To find out more about retail packaging, see the guides below.
What is product packaging?
Product packaging is the stuff needed to ensure your products are kept safe from damage when stored, transported, and delivered to guests.
This means there's often a few things needed to protect the goods from damage, such as:
Cardboard boxes
Packaging tape
Void (bubble wrap / flexi hex / tissue paper)
etc.
We all know that the user experience (online and in person) is super important - and this extends to the delivery of products; this doesn't finish until the goods are in the purchases hands.
There's nothing worse than buying something online, for it to turn up broken, and therefore damage the user experience. This not only has a negative impact for the guest, but also a negative impact for the business too! The goods will need replacing / refunding, and there could be damage control requirements.
Packaging Types
More and more people now-a-days buy online, the world of e-commerce is growing, and packaging and presentation plays a part of the guest experience.
It's important that time is therefore put aside to think about this element of your product:
Where is your product being sold?
In-store or online (does it need to be shipped to the guest?)
If being shipped - with who, and how?
Is your product breakable?
Is your product perishable?
Asking these kind of questions will help you work out what kind of packaging might be needed, below we explain a couple of packaging types:
Retail Ready Packaging and Shelf Ready Packaging: this packaging is created for sales in-store and is made to be eye-catching - the purpose of this is to help generate sales.
This means however that in a lot of cases, it's not suitable for online sales and shipping as it can be prone to movement / damages and usually isn't strong materials.
Non-retail / transit packaging: this type of packaging is designed to be strong, the aim of this is to get your product from A to B safely and intact.
This packaging isn't alway pretty / branded.
Do I need to provide the packaging?
Our fulfilment warehouse has non-retail / transit packaging ready to go for shipping and distribution. Once we receive your retail samples, we'll advise on the packaging needs.
Your products don't need retail ready packaging. However, if your products do have this ready to go, we'll review this.
In some cases the retail ready packaging won't be suitable for shipping if we believe the items are likely to be damaged during transit. This is fairly normal for retail ready packaging; and we'd advise that alternative e-commerce packaging is created and designed specifically for online products e.g. stronger boxes, dividers, void, etc. as the needs for in-store and online sales are different.
What sort of products can Toggle pack and post?
We treat each product differently because they have their own unique weights, shapes and sizes, and storage requirements. As such, we have to find out if our fulfilment team can safely store and post your products.
We currently fulfil a variety of products such as:
Alcohol (e.g. bottles of prosecco)
Books
T-Shirts
Hats
Aprons
Setting up retail products on Toggle fulfilment for this reason can take a while, we suggest allowing 12 weeks minimum for these projects so packaging needs, shipping requirements and fees can properly be investigated and reported back - this isn't something that should be rushed, especially for fragile items.
If you're already selling online, let us know what packaging and void you currently use to protect for your e-commerce products.