4 Packaging Sins To Avoid

Packaging is a vital consideration for any business big or small. Without an effective packaging strategy, you’ll be left in the dust by your rivals. This post, courtesy of the packaging experts at Kendon Packaging, will run through some packaging sins that you should avoid if you are to engender success at your company.

Being too bland

Minimalism can look great on a package – think about Apple’s packaging for their laptops or phones. But when minimalism is done improperly, it can look bland. This should be avoided at all costs.

Striking a happy medium between minimalist and bland can be difficult, but it’s certainly possible. Take time to examine good examples of minimalist packaging and see where you can draw inspiration from.

Being too excessive

Over-packaging things might ensure that they’re adequately protected, but it’ll come at a cost of inconvenience for the customer, as they’ll have a lot of packaging on their hands that they don’t know how to dispose of. Even Amazon is guilty of this from time to time, so don’t be discouraged if it occurs to you.

Streamlining your warehouse processes and making sure that your cardboard box range reflects your products is an important step towards eliminating this. Providing adequate void fill and product protection will also negate the need for a bigger box, by providing a snug fit for whatever you’re shipping.

Adopting similar colours to your competitors

There’s a reason why Coca-Cola cans are red and Pepsi cans are blue. The cola brand binary choice has been ingrained into the psyche of consumers over the decades – and it means that both brands have loyal customers.

If you’re going into competition with another brand, make sure you have a distinct colour scheme and packaging design to make you stand out as a new choice on the market. Opting for a similar style will draw consumers to believe that your product is a knock-off of the established brand, which is a status that should be avoided at all costs.

Using the wrong products

Improperly packaging your products could be a disaster for the survival of your company – you might not have thought about this too much, but it could be the thing that ruins your business’s reputation, especially in eCommerce circles.

Common packaging sins in this line of business include shipping electronics without anti-static packaging, improperly labelling fragile items leading to damage in the shipping process and packaging hot food items without the correct paper to soak up grease and keep the food warm.

A savvy thing to do in order to avoid this is to conduct a full audit of your packaging solutions – from the top down, leaving no stone unturned. This will allow you to identify problems before they become disasters and future-proof your business against any issues that may arise in the future.

Knowing when you’ve committed a packaging sin is all well and good – but the real key to success is to recognise these mistakes before you make them, as this can save time and money, safeguarding your bottom line and preventing packaging disaster.