January tends to be slow on Etsy so there’s a lot time that you spend thinking about how to improve your store. I was thinking back on sellers that I’d purchased from and what made them memorable to me. Packaging, I think, is a huge factor. All the products were fabulous and unique of course but they were also all packaged really beautifully.
So that’s what I’ve been doing today, trying to improve my packaging. There’s quite a bit more to it than you’d think.
I’ve had great packaging ideas but when you break it down to individual costs and its $15 on each parcel, then it’s just not feasible. You have to really hunt down those bulk lots and work hard to get good deals.
To start with, you have essentials like the padded envelopes stuffed with shredded paper, tissue paper, micro-fiber or whatever else you use to protect your precious items. After that you have to go for simple enclosures like paper flowers, stickers, professionally printed business cards and “next order” discount cards, tags and jewelry cards, ribbon, boxes or embellished jewelry bags or whatever else you use.
If the postal costs alone on each parcel is around $3-4 depending on the destination and you’re only prepared to charge a max of $6 p&p (because you don’t want to be accused of having outrageous postage and packing charges) then you don’t have a lot of funds left to spend on nice packaging! I think that wherever you see really low p&p costs, a portion of the packaging costs have actually been worked into the purchase price of the item.
The other thing that you have to consider is whether something is appropriate to enclose with your package. Generally speaking, I’d stay away from enclosures of the flavored or fragrant kind as they might not be to the recipients taste. If you sell soap or perfume, enclosing samples is fine. If you sell any foodstuffs, enclosing samples is fine but just watch out for the nut allergies. If you sell jewelry, enclosing e.g. soap samples is not fine. A recipient that has ordered jewelry probably doesn’t want to be attacked by anything smelly upon opening their parcel. Just remember, you think it smells wonderful but maybe I think it smells like satans a**! (sorry)
Yes, so that got a bit rantish but it is very difficult because you have to think of everything. I’ll post photos of my new packaging once everything I’ve ordered arrives. I'm happy that I got the most that I could whilst making sure that shipping doesn’t go over $6.
Labels: costs, enclose, etsy, extras, how, howto, packaging, postage, to
posted @ 4:25 AM
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