So first you buy a tackle box and about twelve to fifteen different kinds of candy.  Then you fill all of the little compartments with all different candies.  When you are done you will have these irresistible candy boxes laid out in front of you and you will want to dip in and have a bite from each of the spots, but you will stop yourself because you snacked on everything while you were making them and already feel guilty.

From licorice to Swedish fish to runts, the possibilities are just about endless.

When I have a birthday party for my own kids I like to have the guests decorate their own candy boxes, and then fill them from a veritable candy shop that I have set up specifically for this purpose.  Everybody knows that the bubbles and erasers and cheap yoyos that you put in goody bags for the kids to take home doesn’t impress anyone (especially not the parents).  Turn it into candy, and that’s a different story!  Even the parents won’t mind, I assure you.  Once they see a table piled high with bowls and bowls of candy that they can fill those custom candy boxes with, they won’t think twice.  Who cares about the sugar high that everyone will be suffering from later on!  You can always figure something out with candy, and that’s just a scientific fact.

First and foremost, having the right shipping supplies is a moot point if you don’t even have a good shipping station.  Keeping your supplies in a plastic tote and hefting it to the kitchen table does not count.  I’m talking about a desk-like system, with plenty of cubbies at the top and many shelves underneath the actual table part.

On the flip side of that, it doesn’t matter how awesome your shipping station is if you are stocking it with crappy or inappropriate shipping supplies.  When I say inappropriate I am not suggesting that the products are somehow rated PG-13, but I am suggesting that you might be too cheap to be buying the right tools for the right jobs.  Because in the business industry, shipping supplies are absolutely tools.

Now that we have the most obvious, albeit necessary, topics out of the way, I would like to take a minute to share some suggestions of what exactly you could and should be putting in all of those cubbies and lining all of those shelves with:

A large tape dispenser.  Please spare yourself, and anyone else that you might be working with, the absolute horror of trying to deal with scotch tape sans dispenser.  Trying to find the end of the tape, and then having it break off at random individuals, reduces the most stoic individual into a bonafide toddler.  Not to mention the end result is not very professional looking.

A rack for all of the rolls of wraps.  Bubble wrap, foam wrap, rolls of brown packing paper… All of these rolls need to be hung at arm level so that you can just unroll the amount you need and make a proper cut to detach it.  Any time I’ve ever had to cut a piece of bubble wrap off when the roll was just sitting on the ground I wound up making a seriously slanted cut that cut into the amount of bubble wrap I was trying to wind up with.  A waste!  And also, once again, not professional looking.

Folders.  Don’t just haphazardly stack your inventory paperwork or all of the contact information for the retailer’s that provide your shipping supplies. Put them in a folder, and keep the folder at the shipping station.  Or, better yet, but it in a binder and make sure that it stays in the same spot at all times.

Do any of you have the neighbors that really like to go all our for the holidays?  One of our neighbors that lives across the street puts giant spiders all over their house for Halloween.  I mean, I’m talking giant spiders.  Like bigger than me.  These things are not homemade, and they must have cost a small fortune.  Where on earth do they even store them?  All day and all night those humungous arachnids are mocking the meager spider webbing we slung across our front porch.  Or how about the one house that we drive by during Christmas, who have no less than thirty-two inflatable and large plastic holiday inspired characters scattered across their lawn.  Now, they actually have a shed that they store all of this stuff in.

And then there’s people like us.  Well, I would like to say that we can use random household items to make clever-looking holiday decorations.  The best part is that we can do them with our kids and make good memories (instead of the bad ones that probably come with trying to hand up a dozen over-sized, eight-legged freaks, and untangling miles of electric cords).  Specifically, I’m going to suggest we use whatever packaging supplies are laying around.

Like tape.  Tape is still considered part of the packaging supplies family, even though it has many other uses, and this time around we are going to use it as caution tape!  If you have yellow duct tape, that would be perfect.  If you have only masking tape, or electrical tape, than that’s fine too.  I would always suggest painting whatever it is yellow, and then just scribbling “caution” all over it with sharpie.  For some reason, the kids really like to do the writing part, and it’s just cool to see their shaky handwriting.

Make tombstones out of cardboard boxes.  Cut them to the right shape, spray paint them grey, and then use paint to write out a witty epitaph: Here Lies Dead Fred.

