How many times have you come across products packaged with excessive materials? Probably a lot. Using custom packaging employs box materials more efficiently to reflect responsible business behavior.

In this age of expanding e-commerce, one cannot do without packaging materials but it needs to be properly assigned to eliminate wastages.

Why is it essential to reduce packaging waste?

Smart packaging choices determine the growth prospects of businesses. Particularly, the apparel industry needs to optimize resource allocation to generate better returns. One of these is undoubtedly the box stock paper.

International governments have imposed regulations concerning the use of sustainable boxes created with controlled material consumption. Brands have to now become more aware of their packaging production and the wastage created through it.

Businesses that have imbibed a responsible attitude towards minimizing wastages are gaining higher customer popularity coupled with inflated profit margins. But what about taking your branding and marketing needs into consideration as well?  Can you use custom apparel packaging while still reducing your packaging waste?

Absolutely, you can. Let’s look at how.

Properly sized boxes use less paper stock

One thing is for sure; custom box sizes utilize optimum box materials. This provides a higher scope for saving on extra resources. Apparel boxes made with required materials are more effective in protecting the products while lowering refunds.

Apart from this, customized boxes offer plenty of other benefits to achieve your packaging strategy. These include:

• Packaging wasteis reduced thanks to smaller box sizes.
• Manufacturing costsare lower thanks to better use of corrugated board space.
• Void fillcan be minimized owing to less empty spaces in the box.
• Damageis less likely internally due to the products being more secure during delivery.
• Dimensional shipping costsare less excessive because of a smaller box footprint.

All these angles make it viable to optimize box materials usage. These offer more opportunities to save on production time and enable safer deliveries.

Digital printing saves on using plates

Printing consumes a large part of packaging expenses and can influence wastage levels too. The printing plates are thin, flat sheets of metal, usually aluminum. When a design is printed onto packaging using traditional forms of printing (such as flexographic or lithographic), the design is separated into colors and each color gets its own printing plate.

Hence, the more colorful a design is, the more plates it requires. This increases not only the costs but the materials needed as well. Comparatively, digital printing does things a little differently.

Digital printing consumes less materials and leaves less waste behind. This is a boon for everyone; the printer, the client, and the environment. This type of printing is more cost-effective so it allows the profits to expand and costs to be decreased to a bare minimum.

Various custom packaging options

Instead of printing whole boxes, brands can opt for alternatives that save on costs and printing inks.

1. Custom stickers

These normally come in round shapes but can be obtained in any custom formation too. The stickers are printed with limited resources and add glimmer to brown plain boxes.

Stickers can be placed on the boxes and radiate branding. If you are maintaining tight budgets or want to considerably cut down on total costs, using these custom stickers can be a good idea. The stickers are made of vinyl and laminated with numerous variations. This prevents the stickers from fading away quickly and also attracts customer attention via a glossy look.

2. Custom sleeves

You must have seen apparel items packaged with sleeves. These are cylindrical covers that can be placed directly on the apparel products as well as the packaging boxes.

It eliminates the need for using individual boxes for every apparel item. Companies can wrap custom sleeves around their items and package them in one common box for shipping. Every branding detail can be digitally printed on these sleeves and save on printing expenses and resource utilization. Picking recyclable materials for creating sleeves makes them as recyclable as sustainable boxes.

Smaller box orders

Apparel products go out of fashion quickly and so do their packaging designs. Imagine the waste if you don’t use thousands of boxes and opt for renewed ones.

A quick solution to this is ordering in smaller quantities. This way, the boxes would use less per sq ft of paper stock. Errors and design updates can be better accommodated when the order quantity is small and manageable.

Manufacturing a lot of packaging (such as 50,000 boxes), a client can receive an order that’s either over-or under-supplied by as much as 10%.

Shorter packaging runs (especially of the digitally printed kind) on the other hand, are far more accurate. Order 50 boxes and you’ll receive 50 (not 45). As they’re also run in one session (as opposed to larger orders which can be run in batches), there’s less wasted material during the ramping up and slowing down of production.

Using optimum custom printed shipping boxes is a win across the board. The boxes are ordered as and when required. This saves on production downtimes and saves on extra labor costs too.

Shun excessive marketing drives

Using the boxes for brand promotions is a good way to reduce marketing materials. Branding done on the boxes such as introducing the brand to new customers via brand names and distinct logos, makes the boxes more prominent. Customers are more likely to spot boxes designed with distinctive branding elements.

Moreover, the boxes travel through various customer contact points and therefore, serve as promotional billboards. When marketing requirements are better fulfilled using the boxes, brands would use less printed formats like leaflets and advertising hoardings.

All these would invariable bring down material usage at every branding level. Putting the apparel boxes up for most packaging and marketing targets is a clever way to save on excessive resources.

Conclusion

Apparel custom packaging isn’t just an investment for your business, it can be a tool to reduce your environmental footprints and decrease your packaging waste in one go.