Entrepreneur Spouses: Packaging 101
There’s a lot to remember when starting up your own business, especially if you are not a individual sales rep for a company like Mary Kay, etc, where you are not given your own branding and packaging supplies. So what’s a girl to do if you are tired already from digging deep into your creative soul from the daily chores of entrepreneurship and the ups and downs of a military lifestyle?
Image courtesy of Kristen Hodges
1. Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.
Too often do we find ourselves wanting to tackle the world in a day when it comes to our businesses instead of letting them grow and be nurtured into what they can become. Most military spouses don’t even have a day to get all this stuff together. We’re used to the military’s lifestyle of “Hurry Up and Wait” but it’s different when it comes to running a business.
When I started my first Etsy shop, Flyleaf Books, I offered only 12 items – yes, only 12! And each custom listing only had one fabric designer for brides to choose from when designing their custom wedding album. After a year, I had several fabric designers for brides to make even more personalized choices from, several store features/options, and had even begun to do social networking promotions. All of which, had to be taken one day at a time, at a pace I had reasonable time for that wasn’t interfering with my family or my part-time job. Customers enjoy watching your business grow with new things to explore so why not make it fun for yourself as well and take things at an enjoyable pace?
2. Go all out or go home.
This is your business, not your hobby… you are trying to “sell” yourself to your customers and these days, it’s no coincidence that marketers and advertising companies use visual aids as a large part of their campaigns. It’s a visual world out there and TV, internet, and product packaging all play a huge role in having created this microwave culture that we live in. Research shows that you have 8 seconds to capture someone’s attention. 8 seconds. So with that, are you going to go all out to stay in the game or be sent home by your customers?
A good rule of thumb for branding is to keep your brand’s theme going with your packaging for not only your products but your shipping materials as well! Think about it: how many hands will your package go through before it arrives and what kind of first impression are you willing to make? I don’t know how many times I am stopped by the postal ladies for business cards for my shop because they saw a sampling of products all across the top of my shipping label or the stickers on the side of the box with my logo and web address.
I like for my items to make a great first impression in the home, too, when they are first opened up in their shipping box. I like to embellish the inside, too, keeping all my bases covered. I’ll fill the box with colored crinkle paper that matches my shop colors to keeps my items snug without moving an inch in transit (not some left over paper towel or newspaper sheets) and I like to wrap my items in a narrow ribbon to finish them off with a hang tag with my logo, contact info and care instructions. This also makes my items “giftable” since I never know if it’s for the customer themselves or if they are gifting it to someone else. If the gift recipient likes my item, I would hope that I have left a easy-to-follow cookie crumb trail back to my shop so they can buy again if they wish.
3. Keep It Together, Soldier!
Your branding that is, not you – ha, gotcha! Be sure that whether you’re designing a logo or a product label or a blog banner, that you are using 1) a coordinated color scheme, 2) a font family that has 1-3 fonts that go well with each other and 3) you have created print and web ready logos to place on all your items to keep a consistent look. You want your customers to be able to spot your craft show booth, your web ad, or product from a mile away. Research shows, people love what they are familiar with and can recognize. This increases your chances of sales and will make your life easier, too, if you have these templates set up, ready to use and by your side for when you have a new site or packaging item to design.
So we just learned that staying collected does have it benefits but how often should you give your shop a branding facelift? That depends. I would suggest no more than twice a year, especially if you are ordering supplies in bulk to avoid wasting resources. You don’t want to change so often that your customers from a few months ago doesn’t know what site they are on when they return.
Resources to Check Out:
- How to Package Etsy Items
- Why Packaging Matters More Than Ever
- Taking Your Brand from Concept to Reality: Part 1
- Taking Your Brand from Concept to Reality: Part 2
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