In today’s market, where a brand faces the pressure to perform equally well on both physical retail and on e-Commerce or digital retail – Custom packaging has become an utmost important factor for the brand’s success.

Since custom packaging has turned crucial for all kinds of retail products, a lot of time businesses make crucial mistakes without realizing them and thus end up losing time and money.

In today’s blog, Mr. Gaurav Jalan, Founder and Director Packman Packaging, India’s largest packaging solution provider, shares some of the common errors that Indian companies make during custom packaging.

Wasteful Packaging

The first common mistake that people do is to use excess packaging material in custom packaging. This happens due to a non-optimized packaging design. Thus prior to designing custom packaging for your product check how much packaging material is required to create the perfect custom box? Is your design completely optimized for functionality?

For example, does your packaging require a lot of extras such as bubble wrap, corrugated sheets, or other solutions that will likely go into a landfill? If yes, then identify the design solution to reduce that kind of waste, while keeping your product safe.

Excess packaging material not only increases your shipping charges but it also does not go well with today’s eco-conscious customers. The new generation buyers appreciate smart brands and the absence of smart packaging can damage that brand image.

You can easily avoid this mistake by working with a professional custom packaging provider who has in-house packaging designers and engineers and can guide you to design the perfect custom packaging for your product while ensuring that your packaging meets environmental standards and keeps your product safe.

Furthermore, putting your custom packaging to the test before your product launch will save you the stress of having to pull it from the market because of simple errors you could have avoided!

Testing Error

There are two common testing errors that take place in developing custom packaging – first, is errors of never testing the packaging before introducing in the marketing and the second is incorrectly testing of custom packaging.

No matter how tempting it may look to forego testing or no matter how much timeline pressure is there, once you’re happy with the overall design never launch the brand in the new custom packaging without thorough testing – else the packaging mistakes will be picked by customers and retailers and will cost your company both in terms of product returns and brand image loss. Thus always ask your company to give you prototypes of your packaging before they start large production of the packaging. This way you’re able to evaluate the design, quality, and durability. Furthermore, shipping out prototypes to small and loyal customers and retailers to get some feedback from those who matter most!

The second error is not testing custom packaging to its full extent. Thus thoroughly check the custom package for

  • Small measurement errors
  • Misplacement of artwork designs
  • Spelling mistakes
  • Structural engineering errors

Design Considerations

For your branding success, the custom packaging design must resonate, its labeling and design need to be perfect, and it has to create the right brand narrative to leave a lasting impression on customers.Prior to launching your product in new packaging, gather as much as possible information if your new packaging is liked by your customers? Does your customer perceive the design to be of high-quality, or does it look a little dated once executed?

Thus ask your packaging company to share prototypes – remember many times a designs look great during the ideation and on a computer screen but may not be the right choice once you see a prototype. Show the prototype if possible to a sample of the target market or to your trusted wholesalers and physical retailers – and ask for their honest opinions.