Packaging for internet sales.

[Not your average framer]

I'm looking into the possibility of making a few things to sell on the internet. I don't want to waste to much time, or money to pack items, but I do want the packaging to adequately protect the items, that are being packaged. We have a packaging company a few miles away, who we have used as a supplier for many years and they have a computer controlled machine that makes those fold up boxes with tabs that fit everything to gether. Obviously, this involves some extra expense, but it's quite quick and easy.

I would need to add some internal packaging inside the box to prevent any damage in transit and include the sales invoice in side and then tape up the outside of the box, but as we have not done anything like this before, I need to better understand, whether this the best way to do things, or if there is a better,quick, simple and more cost effective way of going about this. I have never sold anything via the internet in the past, so I am an absolute beginner at this.

I am also assuming that there is not much point in selling things that are cheap and likely to face too much competition, so any indication of what prices are likely to be worth aiming at, would also be helpful. The items I will be making, will be standard sizes and will be made in batches, custom made items for selling on the internet probably does not make much sense. Is it worth selling on existing selling sites, like Etsy, or it easier to just sell from your own website?

Thanks in anticipation,
Mark.

[GeoSpectrum]

I think it may depend on what you are selling. Premium items need premium packaging, bespoke boxes etc. If you are selling frames then you need to consider the possibility of breakages and suchlike. Watch the postage and packaging costs, they can eat a hole your profits.

Over the last few years or so I've considered and tried all sorts of packing options but unless you are planning on selling a lot of the same size item the best option in my opinion is sheets of triple couragated cardboard , a sharp knife and a lot of tape.

ETsy and eBay are probably ok for cutting your teeth. the fees on eBay can be a bit expensive but you need to weigh this against a ready audience and established selling platform. Your own site is an option but possibly longer term as the work involved or the cost if you are paying somebody else, is not to be under estimated.

Don't get involved in taking stuff to the post office. Use Parcel to go or some such site and get stuff collected, it saves alot of time.

Dont make a batch of stuff in the hope of selling it. Sell it first then make it.

[Not your average framer]

Thanks Alan,

I will be making the same items, to sell in my shop windows as well, so I need to make them before I can sell them. Interesting what you say about cutting out your own packaging, because I've got a jod lot of 2ft x 2ft x 2ft brand new boxes left over from when I moved premises and they are made from nice thick double wall corrogated cardboard.

I suspect that ebay is a waste of time and I hear lots of bad things about some of the buyers on ebay, trying to rip off the sellers, but I am hoping that Etsy would be better. Some of the items I am thinking of selling will cut out using templates and then assembled. I'm a bit of a wheeler and dealer and know various business people who I can do deals with so I've got a few options to play with.

[Abi]

I'm on Etsy, it's fairly easy to use, though there is definitely a learning curve on tags, titles and descriptions.
I use pip boxes and a bit of bubble wrap for smaller format work that can be posted large letter.
For anything that needs to go small parcel I use cut up cardboard, bubble wrap and brown paper.
Etsy is hard work if you opt for a product with lots of competition. There is always someone that can make it cheaper/advertise it better. Some of your more niche ideas might work better on there.

If you sell a product for £22 once you take off fees, small parcel postage, 50p allowance for packaging, your take home is £17.04. Assuming UK postage.

[Not your average framer]

Thanks Abi,
Tthat's helpful to know. I'm not expecting to much competition, I don't want to do anything that's "run of the mill" and I'll be working from tempates and jigs to be sure that anyone wanting to copy what I am doing, will have a hard time trying to do so. I have some useful pieces of nice quality wood, inluding some nice solid oak boards, which don't owe me much and I'm got at using completely hidden fixings, so matching my workmanship and such like won't be easy to match. I'm well clued up with really nice finishing techniques as well. I will be doing my best to be a hard act to follow.

BTW, what are pip boxes? I've never heard of them. My usual packaging supplier, makes fold up and insert the tabs post box size boxes, I wonder if you mean something similar. These boxes work out at £1 each, for an order quantity of 20, but since thay make these on a computerised machine, they can make other sizes too. I've already started saving packaging materials, from my suppliers since before last Christmas, as I was already thinking about this back then.

I've no definite idea of what business will be like after the lock down gets lifted, so i'm hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. I've got a long list of different things I want to make, so I'll probably have plenty to keep me busy. I come from a design and manufacturing background, so I know a lot of tricks that not many people know and I hope that this is going to give me a real edge over others. Making things in batches, makes a lot of sense to me, I'm not wanting to be selling something that's not already to pack and dispatch.

