Every business is always looking for ways to cut operational costs.
With the increase in online purchases, it’s vital that you keep a close eye on the amount of money you spend packaging and delivering products to your customers and try to cut the costs as much as possible.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways you go about it. These ways include:
Avoid using unnecessarily big packages.
One factor that affects the shipping cost is the product’s dimensional (DIM) weight. And you can guess, the larger the packaging, the heavier it will be and the more expensive you will pay.
We are not saying you should try to stuff a large item in a small box. No. We are saying that you shouldn’t use a larger packing box than you need.
For example, if you are shipping a T-shirt, you don’t need a 15” X 15” box, do you? You should find a smaller box that will be lighter and won’t take up much space.
Properly package and transport your products.
You might be wondering how this will reduce your packaging costs, but it plays a vital role in reducing returns. As mentioned above, studies show that up to 20% of products are returned due to transit damage.
When a customer sends back a product, the return hurts all areas of your business, from manufacturing, packing, and shipping. You also jeopardize your relationship with your customer, not to mention the ballooning effect, if the customer shares the terrible experience with their friends, relatives, and online connections.
You reduce returns when you properly package your items, saving you money.
Take advantage of automation.
When you take advantage of automation, you boost productivity in your business by significantly cutting down on packing times.
When you go the manual route, you waste a lot of time on packaging tasks such as:
- Constructing the shipping cardboard
- Assembling and securing the cartons
- Inserting the dividers or stuffing materials
- Taping and securing the boxes
Invest in an automated line to save the money and time you spend packaging your products.
Stick with one packaging supplier
Like in other sectors, when you stick with one supplier for your boxes, wrapping paper, paper bag, or even postcards, you stand to attract crazy discounts and lower prices per unit. As you can tell, this saves you money.
Larger orders always attract cheaper prices per piece, especially when you order all of your items at once.
If your business doesn’t have a lot of space to store large quantities of packaging materials, use the Just in Time model that allows you to decimate your inventory without bringing the entire inventory to your working area.
Instead of shipping all of your corrugated paper orders and corrugated cardboard directly to you, your supplier houses the packaging material and only releases it on a needed basis.
If you are looking for a reputable company that will hold your hand and ensures that you don’t have too much packaging material and you never lack, take a look at Millennium Packaging, which offers pre-scheduled or automated releases of the packaging materials based on your company’s historical data.
