Homebased Craft Business

Packaging your products is like sharing a bit of your business with every purchaser. In the real world professional and creative packaging will help your business more than you can imagine.

This does not mean you have to look corporate or have expensive commercial style packaging.  Not at all.  But creating every piece of your promotional material to co-ordinate and send a specific message about you and your business is of utmost importance.

Packaging your products with style and yet adding tiny subtleties to advertise your business is really important for your marketing scheme. 

How do you create a unique packaging idea? 

Let's talk about how you tag your art.  If you are using commercial stick on price tags that look like something used for a yard sale… well this could be the reason you're getting yard sale prices for your work.

How about some creative ideas that will be unique just for your product line? You could design one of a kind tags for each product.  This could be tedious and a real time waster.  Cute, but unnecessary.  

How about heading out to your local office supply store and picking up a box of vanilla colored tie on shipping tags.  The come with a nice clean string to use, but you could replace that with a ribbon, torn strips of cloth or raffia.  These tags could be customized by you with a simple stamp and a handwritten description of the product. 

Or… I just heard about a crafter who makes recycled art. Her tags are cut from cereal boxes.  Cute!

I used a tag that I printed on my home computer.  It was styled after my business cards. The tag was exactly the same size as a business card, but the design of the tag was a bit different.  

    You could use your business cards as tags, but I go into the reason why not below. 

Here are some samples of business cards that could be used as price tags. 

Each one has my website, phone number and email addy so that a customer could save the tag for future purchases.

The two tags I designed below are a much better solution.  You can have them printed or print them yourself using the same artwork as your business cards.  The big difference is…. the tag has a small area at the bottom for the price. Your customer can then cut the price off when giving the item as a gift and your information is still attached.  

Use a hole punch and use your creative juices to add a string or ribbon of some sort.  

I print mine on gloss photo paper, this gives the card a gift tag quality. By printing these cards myself, I can design many styles and run them off as needed. I usually print up about  500 cards - which is 50 sheets of paper. 

Then I run them down to Kinkos or other printer shops and pay to have them cut.  It's about $15 to have them cut.  

I found this paper at Sams Club for $19.50 150ct
and
online at DealSurprise.com priced at $24.95  150ct

This may seem like an extravagant price with paper, ink and cutting. But I find that having the ability to print of 50 or 100 of each style I want and then having all the styles cut a once… this gives me a ton of different styles of tags to use.

This is a great site to order all sorts of custom goodies that all match.  

VistaPrint.com 

Are you using plain white plastic bags for your customer purchases?

Or… heaven forbid - grocery bags? 

Have you ever purchased something at a great little boutique and marveled at the package you left with.  Obviously, you love the product or your wouldn't have thrown down your hard earned pennies. But… the extras that they pile on is often amazing. Wrapping each item in tissue - bound with a cute seal with their logo - and everything put into a gift bag with more tissue and ribbons.  

Really, do you get free gift wrap anywhere in the mall anymore? 

Then… when the gift receiver sees the bag… they know they are going to receive something very cool from their favorite gift shop, just by seeing the bag. It's like adding to the specialness of the event and the anticipation.  This is an easy marketing tool to add to your war chest.

Several years ago… I had a consignment gift shop. We sold country gifts when country was still cool. 

• The walls were covered with cranberry and beige gingham fabric.
• Every window had a grapevine wreath with a cranberry gingham bow. 
• The business cards were bordered with cranberry gingham.

Do you see where I am going with a theme? 

The packaging that we used was very simple.  We used brown gift bags (like paper grocery bag paper) with handles. These came in two sizes. We also used the lunch bag size for small items.

Each item was wrapped in cranberry/beige gingham checked tissue.  The bag was lined with the same tissue. The handles were tied with raffia and a business card was attached. This card was designed to be folded and used as a gift tag.  

During our free time, we would sit and stamp the bags with a logo. We had the stamp designed locally and it was very inexpensive. So, even if the purchase was not for a gift, the purchaser would inevitably save the wrapping and use it for a gift some other time.  Now the item they gave didn't actually come from our store, but the bag still had a small bit of our stores information right on the bag.  Still more free advertising. 

Resources for the products I used:

Brown Paper Gift Bags 

="http://www.papermart.com/templates/showimage.asp?PAGE=43030&IMG=../itemimg/jpg_tissue/cys_print_gingham_red.jpg" target="_blank" title="Gingham Tissue">Gingham Tissue 

Raffia 

Whoooh… I know what you are thinking. I can't afford to spend money on free gift wrapping.  For every purchase?

Well, my friend, you can't afford not to.  Break down the cost by piece and add that as a direct cost of supplies to each of your products.  Now, the customer is actually paying for the "free" gift wrap.  Cool huh?  

Now… you need to start searching at some great suppliers on line. Their are many to choose from, so shop around.

I found metallic bags and tissue, hip young graphics on tissue and some very interesting ideas to use for ribbon.  Spend an afternoon shopping for your "look". Then get thyself to Wallie World and pick up a bin to hold your packaging supplies. Every craft show event will be even more fun now, because you are offering your customers an extra bit of love!   You will be a hit.

P.S.  Remember to check out the BlogHer discussion on CraftSanity.com .

The session was called " The Art of Crafts" and I found it fascinating. I want to go next year.  They covered topics such as:

• Pricing Your Products
• Copyright infringement - when someone steals your ideas.
• Going to the next level - Can you design products for big name manufactures?
• And the big question…. Are you a crafter and an Artist?

• I give my personal views in this episode.

If you have any interesting ideas about tagging and packaging… leave a comment.  I love to hear from you!

 

 [pcc] Show #2 - Packaging Your Craft Business [22:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download