When you drill down into your shipping budget, how much do you have allocated to send your customers air and plastic?

Because that’s what a lot of companies are doing. 

They spend tens of thousands of hidden, unnecessary dollars shipping their products in boxes that are bigger than what they actually need.

Not only does this cost them for extra packaging supplies, usually made of non-recyclable plastics, but then they pay their freight carriers to ship those supplies—and a whole lot of air—across the country or even the world.

Chances are you want to avoid as many unnecessary shipping costs as you can. And to be as sustainable as you can in the process.

We made this guide to help you avoid the biggest traps of oversized packaging so you can reduce both your costs and your environmental footprint.

Trap #1: One Size Fits All

When you’re creating a packaging strategy, you don’t want to overcomplicate things. 

It’s tempting to just get one size of box and use that for everything.

But that one box has to fit your largest shipment. Which means it’s going to leave your smaller shipments with all kinds of extra space to fill, sucking up extra packing supplies and costing more to ship.

This is one reason that custom packaging is much more cost-effective than most people think. It cuts out a lot of invisible shipping expenses, while also opening up new ways to boost your brand and business.

Trap #2: Bigger is Better

One step up from the one-size-fits all strategy is stocking a few different box sizes, then selecting the one that’s right for each shipment.

This is a move in the right direction.

But eventually you run out of one size or another, and what becomes painfully clear is how bigger boxes can ship smaller items, but smaller boxes can’t ship bigger ones. So the next time you place a packaging order, chances are you’ll bump the ratio of big boxes to little ones.

Over time you end up shipping a lot of smaller products in boxes that are bigger than necessary, incurring the same hidden costs.

We started offering just-in-time warehousing to help our clients solve this problem. So instead of running out of the boxes you need, we keep you stocked with the right sizes for every shipment. 

Not only do you save on shipping unnecessarily large boxes, you also open up your warehouse space for your actual products.

How to Right-Size Your Packaging for Cheaper, More Sustainable Shipping

To save money and frustration in your shipping, right-sizing requires two steps.

First is creating a packaging strategy that’s tailored to your products and shipments. If you run a streamlined direct-to-consumer business this might mean a custom box for each product you sell. Or if you’re a B2B manufacturer it could be the simplest set of box sizes that allows you to meet all your shipping needs.

Then second is developing a dependable packaging supply chain so you don’t have to keep defaulting to larger boxes, even for smaller shipments.

Our team walks you through every step of this process.

From assessing your needs and prototyping the perfect set of custom boxes, to establishing your ideal supply chain so you always have the packaging and shipping supplies you need—we bring 50 years experience and cutting edge production technology to create your perfect packaging system.

If you’re curious how this looks for your business, use the form here to get in touch and we’ll walk you through it.