Effective Packaging

/ 12 Votes

The basic principle about any fulfillment operation is that time is money. I know it sounds cliché and silly but it's true, your time is more valuable than you may think. The time you waste while shipping your orders is time that you could have spent finding and seeking more inventories and spending time with customers. However, you don't have to sacrifice the quality of your shipping product in order to accomplish that, and in fact you can save time and make your package even stronger, more durable and retain the piece of mind that it will get to your customer in the same condition it was sent in.

There are so many types of ways to ship your books; you can bubble wrap them and put them in legal envelopes, put them in bubble mailers, shrink them into a box as Amazon and some independent sellers do or use cardboard book folds. Each one of these methods are feasible and cheap ways to ship a product, some more than others, but they all work. The problem with each is simple, durability. Some may say the only good way to pack a media products and know it is going to last is by using boxes and let me tell you how WRONG that is. In my time as a bookseller, I've tested each method with all types of items, big and small, and the only truly time, cost and durability effective method I have found is the poly bag system. I know it sounds scary but take breather here and continue reading.

Poly bags for people who are unaware of them are plastic bags, with different mil grades. Mil grades are if you think of a zip lock bag vs. a trash bag. Poly bags in the book business are cheap and durable and the key word here, they are waterproof. Poly bags come in a variety of sizes, and they even come in continuous rolls so you can set your own width and lengths. They are also preferred by the US Postal service if you are shipping books because if they happen to inspect your package, they can simply just see what's inside it. Without trying to feed you any more verbal sales lines here I'm going to show you some pictures and describe what we do and then explain as I go along.

After I've pulled a book from a shelf and cleaned it if need be, I grab the corresponding packing slip and bring it over to my shipping station. You will see here that I'm using a material called B Flute to wrap my books before they go in their respective poly bags. This is a cardboard material, very strong, very long lasting for any journey across the states or internationally. I first wrap it to where I want it as you see, and then cut it with a box cutter, it doesn't have to be perfect, and once you get going you just do it without even looking that much, it is all on feel. Then I tape the excess flap over.

The next step is to secure it. You can either fold the ends in gift style, or use two single pieces of packing tape to "pinch" in the ends so it can't move anywhere. This allows USPS to view it if it gets inspected and see the binding without even as much as opening it up. Remember, the easier you make it for USPS, the faster it will get there and the less of a chance you will get an angry customer because it got held up in inspections.

After that, you want to find the correct size to bag it. Usually 9x12's are the best and most used, and if you aren't into bagging and want to use rolls, a 9" wide roll again will be the most used for most typical booksellers. (IE: hardcover fiction) To keep things tight I always go as small as I can. You don't want it flopping around in the bag because the excess has the chance of getting caught in USPS's automated machines. It probably won't and since I'm using 4 mil poly bags, even if it did it wouldn't do much, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Once that is done, I fold my packing slip in half, stick it in there and use my hot sealer to create a nice clean tear away seal.

Now some of you may be saying to yourselves right now, "whoa there buddy, my customer's information would be visible to everyone?" I do this so I can identify packages, and trust me working book seller's hours it helps to keep identification of goods! When I get to the next process of labeling it, it will cover all of the sensitive information from the outside, but still give the customer the full packing slip for their records from the inside.

The next process is to label the packages. Now, most people use inkjet or laser printers and print them on sheets of precut labels. I've been there, I did the flipping every time you print one to get the other, and it's a waste of time. So I went ahead and bought a thermal printer. Thermal printers are very cheap if you buy them on eBay. I spent $40 on mine, everything included in perfect condition. The advantages to a thermal printer are simple, they don't use ink. Yes, let me repeat myself, they do not use INK at all. They embed and burn the image of the postage label with a thermal laser head. And unlike toners on laser printers, it can simply be cleaned with alcohol and never has to be replaced. Mine is a Zebra Eltron 2442. Here is a link you can bookmark and check out later on eBay to check out thermal printers. Thermal Printers

Once I weigh the package and meter it with Endicia I print the label from my printer and it prints in seconds. I stick it on, covering the sensitive information and it is done. Then it goes to its respective bin based on class and it goes out with next day or same day's pickup. It is now as durable as putting it in a box because it has that cardboard strength, waterproof because it's sealed, private because it hides the nature of the book, visible which ensures little or no delays with inspections, and best of all it was all done for under a quarter and fulfilled in less than a minute. You can't even pull off that kind of quality and efficiency with boxes or bubble mailers.

The Roundup

Time is money, we all know that, but your customers will appreciate that you took the time to properly package their product that they paid for, and in return you will likely get great applause for it as we have. You can use my methods or adapt them into your own as you see economical. We get our bflute, poly bags and other shipping supplies from a company called Pac-N-Seal, a VA mom & pop based business run by two very well established shipping supply dealers, Steve & Mary. To check out bflute further and the poly bag system click the little image below and it will take you to their online store where you can purchase everything found, seen and talked about in this article.

Pac-N-Seal doesn't sell "Endicia" but they do strongly endorse it, so I will point you there as well. Endicia is the best and most efficient online postage provider, but I will save that explanation for another article. Click the Endicia Logo to go to their website.