How about bubble wrap?  I spray paint it white and wrap it around a homemade snow man that sits on our front porch.

What other kinds of packaging supplies can you dig up and find creative uses for during the holiday season?  My friends and I have started getting into competition over it all, and we wind up voting which family put on the best show.  It’s a great way to get into some creative activities with our kids that involve critical thinking and lots of fun!

Fun, random fact of the day: It’s probably common knowledge by now that the Disney story of Cinderella is not the original one.  The one by the Brothers Grimm is perhaps the most familiar to us, and it is chock full of disturbing elements.  For example, I was horrified to find out that the father doesn’t actually die, but most versions just kill him off because it’s better than his lack of character in the way his daughter is treated.  And of course there’s the bit about the stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the slipper…

Anyway, it’s time to talk about packaging materials.  Perhaps packaging materials are not nearly as interesting as grim fairytales (yes, that pun was intended), but they are a pretty constant part of our lives, and so it would behoove us to talk about some clever alternatives to the expensive store bought stuff.

I did a quick walk through of my house, just wondering how many things I could point that would be useful as packaging materials, and I was surprised at how many things seemed to fit the description.  I thought a couple things, sure, but I wound up being able to put together a short list, and here are some of my findings:

• Shredded paper- depending on who you are sending something to, your shredded documents are a great alternative to other more expensive, less environmentally friendly options.
• Old boxes- just because your coffee maker box says Mr. Coffee doesn’t mean you can’t cover it in plain paper and use it instead of spending a few dollars on a new one, on top of the shipping costs.
• Grocery bags- those plastic grocery bags really start to accumulate. I know in my house we use them for dirty diapers, cat litter, sending stuff home with people, an overnight bag, lunch box…  You name it.    They are also really useful as stuffing for packages.  And they have a dual function: wrap up books or clothes or other vulnerable items that might became ruined if the box gets wet or broken into by vermin.
• Rubberbands- yes, even rubberbands can serve a big purpose! Consider using them to keep loose items taunt and you will wind up saving a lot of space, and hopefully have cheaper shipping costs as a result.
• Old socks- make sure you wash them first! I save old socks and use them when I’m sending breakable items by actually putting the item in the sock and then rolling it up (of course this is to people that I know will be offended to receive one of my old socks as well).

I go to this club every weekend where they do improv comedy skits and I wind up laughing to tears every single time. They say that laughter is good for the soul and that has to be the truth, because I feel like colors are brighter, food tastes better, and there’s a new confidence inside of me. It’s kind of like being in love, I guess you could say, but it’s really just endorphins.

When you get to the club you can write a suggestion on a slip of paper and put it in the box and after every skit they will go into the box and pull out a suggestion. I wanted to think of something really hard, really challenging. I had been to the post office earlier in the day, and and for some reason “discount packaging supplies” popped in my mind. Now that would be hard. I don’t know how anyone could come up with funny material for that. So I wrote it down and put it in the box. Maybe I would get lucky.

I took a photo of the slip of paper and sent it on Snapchat and Instagram, and then I added a few hashtags: #comedyinthemaking, #lornemichaelsprotoge, #discountpackagingsupplies, #howcanthesebefunny, #letsseewhatyouvegot, #ivegotagoldenticket, #pickmepickmepickme… That kind of thing. I kept my phone primed and ready, with the video camera open at all times, and every time they pulled a suggestion from the box I started filming just in case they pulled mine out.

Lo and behold, the next I think knew, the guy was reading, “Discount packaging supplies…?” And then everyone was having a good laugh because of the way his voice trailed off at the end and how his face was like…whaaat? I was filming and laughing and later I put up the fifteen second clip of this part and added some more hashtags, including all of the originals: #nailedit, #copyrightinfringement, #hisfacewaslikewhaaaat, #ivebeendiscovered…

It was a really good skit. It lasted longer than all of the other ones, because somehow those people made discount packaging supplies really stinking hilarious. Everyone was loving it- just eating it up. We couldn’t stop laughing, and they were just going with it, just feeding off of us. I put as many fifteen second clips of the skit up as I could, which wound up being a lot, but it was worth it. My final hashtags really represented how I felt: #fiveminutesoffame, #icandiehappynow, #suggestionaddict, #bestnightofmylife.