Devising a winning package for your product

It’s both a science and an art, experts say.

Ibiam, Nigeria
How can I create an attractive package for my soap and deodorant product?

By Kathleen Ryan O’Connor, Fortune Small Business Contributor
Dear Ibiam: It may sound like you’ve already done the hard part – creating a product you feel is ready to hit store shelves. That’s an accomplishment to be sure, but it’s only the beginning.

Packaging a product correctly and attractively without breaking the bank is harder than it looks, says Karen Proctor, a professor of packaging science at the Rochester Institute of Technology – and it’s something 99% of small-business owners fail to consider properly.

Take the woman who came to her to help find the right package to ship her locally famous cheesecakes. Poor packaging was turning the eager entrepreneur’s dreams of becoming the next Mrs. Fields into a nightmare. Half of the cheesecakes she shipped arrived damaged.

“Customers just sent them back,” Proctor says. “It was really sad.”

Where to start? First, do your homework. Especially for personal-hygiene products, there will be certain regulations you must follow. The last thing you want to do is order a huge lot of packaging only to find you haven’t followed legal disclosure requirements for ingredients. Another consideration: Your packaging needs to be sturdy enough to get the products safely to vendors.

“What I recommend is to always survey the market and see what the competition is doing,” says JoAnn Hines, also known as the “Packaging Diva.”

“The biggest issue you’ll face is finding a vendor who can supply in small quantities,” Hines says. Custom-designed packaging runs anywhere from a minimum order of between 10,000 and 100,000, which is not at all where a small-business owner should start.

Next step: Once you’ve figured the type of packaging you need, find out what it’s called in the industry and start a Web search for vendors. Both Hines and Proctor note that the Internet is the best source for finding vendors who can specialize in small quantities. Hines recommends starting with as little as 25 units.

“I always encourage people to do their research and do their homework and come up with something they are happy with, but don’t go overboard tweaking every final detail. It’s probably going to change,” Hines says.

And cash-strapped upstarts shouldn’t be afraid to use their creativity, says Hines, who recently gave a speech to a group of soap-making entrepreneurs in Vermont titled, “Got Soap? How to package it simply, effectively and within budget.”

Are you selling something that everyone else is packaging in a typical glass jar? Go with a beautiful tin. A rudimentary search found one promising packager, Brambleberry, selling plain plastic soap pumps for as small a quantity as 1 bottle for a $1.10 or a case of 315 for $141.75.

Proctor stresses the benefits of plain packaging combined with customized labels. “That’s one of the big things to keep your cost down,” she says. The label itself can be expensive upfront, but you apply it as needed and it can be changed far more easily than, say, 500 preprinted corrugated boxes with a logo that just isn’t working.

And speaking of secondary packaging, Proctor warns this is another area that can get tricky. Most small-business owners will be using UPS or FedEx-type carriers to get their product out, so they must spend time and attention on make sure it arrives in pristine condition.

“Product damage is serious,” Proctor says. “No one wants a dented carton of bar soap.”

And the product must be able to travel inside the packaging: Proctor cites a Boston woman making natural lip balms. The product was great, Proctor says, but its softness couldn’t hold up to the varied temperatures it faced as it went through retail shipping chains. In short, a lot of lip balm melted and the woman had to go back to the lab to make her product more solid.

Give us your advice: Check out recent “Ask & Answer” questions.

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