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I shop online a lot. It's easy, I can do it in my pajamas, and it's fun to come home to a pile of boxes on my welcome mat.
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I'm also a big fan of nice packaging. I know some people would rather see the money and energy go elsewhere, but quality packaging really does elevate the customer experience.
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The problem is, packaging can get expensive. At MailChimp, we use inexpensive custom printed Tyvek mailers and ULINE boxes. But here's the thing: MailChimp ships giveaways—t-shirts, hats, vinyl Freddies and the like that our customers are getting for free. People choose to spend their money on Freddie and Co. items. From the start, we've strived to make sure that shopping at Freddie and Co. was a nice experience from start to finish.
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For our Baron Fig collection, we used Commonwealth Packaging Company. Commonwealth creates custom products for retailers like me who care about packaging and want unboxing to be a satisfying part of the entire brand experience. They have tons of options for printing on everything from tissue and gift wrap to tape and gift card envelopes. We worked with their team to combine a few of these elements and build a complete packaging solution for our books.
One of the many things that excited me about using Commonwealth was the ability to print all over. David made this cool repeating logo pattern to use for the inside of our boxes which turned out really fun. We even made a custom printed sleeve for the packing slip on their suggestion, and got some annoyingly amazing krinkle paper to stuff the boxes:
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When we initially reached out to Commonwealth for a quote, they actually offered to sponsor us for our next few collections.
I've gotten some flak from readers who say Freddie and Co. isn't an "authentic business experience." Initially, I didn't want to accept a packaging sponsorship for fear that people might make that argument. But when I thought about it further, I realized that if this was actually my business and I could get beautiful packaging for free just by including the company's logo on the inside, would I say no?
(I'm pretty sure I'd say yes.)
Businesses with decent followings receive offers like this fairly regularly, so we thought it be fun to test it out a sponsorship and see how it works!
So we asked for some samples to make sure the boxes met our standards, and when they did, we accepted. Obviously, if we didn't like the boxes and think they were great, we wouldn't have.
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Before we partnered with Commonwealth we were using Lumi to print our packaging. We made kraft mailers and tissue for the socks:
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And a bubble mailer and cotton drawstring bag for the pins:
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If you'd like to see one of our Commonwealth boxes in person, buy some notebooks!
Speaking of our notebooks, next week I'be writing all about Baron Fig and sharing some of their stories!
Talk to you then.
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