Custom Packaging Ideas for Small Businesses: Stand Out with These Packaging Tips

For an ecommerce business, there’s no closer touchpoint with your customer than when they receive the package and unbox it. 

That’s why custom packaging makes a world of difference to the unboxing experience. Opening a specially-designed box or poly mailer featuring your branding increases the likelihood that a customer remembers your brand, and helps you build a stronger connection with them.

From eco-friendly options to highly branded and personalised experiences, there are plenty of ways that small businesses can use customer packaging to stand out. In this guide, we share some of those ideas along with some tips and best practices on using custom packaging.

10 standout small business packaging ideas

There are so many different ways that small businesses can customise their packaging to create a premium first impression. Here are some of the most popular ideas to inspire your brand’s design.

1. Corrugated boxes

Corrugated boxes are the most common kind of shipping boxes. They are also known as “RSC boxes” meaning regular slotted container boxes. They’re a strong 32ECT kraft corrugated with a rugged look and feel.

Corrugated boxes have the following features:

• Simple to construct
• Easily collapsible
• Has the most economical board usage
• Gives a uniform finish to the package
• Very little manufacturing waste in production
• Accommodate products of different sizes based on the length of the flaps used

2. Paperboard boxes

As the name suggests, paperboard boxes are made from a sheet of paper that’s sturdy yet lightweight. The sheets are either made from recycled wastepaper or the fibrous material in wood. 

Because they’re more lightweight than corrugated boxes, paperboard boxes are a more versatile option for printing and graphic design work. These sheets can easily be folded into boxes and cut into various designs and shapes to suit your product’s dimensions, so they’re one of the most customisable small business packaging options.

3. Rigid boxes

Rigid boxes offer a premium solution for luxury products. These high-end boxes are sturdy and offer excellent protection to the product. These boxes provide a unique unboxing experience to your customers, increasing your brand values and creating brand awareness.

Depending on the box you choose and the products you need to package, you can also use custom-designed inserts to hold your products in place inside your box. Custom inserts add an extra touch of elegance to your unboxing experience while ensuring that your products are safely secured within the box at the same time.

4. Plastic mailers and poly bags

Custom poly mailers or poly bags are a great, eco-friendly packaging option. It is made of a plastic substance called polyethylene. Bio-based polyethylene helps reduce carbon emissions and also protects the environment. 

The smooth exterior of poly mailer bags makes it easy and hassle-free to label your shipments. They are tear, tamper, and waterproof, and also ensure the safety of your non-fragile products, making them an excellent choice for apparel. You can even find poly mailers with built-in padding to offer extra protection to the contents.

You can customise the poly mailer bags with the design and logo of your choice.

5. Paper mailers

Paper mailers are a great option for businesses that want a light-weight eco-friendly solution for their products. 

Paper mailers give a luxurious feel with sharp, digitally-printed colours, you can customise them in line with your brand’s aesthetics. They are also great option for apparel brands. 

Paper mailers are ideal for shipping small or multiple products and provide a great unboxing experience.

6. Foil sealed bags

Foil-sealed bags are a great packaging choice for food items. They offer air-tight sealing to keep the contents protected, ensuring durability and quality. Arka offers a variety of eco-friendly options for foil-sealed bags:

• Recyclable BioPE Vacuum Bag
• Recyclable BioPE Stand Up Pouch
• Compostable Stand Up Pouch
• Compostable Vacuum Pouch

7. Custom tapes and stickers

For an easy and cost-effective custom packaging option that makes your packages pop, try using custom tapes and stickers. This involves having tapes and stickers printed with your brand logos and colours. You can simply use these with your regular boxes and mailers, allowing you to make a big impression with a little extra attention to detail.

8. Custom tissue paper

Looking for another cost-effective way to spice up your plain boxes? Custom tissue papers are the easiest way to instantly elevate the unboxing experience. These are tissue papers printed with your custom logos, colours, and patterns, which you can use to wrap the items neatly while keeping branding at the forefront of your customer’s experience.

