Welcome SeymorOnion. Glad Aaron approved you.
Thanks! And thanks, too, for starting this thread.
I probably would have been approved sooner, but that whole forum hack thing took us all by surprise.
Welcome aboard. I wouldn't waste money on having custom packaging made - nobody here is gonna care whether or not they come in pretty boxes (heh, that sounds naughty).
Actually, it winds up being cheaper (for you all) for me to use the custom packaging, opposed to me just buying boxes at the supermarket.
Supermarkets, and the local box shops, markup their boxes at least 3 times what it costs to make them.
Also, I balanced the size-to-weight ratio in such a way, as to ensure that I can get the lowest possible shipping rates, while still protecting the integrity of the sleeves, as they travel through the postal system.
I did keep the packaging design simple though.
The Shipping Boxes themselves are a plain brown corrugated cardboard.
They are lightweight, but strong, especially in the corners of the box.
They can hold up to four 25-Packs.
The 25-Pack boxes are made out of a white cardstock; similar in thickness to the paper used to make a greeting card.
They have a single color print on two sides; a simple description of what's inside, in plain text.
They don't need to be very strong, because the shipping box will be more than enough to protect them.
When you take the costs-per-box, and divide it by the number of sleeves I'm putting in them, it winds up costing either a little less than 1 cent per sleeve, but no more than 3 cents per sleeve, depending on the # of 25 packs I put in a shipping container.
I can fit about 50 sleeves in a 'free' small flat rate box from the USPS, but that costs $5.00 to ship.
With my custom boxes, I can charge $2.60 for S&H for one 25-pack, or $4.35 for two of em.
Or, I could buy some bubble envelopes, or jam them in a standard paper envelope,
but the odds of them getting damaged, while en route, would be high.
Oh, by the way, I got the Shipping containers a little while ago.
5,400 of them. (I have to buy in bulk to get a decent price).
I just finished bringing them all inside.
Here's some photos of em, in their temporary resting place:
I'm going to put them up on some shelves tonight,
in the room I've set up to be my Shipping Department.
They are going to deliver the 25-Pack boxes tomorrow, (at least 5,000 of them)
and I'll finally be able to start selling the sleeves (which I bought in bulk as well)
through the website then.
When you bulk order custom stuff, like boxes, sleeves, or any plastics, most companies have a policy you have to agree to called "Overages and Underages".
Basically, they state that you agree to pay X up front, for Y amount of product,
and the actual Y amount they make, can vary by 10% more, or 10% less, than the desired quantity.
After they are done with the run, I pay for how many they actually wound up making, at an earlier agreed upon price-per-unit.
That way, I can lock in the price per unit for the Y Quantity's Bulk Rate, and only have to pay that much for each one.
So, if they make a little less than I wanted, it won't revert to the higher-priced, less than Y, price-per-unit cost.
Whew. I hope that made sense.
To be honest, it took a while for me to wrap my head around that one myself.
