No Two Boxes Are Alike

Knowledge can really help you in business.  Knowing what is what and how things work are key to staying ahead of the competition. In 2021 I have been busy learning how to improve our own business and some of that came with the idea of using different boxes.  That seems like a pretty simple thing and if you had asked me last year I would say a box is a box and that they are all pretty much the same.  But with the search to be competitive in this day's shipping market and with the fact that our company ships heavy items.  This leads me down a path to discovery on how to save money.

We now had to ship heavy items instead of putting them in a car at the store.  Most people would call our company a brick and mortar business and that has been what we were for years.  But with the foot traffic simply not legally allowed we moved to an online company.  We had done shipping in the past, but due to the weight we usually just found a super heavy box that we had been shipped and shipped our items out.  But this year all items are being shipped out and we are having to spend extra money to make that happen.  We all know super heavy boxes cost a lot of money.

So, the packages needed to do it correctly without any thoughts of damage or tearing happening.  So that was my first task was to find boxes we could use to ship our products out in.  I am a big fan of local and amazingly the laws allowed giant companies who are filled with people to stay open.  Ironic, but I looked locally and got prices for boxes and tape.  Shipping supplies at this location were pretty expensive and I was not even sure if they would work.  

Now I looked on Amazon and was not too thrilled about what I found.  It took me a while to find a company that would give good shipping and the price seemed to be about 20% less on Amazon.  This seemed the way we were going to have to go, but I was still not sure if these items would work for our heavy products.  It was a risk and I wasn't ready to spend thousands of dollars on a company I couldn't contact or call.  The customer service was flat-out trash. 

The best answer came when I found a shipping supplies company that specialized in this sort of thing.  This company told me all about the industry and gave me the low down on how boxes are made and the different ones for different tasks.  There are heavy-duty boxes that are actually corrugated boxes and they can handle the weight of our products without fear of having issues.  But the tape I was using would not hold the weight so I learned what stuff was correct. 

We all have fears and I was afraid the price would be insane because this was more specialized, but with bulk pricing, I was able to get the correct items for us at a 10% discount from amazon pricing.  But that was just the right answer and I was super happy with the outcome and service that was provided.