Everything must be considered; from the product you’re selling to how you’ll advertise it. But for businesses offering material products, business owners should take into account a feature not found in service-based industries: packaging.

Business owners who already have a fair share of experience under their belt would know how packaging impacts consumer attraction. Some would claim the package should be eye-catching to reel in customers, while others highlight the practicality and prioritize ‘containing’ their products more. Finding the fine line between the two proves how adept the business owner already is with their product. And the best starting point is focusing on your supply chain management.

 

What Is The Supply Chain Management?

Monitoring your products is a crucial step in guaranteeing their quality. This is where supply chain management is heavily utilized. Even while they are raw materials, supply chain management overlooks the step-by-step process in production.

Since your products are the turning point of your business, the quality of the supply chain activities you’ve turned to should have no room for errors. Because if your management software is known for making errors, the packaging might cause defects that you could’ve avoided in the first place. And possessing defective products could easily impact the quality of the product itself.

 

How To Transform Your Packaging

Even though you selected a highly recommended supply chain management software, that doesn’t mean it should stop there. There’s always room to push your product even further. And by optimizing your packaging, you might reach a point where it helps your product reach its peak.

1. Know Your Business Objectives

You have to be familiar with your business goals and objectives. This way, you can determine what specific qualities your product needs, thus accommodating the packaging to preserve its quality. For example, there are different types of FIBC bags you can use as packaging that accomplishes a certain purpose.

Besides catering to the product’s requirements, acknowledging your objectives can help you pinpoint any unnecessary features your current packaging has. One problem that might bear fruit from these ‘useless’ features is weight problems. 

In loading up a truck, weight is a valuable characteristic since its even distribution could contribute to safe travels. However, if your product is too heavy, the delivery services will be forced to cut the number of products they can load each truck. Considering how one product is already heavy, this will lead to a lesser number of products per truck ratio and more back-and-forth to deliver every product to its destination safely.

From this, you could understand how having less is better sometimes. Getting rid of these features won’t only reduce its cost, but you’re also streamlining its characteristics more. In the end, you’re likely to lessen any delays since you’ve narrowed down your packaging design.

2. Observe Consumer Reviews

You wouldn’t have started a business in the first place if it wasn’t designed to cater to your audience’s needs. Thus, it only makes sense to consider what their preferences are. While you could simply study how your last line of the product performed, collecting concrete data is much preferable.

Distributing surveys is an effective method for data gathering. You can do this either in-person or by making an online survey. Be sure to make every question count since you’re using their answers here as your reference.

On the other hand, you can also hand out surveys to gather feedback instead. As soon as they receive the product, provide an option to input their review. Here, rather than collecting data for your product line in general, you’ll be focusing on learning their insights about each product.

Once you have their opinions, only then can you begin selecting the perfect design for your packaging.

3. Remain Sustainable

Plastic is the environment’s one of many enemies. This material is much cheaper compared to others. Naturally, its low costs attract more business owners. Thus, causing business owners to demand it more. Because of this, the staggering amount of plastic used within the manufacturing process and outside could easily damage what little recovery the environment’s been doing.

Since you’d want to set an example (while expressing your stance on preserving the environment), utilizing sustainable materials can help you make a change. Even something as simple as replacing a toilet roll can already do so much for the environment, considering billions of people are using it.

Use recyclable or reusable materials to create your packaging as much as possible. You don’t need to invest more in something that’s far too flashy for your customers. Furthermore, other than raw materials, it’s highly recommended you look for the right supply chains management that uses energy-efficient technology when constructing your product. This way, you could promote your environmental stance even more by choosing sustainable packaging.

Of course, this criteria might cause you to look for another supplier if your current one neglects it. You also need to take time selecting your suppliers from now on. Observe what happens during their production line. Survey and probe the supplier with questions for you to know the ins and outs of their supply chain. 

4. Perfect Design Aspects

Although it’s important to be detail-oriented when it comes to the overall aesthetic of your packaging, you must pay attention to the rest of its design. Being able to identify your product should be one of your priorities. To do that, you need to include the following identification prints, such as:

• Bar codes
• Labels
• Warnings
• Instructions

Already considering these while they’re on paper can help supply chains apply them without delay. Once these identifications are added, even the transportation will run smoothly since they know what to expect in handling your product line.

Shipping Out

In handling a business exchanging goods, packaging will influence how your customers view your product itself. After all, if the packaging is done poorly, who’s to say the product’s quality isn’t the same? That’s why you need to know that what you thought was already ‘good enough’ shouldn’t stop there. Think outside the box, and you could optimize your supply chain management even further.

 

Author Bio

Christie R. Daniel is an assembly supervisor. She’s been reviewing and assisting assemblers in testing out pre-assembled parts. Because of her love for intricacy, she’s taken to solving jigsaw puzzles with hundreds of pieces in her spare time.