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How to Select the Best Custom Foam Packaging for Your Business
Retail products are highly valuable and highly perishable. Their loss, damage, or theft can result in significant financial losses to merchants. Custom foam packaging helps protect retail products from physical damage that could arise from mechanical shocks, excessive vibrations, pressure changes during storage or shipment, or impacts during handling of the product by customers.
So, if you’re considering customizing your patterns to protect your product, there are a few things you need to check first. Here, they are:
1. Identify Your Product and Primary Hazard(s)
The first step is to identify precisely what you are trying to protect. Understanding the dimensional space your product will occupy during transit is important for achieving complete coverage with custom foam.
For instance, if you’re sending a fragile electronic device, you’ll want to avoid choosing an aggressive-looking pattern such as camouflage. Avoid too much detail like branches or leaves, as these can make it difficult to remove the packaging from around the product.
2. Determine Your Protection Needs
Custom packaging needs are based on how, where, and by whom the product will be transported or handled. The use of custom foam can help prevent damage to products due to shifting inside packages.
For instance, if a box containing a pair of flat-screen televisions is dropped from waist height, the packaging may suffer dents and bumps and the TVs. In comparison, custom foam cartons will likely prevent this damage to at least one or both screens even though they have been packaged together.
3. Determine a Budget
Packaging costs can vary significantly from one company to the next. Choosing a style and number of pieces will determine how much you spend, so look into the various options available in terms of thicknesses, styles, materials, colors, and features to find a combination that fits in with your budget while protecting your products.
4. Compare Packaging Material and Thickness Specifications
Many custom foam packaging suppliers can provide attractive and cost-effective protective solutions. Make sure to compare materials, thicknesses, dimensions, and performance characteristics such as durability, resistance to compression, etc., so you can choose the best provider for your needs.
Also, check if the supplier has a trial period, so you can try out their material and see how it holds up to your product.
5. Compare Packaging Design and Printing Capabilities
Customized foam packaging is available in various colors and designs—including camouflage, animal prints like leopard or zebra print patterns, sports-themed designs, and patterns that resemble wood.
For smaller businesses, there are opportunities to brand your business through the use of custom packaging with your company logo or slogan imprinted on it. Doing so adds value to whatever product you’re shipping while simultaneously promoting your brand more effectively than any other medium can.
6. Consider the Environmental Impact of Your Design
For outdoor sporting goods, luggage, apparel, and footwear retailers, customized foam packaging provides an environmentally friendly choice of product protection. Customized foam packaging is generally made from recycled or recyclable materials such as paper and plastic.
You can use less-durable materials like paper or plastic for packaging, but they are easily destroyed by weather conditions and must be discarded after use. Custom cushions use a durable material that you can reuse multiple times with little to no damage to the retail product.
7. Choose Flexible Design Options
Retail products come in all shapes and sizes. And manufacturers often need to use packaging that will fit these various shapes, even if custom foam packaging would be ideal for their needs. It provides the necessary flexibility to offer high-end products in various styles.
Check if the custom foam can be cut or molded into numerous shapes, making it a perfect material for shippers and retailers to use for custom packaging. This enables a retailer to maximize storage space by efficiently packing items into containers of the exact size required. Ensure the products arrive at customers’ doorsteps undamaged, increasing customer satisfaction and boosting sales.
8. Ensure Product Compatibility
Ensure that the custom foam you choose will work with the product you want to ship. Some custom cushions can be used multiple times, while others are intended for one-time use only. For example, packing peanuts are intended for a single-time use only, while foam blocks can be used multiple times before replacement.
For retail businesses that sell various products, reusable custom foam materials will help maximize product protection at the lowest possible price. Even if your company doesn’t often sell similar items, you may still find value in reusable custom foam packaging—it can be used to create containers for specific orders or to ship large items that don’t fit into standard-sized boxes.
9. Choose Customizable Cushioning
The cushioning provided by foam packaging can be designed to best protect specific retail products from damage during storage and shipment, making it the ideal choice for any brand or industry.
Any product from clothing to sporting goods can be displayed on shelves or shipped to customers’ homes without fear of damage because the packaging will protect it during the shopping and shipping process. And if one retail product can be shipped together with others in custom foam, this increases storage space efficiency.
A range of custom foam cushioning materials is available in different thicknesses, sizes, and densities to meet the specific needs of your product. Depending on the size and shape of your retail products, you can use thicker or thinner custom foam for protection that is appropriate for your company’s needs.
10. Keep It Consistent
When considering your options for custom foam, don’t forget to use the same company for all of your packaging needs. Choose one source for retail product packaging and shipping so that you can work with a single representative who knows you on a more intimate level.
It takes time to develop this relationship, but the benefits are worth it. Your consultant will provide more specialized and dedicated service while also helping you save money and time on both fronts.
Retailing is a rapidly changing industry through the influence of technology, and even small business owners are starting to take notice. Many small retailers and eCommerce businesses know that they need to explore new ways to compete and attract more customers online.
One way to make a business stand out is through the effective use of customized foam packaging in the retail industry, which benefits small business owners looking to improve their bottom line.