This inexpensive small business packaging option is great for those who need to ship discreetly or want to customise shipments on a budget.

9. Jute packages

Jute packaging is a great eco-friendly option for dry foods and grains including  wheat, rice, coffee beans, potatoes and onions, etc.

It is also one of the oldest and traditional forms of packaging. A jute package is durable, has natural ventilation, and prevents damage to packaged products.  

10. Dunnage packages

Dunnage packaging is ideal for products that require extra padding and protection during the shipping process. There is a wide range of dunnage products, from bubble wraps to honeycomb kraft paper. 

Dunnage packaging provides extra cushioning for products and prevents them from bending or breaking. 

Arka’s recycled kraft padded mailers are made from:

1. Recycle paper
2. FSC-certified honeycomb and are both compostable and curbside recyclable

The recycled paperboard provides a rigid structure that is both durable and waterproof, while the honeycomb paper interior provides a layer of cushioning. Investing in recycled kraft padded dunnage package is a great option because it’s:

• Cheap
• Eco-friendly
• Reusable
• Highly effective

Another eco-friendly option for dunnage packaging is compostable bubble mailers. 

Arka’s home compostable padded mailer is made from renewable bioplastic film. The mailers break down into healthy compost, leaving no microplastics, and conform to almost all major compost certifications.

Why small businesses should create custom packaging (benefits)

The impact of custom packaging is often underestimated – but in such a dynamic and competitive market as ecommerce, it’s important to consider.

High-quality custom packaging boxes are more than just a container for your product; they’re a material benefit to your business in a variety of ways. Here are notable reasons for your ecommerce business to begin using custom boxes and packaging today.

Create a great first impression

A crowded marketplace filled with a barrage of product messaging is confusing, but a unique first impression can make a brand stand out among the noise.

People are visual by nature, so we store information as we see it.  That’s why attractive brand packaging not only attracts attention, but it also retains it.

It’s also true that out of the many retailers offering similar kinds of products, people will remember those deliveries that were packaged in a more aesthetically pleasing way than the others.

Give your customers something to remember

Unique packaging designs make your shipments more memorable, which can help keep your brand top-of-mind for future purchase decisions. After a positive unboxing experience, your customers are more likely to return for a repeat purchase.

Build better product protection

Custom packaging allows a business to create a solution that will be personalised and tailored to meet the specific needs and demands of their product and will be in line with their brand values. 

Custom packaging enables you to protect your products when your package gets shipped. Arka provides custom inserts that add a layer of protection for your product. 

Custom inserts or packaging inserts are inlays that ensure your products are secure in their box. You may use the best and durable boxes or cartons to pack your products for shipping.

“Before I even committed to moving forward with ShipBob, I actually ordered products from a bunch of brands that I knew were also using ShipBob – and I was so impressed by how each order was packaged with total care and matched the aesthetic of the brand. Everything was just pristine, and I was blown away! Orders sent to our customers have been no different.”

Charlotte Katona, President of Makesy 

Make your brand stand out

You can safely add custom packaging to your branding and marketing plans, keeping an eye on the latest logo design trends. Full-colour or eye-catching packaging with your brand name and logo stands out more than retail packaging and helps create high brand recall. Use this opportunity to build your brand further.

Capture your brand’s personality. If your brand is all about delicacy, customise your packaging to reflect that image in custom labels, custom tape, subtle colours, stickers, and box designs.

Likewise, if your brand image is rugged, utilise corrugated boxes with primary colours and bold designs to make a lasting statement.

Don’t have any design chops? Recruit some design contractors to draw your logos and designs for you. Twine, Fiverr , and Upwork are great resources for this and you can find the right fit according to your design budget. To make sure your design files are ready for printing, they should be vector files and at least 300DPI.

Increase the perceived value of a product

Premium packaging and shipping improve overall brand perception. In fact, 61% of shoppers believe premium packaging makes a brand seem more upscale, so there’s an instant boost in the perceived value of your product.

