Friday, September 10, 2021

Weather the Disruptive Pandemic

The coronavirus first broke out around December 2019 when few people would expect this flu-like disease to be so much of a concern. But it turned out to be the great disruption to the global health systems and economy. Most of the major economies are still struggling amidst the pandemic. What's even worse, it seems that no one knows it will end...But life and business will continue anyway...

After the early lock-down period one and a half years ago, Innove Packaging had been gradually returning to its normal production (if not over burdened in this summer☺) 

Custom Cardboard Gift Boxes & Tubes


Cardboard Gift Boxes in Production


Boxes Ready for Shipping


Loaded on Trucks

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Ocean Shipping Freight Rates Soared by 10 Times 2021 But It's Still Hard to Get an Empty Container

International sea shipping freight rates have skyrocketed by 10 times in 2021 while exporters still have problems to book an empty container. The shortage of shipping containers is yet another symptom of the havoc the coronavirus pandemic has wrought on international supply chains. The current situation is: exporters may not be short of orders but the cost has risen sharply. That means they are suffering from profit margin squeeze.
Ocean Shipping Freight Rates Hikes in 2021

Ocean Shipping Freight Rates Rose Sharply in 2021

CCTV (China Central Television) recently approached Taizhou Threeway Vehicle Catalytic Converter Co., Ltd. and covered the international shipping issues. Although export orders for auto parts are booming and factories are busy with production, companies are still mixed, pwith problems such as rising prices of raw materials and persistently high shipping charges. Threeway currently has sufficient orders. However, due to the rising prices of precious metals such as palladium and rhodium, steel and other raw materials and the rising ocean shipping freight rates, the cost has risen by at least 20%. 

Friday, April 3, 2020

How to Make a Paper Box Step by Step

In the heat of the Coronavirus epidemic outbreak in China, one factory guy shared making a square paper box by hand to kill time. It can be used to hold some desk trashes like nutshells, or other little things. Listed hereinafter are the steps:

How to make a paper box by hand:

1. Get a square paper, preferably repurposed from used items. What’s used here for demonstration is a piece of T=0.18mm brown kraft paper(22*22cm) , retrieved from a used paper handbag.
How to make a paper box
The thicker the paper is, the more rigid the box will be. But thicker paper make it more difficult to fold. You can find a trade-off here.

2. Fold the paper in half twice, to form two perpendicular creases as shown in the photo.
Folding paper

3. Fold the four corners inward along the creases and make them meet at the center of the paper.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Spectrum of Packaging from Simple to Excessive

— Implications in modern packaging of a Chinese allusion “Keep the fancy case but give back the valuable pearl…”

There’s a household idiom in Chinese which goes as follows:
About 2,300 years ago, a jewelry dealer from Chu state (of the ancient China) traded pearls in Zheng state. One day, he had a very precious pearl.
In order to sell it at a premium price, he decided to make a fancy box for it. He had a top carpenter make an exquisite box with rare wood, then employ a top craftsman to carve delicate patterns top and elaborately decorate it with superior perfume and gem stones. The dealer then put the pearl in and was confident of the packaging.

A person from Zheng State was deeply enamored by the pretty case and bought it for a high price after some bargaining.
But the story didn’t end here as usual!
To his surprise, the buyer soon returned with the case and pearl. The dealer was literally a little frustrated and expected he would think again. But to his astonishment, the buyer took the pearl out, gave it back to the dealer and left with the glittering box only!
This Chinese idiom is used to satirize people who are bewitched by the gorgeous appearance and give up the precious essence, and also used more broadly to mean lacking judgement and making false choices.

In reality, few would go to extremes like the character in the story, perhaps. But when it comes to packaging, it does render us a bit of deja vu, especially with some health products in China. Some products are not as valuable as its packaging and that’s not exaggerating.

However, the importance of packaging should by no means be down played, either to sellers or buyers. Aside from protecting the products inside, a good packaging go a long way in terms of communicating product and brand values between the two parties.

Then, at the spectrum of packaging from simple to excessive, where’s the right point? Maybe there are a thousand hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes.
1. As a buyer/consumer, to what extent will you buy in a fancy packaging?
2. If you’re a marketer, how will you balance between luxury and simplicity of packaging?

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Deliver the Bumpiest Mini Drawer Gift Boxes Project

Simple does not mean easy! Recently we’ve worked on a project where entails a two-part drawer gift box as an accessory to the larger complex box. This tiny box involves no odd shapes, nor complex structure or design! Just so normal except for its delicate size. But just as being so small in size, it had once been quite challenging – unlike round mini tubes(eg. lip balm tubes) which can run on machines. Here’s the story on how we struggled (if not got stuck) in such a ‘simple’ box, and finally were determined to deliver, but at the expense of profits!


This tiny drawer gift box, as shown above, would probably be figured as something not worth the candle by most suppliers, which could be told from the dimensions (as in the following dieline).
dieline

Failed Outsourcing Attempts
Frankly, the reason that we’d accept such an order in the busy season is partly because it’s an accessory, and partly because we thought we could outsource this part. Some peer vendors may specialize in such hand-made boxes.
The first few we contacted all declined flatly at the sight of the drawing. Then we tried to contact some factories who keep good relationship with us and asked for their favor. All of them agreed to try but gave up within one or two days. We were somewhat prepared for such reaction. With its delicate size, it can’t fit on the automatic box folding machines. And as it measures hardly the width of an index finger, it’s tricky for manual handling. Thus even the workers are not willing to work on this project because the slow progress affected their piece wages.
The time lapsed fast – two weeks had passed, and we had approached no less than 10 peer cardboard gift boxes factories. The main/larger gift box sets were already done and the agreed delivery time is almost due. However, the little box project was literally going nowhere!