I want to control my workload, by only offering for sale items that are ready for dispatch, when I have not got something ready I don't plan on listing it for sale. For not far away from 68 years old, running my guts out like a pet mouse on a treadmill is not for me. I don't need the work to make ends meet, but I need to be doing enough to keep my muscles and joints working after my stroke, so I'm still wanting to do a sensible level of work, but not so much that I struggle to keep up.

[Abi]

A pip box is the type of foldable insert tab box you describe, but designed to meet Royal Mail Large letter sizes. One of the key features of the cheaper postage is that your finished package must not be fatter than 1" thick. The last thing I want is a customer getting a postage due card, so I only dispatch large letter when I can fit the item comfortably in a pip box with bubblewrap etc. Everything else goes small parcel. Given it is £1.15 large letter and £3.70 small parcel it can make quite a difference, so I bought 50 pip boxes (there are big discounts for bulk ordering).

[Abi]

This is one of the more useful etsy fee calculators I have come across, though I have a spreadsheet that I made to enable me to do it somewhat easier.

http://mtostickers.co.uk/etsyfees/

[Not your average framer]

Thanks Abi,

That sounds good to me. Not all of my planned items will fit into that size of box, but there are a few that will, It's taking me a while to get things figured out, but I'm beginning to understand things a bit better than I first did. Part of what I need to work out is how much I have to sell thing for to ensure that I get a sensible margin on doing this. I'm guessing that for something that I sell for say £30 , my material cost needs to be about £3. Given the size of what I can fit in to one over these large letter sized boxes, if the item is a frame, I could be making most of it from off cut materials and if the glazing is 2mm perspex, I'm guessing that the prices will be within the £3, So this is starting to make sense. I already like to work so that I can make use of my off cuts. In fact, I often deciding, if the off cuts that are left over, make it wiser to start a new length of moulding, to prevent the off cut to be more wasteful than it needs to be.

I also often do the same with glass and backing boards. I'm thinking that using glass for postage, probably does not make good sense. So buying some perspex is probably the way to go. My wall mounted sheet material cutter, is great for cutting perspex, so everything so far sounds great. I'm well practiced at making french chic and french country style hand finished frames and these already sell very well for me, from my shop, so this is not much of a risk at all. I can make and hand finish most frames that would fit into one on these boxes in well under an hour, without interuptions, so there's a sensible and worthwhile hourly rate in this if I can sell a frame packed in one of these large letter sized boxes. I'm starting to like this! Using perspex in place of glass and obeche mouldings, should help with the postage weight and therefore postage costs and if I can make the same frames for either displaying for sale in the shop window, or selling on Etsy I might end up getting the best of both worlds.

Does this sound right, or am I mistaken?

[vintage frames]

I'm not sure that using perspex in bespoke hand finished frames is such a good look. You might find some purchase resistance there. Perhaps much easier is to protect the glass with this stuff -
[url]https://www.toolstation.com/blue-window ... ion/p20527[/url
I've used it when sending out all my glazed frames to customers.
Another essential is 2xply corrugated cardboard bought in large stock sheets. You can make really rigid boxes with this stuff, and use the waste off-cuts for added protection against the glass.

[Not your average framer]

Hi Dermot,

I''ve already had someone else suggest that glass would be much nicer, than perspex. So you are the second one to suggest this. I don't much like perspex any way, so I won't take much pursuading. This concept of making things that will fit into small letter sized boxes, may work, with a few of the items that I already have on my long list of things to do, after the lock down is lifted. The overall thickness of the package must not exceed 25mm to pass through the post office's test template. Allowing for the thin corrogated board of which the box is made, just the two thickness of the cardboard of the box will mean that the resulting thickness inside the box will be only 21mm. Add some extra space inside for extra packing and the maximum thickness of any item inside and we could be looking at perhaps only about 10mm to 12mm.

I'm guessing that this calls for some clever thinking, to make this work. Strange as it may sound, I'm thinking about making box frames to fit into one of these large letter sized boxes, but I need a bit more than 10mm to 12mm, so something has to give, if this is going to work. In spite of this, I am thinking that with a bit of clever trickery, this still might be made to work. I have some double walled corrogated cardbord that is 5mm thick, using this on the side where the glass is and amost nothing in terms of thickness on the reverse side increses the thickness of the box frame to a possible 16mm. With only an internal depth inside the box frame of 9mm to 10mm, I think that this can work.

