Creature of Craft

Image courtesy Saquan Stimpson

With more business and a couple of craft shows looming on the horizon, I’m taking the leap into one of the oft-overlooked parts of selling your wares — how to package them. I’ve been investigating some options over the past week, and I think I have an idea of what I want to do. While it might seem like a small task to pick out the final packaging solution for your crafts, here are some things to keep in mind:

Cost: While custom gift boxes with your logo affixed in your choice of colors might look sharp, they are bound to be expensive. Every packaging choice, from cardboard boxes to paper bags to wooden presentation cases, have to contend with a tradeoff between cost and…

Quality: The old adage of “judging a book by its cover” is especially true when it comes to selling your handmade soaps, clothing, or jewelry. Even the box it comes in is an opportunity to sell your product. Often, high quality packaging equals a high quality product to the consumer.

Gift Wrapping: Can your packaging be used as-is when the person wants to give their purchase to someone else as a gift? Even adding ribbon or a handmade tag or decoration to the package can take even a brown paper bag from “meh” to “wow”.

Time: When it comes down to it, you really want to make the boxing/wrapping/assembly process as quick and easy as possible. This is especially true at craft shows — you don’t want to be taking too much time to curl ribbon or origami-fold a box for a purchase, as that time could be spent helping other customers, answering questions, and ultimately, bringing in more money.

So, with that in mind, I had to decide on something that would a) look nice, b) be cheap, c) stand out and d) make it easy for me to put together. This is what I have in mind: kraft pillow boxes with brightly colored matte raffia ribbon, hand-stamped by a custom stamp ordered through an Etsy seller. I like this idea for several reasons:

• The boxes come flat, so they won’t take up a lot of space, are made of recycled content, and can be stamped with my name and website.
• The stamp is a one-time deal, and I can use it forever (not like stickers which need to be reordered or printed, and create more waste)
• The raffia dresses up the box and keeps it closed, looks more exciting than curling ribbon, and presents the package nicely enough for gift-giving.

Admittedly, I drew this idea from Nancy Tobey, who boxes her beads this way.

How do you package your items? What was the coolest packaging you remember seeing from a crafter?

[ image courtesy Saquan Stimpson on flickr ]

Tags: bags, Beads, Craft, Craft Shows, custom gift boxes, custom stamp, etsy, gift wrapping, gift-giving, jewelry, package, packaging, packaging solution, paper bags, presentation, presentation cases, purchase, quality product, ribbon

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Craft Shows, Creative Process, The Business of Crafting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.