Packaging, warehouse operations, and shipping systems are probably not your favorite part of your business, but handled poorly, they can be your demise. Here are the most common packaging mistakes we see manufacturers make:

Favoring Design over Practicality

The consumer might buy your product because of your flashy packaging, but if the product is damaged during shipping because of flimsy or inadequate packaging, it will cause you all kinds of headaches. Your package design should protect your product from environmental damage.

It’s also important to choose a material for packaging that is lightweight enough to reduce your load in the warehouse and your shipping and delivery costs. A heavier package means a bulkier package, which can lead to more strain on warehouse equipment and dropped products.

Favoring Protection over Promotion

There is, however, an important balance between practical and pretty. Like it or not, consumers judge books by their covers. When designing your product packaging, keep in mind that there are two types of packaging: internal packaging and external packaging. Your internal packaging will showcase your product on the shelves for consumers to see. It needs to be marketing driven while protecting the product it holds inside.

External packaging, on the other hand, is all about function and utility. Its primary purposes are to contain the internally packaged products, protect them from damage, and ensure they arrive at the proper destinations. This means making sure your external packaging is sturdy, easy to move, and labeled adequately. When you design your product packaging with shipping in mind, it’s possible to find ways to be more efficient, like using pallets for warehouse storage.

Ignoring the Cries of Tree-Huggers

The movement toward more sustainable packaging is not going away. According to the EPA, containers and packaging alone account for nearly

 one quarter of the material reaching landfills in the U.S. Many consumers make their buying decisions based on whether the material the product comes in is recyclable. It’s a marketing decision as well as the common sense, responsible approach to packaging.

Use lightweight materials (like recyclable plastics and paperboard) to reduce shipping costs and reduce waste going into landfills. Corrugated cardboard packaging is also extremely lightweight, versatile, sturdy, and easy to recycle. It’s also easy to customize so your external packaging is appropriately labeled for warehouse management.

As an Atlantic Packaging partner, Skybox Packaging supplies 100% recycled corrugated packaging and provides a cost-effective and reliable option for eco-conscious customers.

Poorly Labeled External Packaging

You’ve got your beautiful internal packaging tucked neatly within your external packaging, but now there’s a problem. The boxes are blank. The labels are buried on the inside of the packaging. No one knows for sure which product is in which box. 

Poorly labeled external packaging creates confusion and disarray in the warehouse. Mis-picks and mis-packs are an operational profit drain that originates in the warehouse, causing damage to both your physical product and your brand’s reputation. These errors cost you in lost products and lost customers. 

Make sure your external packaging has clearly identifiable print & barcode labels. Once that is taken care of, you’ll need to make sure your operations staff understand the process they need to follow to ensure the right products get to the right place, both in your warehouse and when they’re ready to ship.

One of the best ways to do this is to establish a system that rewards employee compliance, accuracy, and productivity. This incentivization helps keep your inventory records accurate. Without lost or mis-picked products, your company will gain an increase in profits. The best place to tighten up profit leaks is by identifying mis-picks.

At Skybox, packaging and warehouse operations isn’t just part of our business—it is our business. We specialize in designing packaging solutions that work, from design to delivery, ironing out and helping to maintain the operational system. Learn more about our services and how we can work to avoid these common packaging mistakes together.

It’s a challenging time to be in procurement right now. Every area of the supply chain seems under a different kind of strain. It’s procurement’s responsibility to order the necessary parts and supplies from companies all over the world in order to complete the manufacturing process and have the proper supplies on hand to get orders shipped.

The two major factors that are keeping you up at night if you’re in procurement (really, any area of business) are supply chain disruptions and inflation. Obviously, it takes more than just one business’s input to get the ball rolling again, but understanding these issues and how each of us affects the other can make a big difference when the world keeps screeching to a halt.

Supply Chain Disruptions

In order for your plant to maintain smooth operations, you have to be able to access the parts you need to build your product. The Covid pandemic set into motion what is now years of supply chain delays and disruptions around the globe as various companies lock down to prevent the spread of disease. Ongoing disruptions continue with new Covid outbreaks globally that impact specific organizations and countries, slowing part production, shipping, and delivery. And now, to top it all off, the war between Russia and Ukraine has made gas prices skyrocket, slowing down transportation so that even if the parts are made, they can’t be moved, at least not as efficiently as before.

Once your parts finally arrive, unexpectedly, it’s go time. Production has to swing into full gear, and orders need to be fulfilled ASAP. The last thing you want is for your outgoing products to be delayed due to warehousing, fulfillment, or delivery, but supply chain delays can cause even more issues on this end as well, waiting for someone else to take care of your product packaging and get it out the door.

Inflation

Just when the supply chain seemed like it was starting to sort itself out, gas prices started soaring, affecting the cost of every single product and process under the sun. In order to combat transportation costs, everyone is working hard to consolidate shipments to make the most of every truck on the road. When it’s time to ship, you need a packaging and fulfillment partner that is ready to hit the ground running with fast and flexible services to keep your products moving.

Now is the time to choose a packaging company that can meet your needs with efficiency and agility. Skybox Packaging has the flexibility and experience to work with you through these unpredictable times so that your business isn’t held up by packaging problems but can continue on its way as soon as you’re ready to roll.

Explore Skybox’s corrugated packaging solutions today.

If you’re like most purchasing agents, product managers, and brand handlers, your product comes first, and rightly so, but that means that packaging is often an afterthought. What will it ship in? How will it look to the consumer? And how many different suppliers are required to pull it all together?

Countless. From design to creation, prototyping to printing, packaging to shipping, and warehousing to fulfillment, there’s a lot that goes into getting your product from your manufacturing floor to the consumer. 

If you’re spending all your time and energy connecting with a different supplier for every single step of your packaging and fulfillment process, let us be the first to tell you that there are other ways to manage the packaging part of your production process.

The Skybox Way

Skybox Packaging is more than just a corrugated manufacturer and packaging supplier. With decades of experience fine-tuning a system for full-service, custom corrugated packaging solutions, we are a key partner who want to simplify this part of the process without sacrificing quality design and creative input.

We love to enter into a collaborative partnership with businesses to simplify your life and give you space to do what you do best. It’s the Skybox Way.

If you’re working with other vendors for your corrugated packaging and product protection, give us a test run as your potential partner. We’d be happy to help you out. Learn more about Skybox’s Packaging Solutions or give us a call today.