Packaging Insights for Subscription Businesses

As a subscription business owner, you’ve likely spent a fair amount of time thinking about packaging.

Exterior and interior packaging design elements can create a fun unboxing experience for your customers, and there are a lot of design variables (and options) to consider.

And while company branding often stays the same, packaging often evolves at a much faster pace.

So what do you need to know about packaging to stay head of the trends? We teamed up with Recharge payments to go over the ins and outs around e-commerce packaging and how it can help your business.

TruBrain: Success with Packaging

Brain food company TruBrain has experimented with packaging with interesting results this past year. With a growing customer base, they needed to finalize a design so they could invest in tooling — which is a cheaper and more scalable option for their business.

And that’s what they did. By partnering with Arka, they tested a few different options and ultimately found a new packaging solution that suits their products and helps keep order fulfillment cost-effective and scalable.

By finding cost-effective custom folding cartons that was faster to produce digitally at larger quantities, they’ve been able to make strides within the business and earn better margins on sales.

Packaging Basics

Let’s take a look at the basics. When it comes to packaging for your subscription business, there are a few different options to consider based on your needs. Here’s what a company like Arka offers:

Stock Boxes

These are standard brown cardboard boxes that are unbranded, low cost, and come in many sizes. They’re easy to acquire and can be branded/personalized with stickers, custom tape, or stamps.

Digitally Printed Boxes

These are specialized, die-cut boxes that are printed on a giant inkjet printer. They can be printed quickly and are ideal for ecommerce companies testing out new packaging.

Flexographic Printed Boxes

Often the first step in mass production of customized boxes, these boxes are shaped into your desired style. They offer crisp and consistent quality and are ideal for non-changing artwork/size, fast reorders, and outside or inside the box branding.

Lithographic Printed Boxes

These are printed as labels then glued onto a finished piece of cardboard, which is ideal for short-run packaging needs.

Digital and flexographic boxes are the most commonly used by subscription merchants. However, each of these options comes at different pricing tiers, ranging from minimal cost to more expensive. If you are a budding startup, we’d recommend you use digitally design packaging whereas if you are rolling in the revenue, you can afford flexography! As with most things, the more advanced and specialized your packaging, the more expensive it becomes.

Think packaging is an afterthought? Think again - it matters.

With affordable, well-branded packaging, you can create a special experience for your customers that evolves (and improves) as your business grows. You can also check Arka's eco-friendly custom shipper boxes and mailer boxes.