“When we first started out, our packaging process was really simple – we just picked the product, stuck it in a brown box, and shipped it. Because ShipBob can support custom packaging, we’ve leveled up our strategy to include Bloom-branded boxes, marketing inserts, and the ability for customers to add personalised gift notes to their orders. The level of customisation that ShipBob supports helps us reinforce our image as a premium-quality product, and lets us curate a branded experience at scale for customers as soon as their package arrives on their doorstep.”

Neil Blewitt, SVP of Operations at Bloom Nutrition  

Get more shares on social media

Custom packaging can be a great way to spread the word about your products on social media. Instagram is filled with creative packaging photos. If your packaging looks great, customers will be more excited to take photos and share them on social media.

Plus, custom packaging gives you the opportunity to encourage user-generated content. Create hashtags for your brand and have them printed on your boxes, then track those hashtags and share pictures of excited customers posing with your beautiful packaging.

“We’ve been able to use ShipBob’s Customisation Suite to create a great initial impression. ShipBob has helped us along the way as we’ve added customised packaging and kitting for our orders. We sent ShipBob a lot of videos about how we want things to look and they’ve done a great job executing our vision. Customers have been tagging us in their unboxing photos on Instagram which has been great. We’re just getting started and we’re excited to see all of the ways ShipBob can help us improve our unboxing experience.”

Callie Tivnan, E-commerce Manager, and Christina Williams, Customer Success Manager at Barefaced   

Build an eco-friendly product package

With the growing focus on environmental issues, many consumers are trying to make more eco-conscious buying choices. In fact, 92% of consumers consider sustainability to be an important factor in choosing brands.

This means supporting businesses with strong sustainability claims and following up with action, such as in the form of eco-friendly packaging. Think: recycled or recyclable materials, compostable materials, minimalist packaging, etc.

You can build an eco-friendly product packaging strategy that aligns with your brand’s values by opting for only recyclable and biodegradable packaging options that you can customise as well.

What’s often included in custom packaging?

As mentioned earlier, the most popular ecommerce packaging types are mailers and shippers. These are available as plain boxes — sometimes called white-label — as well as custom printed boxes. Here’s how you can customise your packaging inside and out.

Exterior printed packaging

A popular and economical trend in the packaging business is digital printing. It’s fast, high-quality, usually hassle-free,  and applicable to orders of anywhere from 10 boxes to 500.

This is Arka’s bread and butter. You can take your packaging to the next level with just some simple designs, quickly printed within two to three weeks.

Filler and promo materials

Filler, tissue paper, insert cards, and inserts are a great way to surprise and delight your customers. It makes receiving a box order from your brand feel like receiving a gift.

You can use printed inserts as a promotional opportunity as well — include discount codes, thank you notes, special offers, and more.

Additionally, offering branded, personal gift notes to your shoppers will make the unboxing experience even more memorable (you can even let your customers add a custom gift note at checkout if they are sending a present to someone special).

Depending on the product, custom packaging is sometimes necessary to protect items during the shipping phase. Your custom packaging may include custom inserts to hold your products in place and keep them safe from damage during transit.

How much does custom packaging typically cost?

While custom packaging can be a great investment for small businesses, it can also be unnecessarily expensive if you’re trying to cut costs. 

Prices can range from $0.10 – $10.00 per box, depending on factors like the material, size, design, ink coverage, and add-ons. The good news is that the per-box price tends to go down as quantity goes up – so if you order custom packaging elements in bulk, you could end up saving some money.

If you’re not ready yet for custom packaging, unbranded boxes and mailers still have potential. You can add inexpensive touches like custom tissue paper inserts or even stickers and tapes for a little extra attention to detail.

How to create your own custom packaging: 3 steps

It is easy to get caught up in the aesthetics of custom packaging, but it’s important to look beyond what’s visually appealing and think about your audience, the size and shape of your product, and other factors.

Here are three essential steps to create custom packaging for your small business.

Step 1: Figure out who your customers are

Do you customers prefer luxury packaging or quirky homemade details?

Companies like Man Crates literally ship products in a crate that needs a crowbar to open. Focusing on your customers will help you pick colour schemes and imagery that best market to your audience, and pick the packaging format that best suits your clientele. 