[GeoSpectrum]

I think you will be lucky to keep under the 25mm. This is for large letter, which are quite small in the other dimensions. If you go for small and medium parcels you will give yourself a lot more scope.

[Not your average framer]

I've been working this out and I've found two mouldings that will enable me to do what I want. The space behind the glass will be 10mm. O.K., it's only 10mm, but that's probably all that some people will want, but I can make a deeper one for a higher price as well. the inner moulding will be standing on it's side inside the rebate of the other one and acting as both the spacer to separate the back from the glass and front mount, but the side endge will give me something to fire the bending tabs into.

It only gives me 5mm of spare internal thickness for internal packing, so I'm protecting the glass side with 5mm double flute, corrogated cardboard and the back of the frame will be strong enough because of the way that it is constructed. I will test how packed it is, by throwing it down the stairs at home. It needs to survive that. If it does, then I've got it right. I will be working on a number of items to sell, probably via etsy and I've got a long list of things waiting to be developed and made. I will sbe intending to ell them from my shop as well as on the internet.

[Not your average framer]

I've just ordered a consignment of large letter sized boxes, which are being delivered to morrow and the same time I will by looking at some wrapping paper from the same suplier with an option to say yes to this wrapping paper. Apparently it's not a popular pattern and the suppliers is quite keen to be rid of it and is prepared to make me an offer I won't refuse for it.

If the paper is really naff, I'll be using it screwed up and used for loose fill packaging. I've also already got a large quanity of nice looking large patterened pape bags, so the ready made frames that will fit in these boxes will be either for selling on the internet, or from the shop and these frames can be stored on selves, ready for when needed.

I will be displaying these same frames in one of my shop windows and offering a free gift wrapping service for these particular frames. Perhaps this will help to generate some extra sales. One plus will be that as I will be storing the frames in there boxes they will be protected from getting dusty. The contents of what is in each box, will be identified by a post it sticker which can be quickly removed before showing it to the customer. Overall, I think that this is a win / win for me.

[Just Love Art]

Hi Mark

I'm interested to see how your test went of 'throwing your packaged item down the stairs' to see if it survived also how your Etsy sales are going, i'm looking at internet sales for some items of my own and your findings could come in very usefull as i've found packaging to be an issue although this has always been with very large items (1metre plus) and glass.

Hope you're not working too hard?

With my very best wishes,

Leo

[Not your average framer]

Hi Leo,

I thought that it went O.K. but it was a relatively small box (Royal Mail call this size large letter) and there is not enough space inside the box for anything all that heavy after allowing space for the packaging. Unfortunately such a small box will only take something small and the item packaged in that size of box, I unlikely to command a big enough price to leave enough profit after taking out all the relevent fees. Since then I have discovered that my local hardware shop puts out plenty of cardboard boxes of various sizes every Tuesday morning ready to be collected by their waste collection and disposal service provider and I'm allso looking at making some mirrors for the lady who is painting my shop, to sell on eBay. She only lives a short distance from the hardware shop and will collect some of the boxes from outside the hardware shop.

Some of these boxes will hopefully get used as boxes for packaging, while others will get cut up and glued together to make much more solid internal packaging to pack heavier items inside some of these boxes. I have changed my plans quite a lot since original posting what I wanted to do at the start of this thread. The lady who is painting my shop sells quite a lot of things on eBay and has made it clear that I need to be producing bigger and more significantly priced item to make it work financially. I've agreed that she needs to take a cut from the profits, so there are two of us looking to get some money from this, for it to make sense. Therefore the items will be bigger and with a bigger selling price. This lady is very experience at this and has a massive total for items sold on ebay and a 100% feedback record, so it makes good sense to team up with her.

She sells a lot of household interior items and is also one of my friends involved in interior design and together we have plans to produce some items which we will also plan to sell on eBay. This is a fairly new thing for me and came out of my concerns to add some extra income streams to my existing business for the difficult trading period which is expected for the post Covid pandemic period. Finding out when a reasonably business nearby shop puts out their unwanted cardboard boxes for the refuge truck to take away seems to be a smart move so far, but time will tell if it's a good as we are thinking. I only have a very limited amount of space for storing packaging in my shop, so packaging will need to be put together as and when is needed, because of the lack of space to store items already packed. Maybe you will need to consider practical storage issues as well, if space is limited.