What are the difficulties with personalized, small-lot custom packaging demand?

   In the historic context of new retail era, brand developers and third-party platforms have spared no effort in situational demand satisfaction, bringing new markets and new business opportunities for personalized packaging.

   After the rise of printing e-commerce, new concepts such as personalized customization, small-volume customization, and large-scale personalized customization have gradually emerged. In recent years, the trend of small batches, individualization and customization in the domestic consumer market has intensified, from Weiquan’s Word Game Bottles campaign(“拼字瓶”) to the Colgate's Dare to Love series, and even to Oreo’s custom packaging for Tmall platform.

    Behind the personalized economy, people's new lifestyles and new social concepts are gradually taking shape. Throughout all the consumer trends and desires, many forms of personalization services already come to being, personalized education, personalized travel services, personalized wedding services, personalized gift customization, personalized clothing customization, personalized luxury ordering... Printing-related personalized applications are endless, and they are constantly evolving with rapid growth. Human society has now entered a personalized era. With the Internet technology, consumption upgrades and social development, this trend of personalized development will become more apparent.

    Back to the personalization process of the printing industry, it is not easy to get started. And even today, there is no mature profit model existing. The early players are mostly in the industry. They have been struggling in the dilemma of where the traffic comes from and how the customer cost is reduced. It doesn't seem to be as smooth as I imagined.

    Where is the aporia for personalization?

   The problem of personalized customization is not a new topic, and it’s a problem that the industry has always been working on: high service costs and high manufacturing costs. The most tricky part lie with personalized customization is the contradiction between critical requirements and small order quantity, low efficiency in winning orders; too low output results in high factory cost of service and manufacturing and thus low profit, which makes the factory unwilling to take orders.

    There are two fundamental reasons for the difficulty of personalization. One is that the order is inefficient and the output is low compared to the big order. The second is that the factory assembly line are designed for mass order production, which is not suitable for small orders.

    Therefore, personalized customization must use a production mode suitable for small orders, do not shoot mosquitoes with a cannon, in order to get out of the misunderstanding of personalized customization.

    The essence of the problem of custom box designs is profit. If the profit brought by personalization is far higher than the cost of fulfilling the order, this will become a profitable thing, the problems with personalization will no more exist.

    All in all, personalized packaging is a tempting business, on the one hand, it is really profitable, and the imagination is huge. On the other hand, we have also seen some of many printing and packaging companies peers who have tried get the fruit failed in practice.

Why choose cardboard boxes with foam inserts?

In many cases, cardboard boxes alone are not enough for packaging gifts or products. Some kind of inserts are then required, plastic blisters, cardboard trays, foam inserts, sponge and so on. 

Foam inserts, as one of the mostly used, enjoy some advantages: 
(1) Elasticity is an important characteristic of foam, which protects the product from shock and help survive rough handling in transit. 
(2) Foam elasticity also enable it to better secure the product in place compared to other support material.
(3) Integral foam inserts of the same thickness with the product can be used, instead of piecing together.(However, if the ordering quantity is not too big, the foam inserts will usually be pieced together to save cost.) With computer process control, foam inserts are precisely cut to fit closely to the unique shape of the product, aperture size, varied depths, etc. Thus slots can be as small as 1.5 mm in width, and depth ranges from 0.5 mm, to 120 mm. Such precisely custom shaped foam inserts, with neat and smooth cuts, are perfectly integrated with the outer cardboard box and inner product. 

Of course, coin has two sides, and foam inserts are not without blame. They are a little costly and not so green. 

With all the things said, cardboard gift boxes with foam inserts are a premium choice for luxury packaging solutions, especially when it comes to bottle or other care-needed products.

Why are cardboard gift boxes the most suitable packaging for camellia oil?

With the growing awareness of healthy diet, green products have gradually caught consumers’ eyeballs. Camellia oil is a type of cooking oil drawn from seeds of camellia. Its production process can be divided into: shelling, drying, crushing, steaming, oil extraction and filtration. Every step is a physical method. It is a true pure natural green edible oil.