Step 2: Understand your product and its size/shape

There are some funkily shaped products out there, but you want to make sure they’re packaged nice and snugly.

Figuring out the right combination of size, shape, and security of boxes can take some trial and error, but don’t be afraid to choose creative packaging options if you want a custom size or a unique box style.

Of course, nontraditional packaging may not always be safe for your products, especially if they’re fragile, so be sure to balance form and function.

Step 3: Understand your product’s fragility

The type of packaging you choose can make or (literally) break your product’s integrity.  Shipping fragile items can lead to damage when it arrives at your customers’ doorstep, so you’ll want to keep your products snug – perhaps with some additional cushioning such as airfill and other dunnage.

The two most popular types of packaging are shippers and mailers. Mailer boxes are ideal for keeping skincare, jewelry, and other smaller items safe. Bigger items such as appliances and kitchenware should be neatly wrapped in larger shipping boxes.

When it comes to additional padding, crinkle paper, airfill, or bubble wrap can be economical options. If you have the budget, custom-fitted inserts are a great way to keep your products in place and safe.

The last thing your customer needs is to receive a pair of earrings in a large shipper box, layered in a million sheets of bubble wrap.

That’s a waste of material and can increase shipping and logistics costs, so make sure you’re using the right packaging for each product.

“There are less exciting but very practical parts of customisation that ShipBob also helps with. As a home fragrance brand, many of our products are made of glass and the vessels are breakable and heavy. That makes shipping and logistics a bit more complicated than throwing a product in a polybag and sending it out. Through ShipBob’s technology, we’re able to customise how we want them to pack and ship our candles versus our incense versus an order that has both. Setting up these parameters lets them automate packaging selection and helps us consistently deliver candles that are undamaged according to our standards.”

Lizzie Vance, Sales Director at P.F. Candle Co.

Custom packaging with ShipBob and Arka

In an increasingly competitive ecommerce landscape, unforgettable packaging can be the extra detail that gives your business an advantage – so you’ll want to partner with a fulfilment provider that can support your custom packaging needs. 

ShipBob’s Customisation Suite offers brands a ton of ways to personalise their parcels, and has the capabilities to support:

• Branded boxes and polymailers
• Kitting services like constructing a branded box, placing multiple SKUs in a kit, and adding stickers, labels, and barcodes to items
• Standard and fully-customisable marketing inserts, printed on-demand
• Premium gift notes for customers to add to their orders
• A proprietary Rules Engine that automates the selection and addition of custom packaging elements

“We really focus on the unboxing and post-purchase experience, so ShipBob’s robust customisation capabilities make it so easy for us to add special touches like marketing inserts to an order. We were just recently running a bunch of different inserts and were able to handle the majority of that on our end via ShipBob’s tagging rules. All I have to do is go into ShipBob’s Rules Engine, and create a rule that says, “If an order has this tag, add an insert.” I’ve never seen that before where our fulfilment partner can operate similar to how we run marketing email campaigns with tags and rules.

We also use ShipBob’s Rule Engine to implement custom packaging elements, like custom dividers and bubble wrap. I’ll create a rule on my end where every time a certain candle comes on an order, ShipBob knows to put the ordered items in a specific bag. It’s all quick and easy, and we can always change rules on the fly as our business changes.”

Rachel Tannenholz, President, and Melissa Mosheim, Director of Logistics at Aroma360 

To ensure merchants get a wealth of custom packaging options, ShipBob also partners with Arka—a one-stop shop for ecommerce packaging at highly competitive prices. Merchants can use an advanced design tool to mock up product packaging in minutes.

Arka’s team of experts and designers will assist you through the entire design proof and production process. Plus, the company accepts minimum order quantities as small as 10 boxes.

Whether you need 10 boxes or 5,000, Arka is ready to help. Contact the team today for competitive custom packaging deals for your ecommerce business.

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Small business custom packaging FAQs

Below are answers to the most common questions about small business custom packaging.