Camellia oil is a totally new oil category and is mainly produced in mountainous rural areas. It has always been regarded as a royal tribute from the mountains. It is known as the "oil king" and is superior to olive oil in nutritional value.

Camellia oil allegedly has effects of anti-aging, hair conditioning, emollient and Anti-microbial, etc. Camellia oil also has the nickname of "longevity oil" and is especially suitable for middle- and old-aged people.

Despite all the benefits of camellia oil, not many people know about it. How could that be?

A good product entails a good packaging, not necessarily expensive, but the packaging represents the immediate image of the product inside and the brand behind. Therefore, not only should the packaging appeal to the consumer visually, but also help convey the merits of the product and the brand. Camellia oil, as a new thing to the general public, requires a proper and selling packaging.

Cardboard gift boxes packaging, compared with other materials, has distinguished advantages. To name a few, cardboard gift boxes are more convenient, affordable, and environmentally friendly than wooden or plastic boxes.

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Find more food retail packaging from Innove Packaging: food gift boxes packaging with handles, window food boxes, 16-inch large cardboard gift snack boxes with lids, foil lined cardboard tube food packaging containers, food safe natural kraft box and 3" retail food packaging containers,etc.

How to Select Cardboard Gift Boxes Supplier?

How can you select your cardboard gift boxes supplier? We, at Innove Packaging, believe that an important dimension is the quality of their products (cardboard gift boxes) . We can determine the gift boxes’ quality from these aspects:

1. Smoothness.

The surface smoothness for general-purpose gift boxes must be kept within +/- 1mm. This is the minimum requirements to make sure they look good. And this also, to some degree, represents a gift boxes factory’s level of workmanship and quality control.

2. Color.

 Color can make or break the custom printed gift packaging. If you see gift boxes with distinct color discrepancy, and you can just cross the maker off your vendor list. A purpose of gift boxes packaging is to add a touch of aesthetic and luxury. If a factory fail to realize the desired color effect, chances are it’s a poorly organized company!

3. Brightness and viewing angle.  

The brightness and viewing angle of the appearance of the paper can also be checked. From every direction, the cardboard gift boxes should be bright and gives a high-end look.

4. Safety.

Safety is also critical for cardboard gift boxes, especially when it comes to the packaging of food and tea boxes etc.

For all the emphasis on quality, there are many other factors that can be taken into account, such as pre-sales & after sales support, designs,response time and supply ability, etc.

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High Stakes in Food Packaging Requires Right Ink for Printing

When ink is applied to food packaging as a printing material, it must be non-transferable. Prints in food packaging should not use conventional inks. The printing company must ensure that all the solvents in the ink are completely volatilized after printing. The ink needs thorough curing and meet the corresponding industry standards.

::Phasing out of Hazardous Benzene-solvent Inks::
In current printing for plastic food packaging, benzene-soluble chlorinated polypropylene inks are the most widely used, both the manufacture and use of which are in good practice. Such inks are mainly used in the printing of BOPP (biaxially oriented polypropylene) materials, and through gravure. Despite the benefits of good printing suitability & post-press processing performance and fast drying, they also have as big disadvantages. Firstly, the solvent residual in prints from such inks is high and toluene is toxic. Secondly, as the thermal stability of the chlorinated polypropylene is poor, the solvents tend to release chlorine to form hydrogen chloride during the production and storage, which makes the ink more acidic, causing severe corrosion to the printing plate roller. Also, the benzene-soluble ink can destroy the ozone layer and cause harm to workers' health and safety during use. And the residue remaining in the packaged product will cause a certain degree of contamination of the food in the package. This type of inks are phasing out, and regulations for prohibiting or controlling the use of this ink have already been developed in Europe and some other countries.
Because of the problems of benzene-soluble inks, environmentally friendly inks came into being. The use of environmentally-friendly inks does not pollute the environment, nor cause physical harm to the operator, nor incur contamination to the contents.