A proof that knowledge is always worth more than images
How to find a new piece of packaging to inspire our clients or consumer? Instagram, tracking our likes and engagement if offering bright post on its own bringing filling our feed with concepts or examples other people like. Hit Google for “best packaging design” or “buy 100ml cosmetic bottles” – and here we go with dozens of websites and offers, while Pinterst feels like a buffet table for brand and marketing managers’ imagination. Simple as that – click the one you like, wait for and offer, approve samples and calmly expect the delivery. So easy. Or, maybe, too easy?
Technology has instilled within us an allusion, that everyone can do like a pro at almost anything in no time and effort. Neural networks in smartphones allow to make photos that sometimes look even betters than those shot with pro cameras. Facebook feeds made half community feel like political scientists, psychologists and home-made therapists. Webinars promise to makes us crypto-investors in 10 hours and so on.
Every product is available on-line – description and specification below image, just click a buy. Does anyone stand a chance not to become a pro purchaser? Still, even ordering a pair of sneakers one takes certain risks. What if they won’t fir? What if this pair is good for gym but drives feet sore in an hour of walking around the town? So, instead of saving time, we’re at risk of a huge waste returning the product and asking for a replacement. And that’s just silly sneakers. What’s in case when the scale goes industrial? When seeking for packaging for 100 000 lotions with a rigid deadline and the whole project worth 3 000 000? From distance the risk might not seem the threatening. Like, really – that’s just jars and bottles – but in realities of cosmetic manufacturing a single mistake may cost a half-year salary of twenty employees. Not mentioning the cost of raw materials and advertising budgets wasted.
Is a pretty image, then, worth a risk, when there are experienced vendors and distributors you reach out to? Especially when you’ve already made a deal with one of them and he then keeps a stock for new orders to be delivered on demand in any quantity? Sure, the distributor will get his commission for that. There may be a team of purchasing veterans gathered within a cosmetic factory, but still none of them would be able to measure up the backpack of knowledge and experience represented by a supplier whose number of projects reaches up to 2 000 annually. And yes, the price of the final product would grow like 0,5%. But this half of a percent may work as a lever that drives your risks towards zero – the risk, that’s able to overgrow the cost of the whole project. And, what’s more, this 0,5% is an extra insurance against possible damage to the brand’s image, penalties from vendors and marketing budgets poured down the drain.
Sure, distributors make no magic, and you probably won’t find whatever you desire waiting for in the warehouse. However, an experienced company, which has been supplying its clients with around one hundred million pieces of packaging from a hundred of different manufacturers – that’s already pretty much a promise, that a proper solution to fit your brand and product will be found. Which means your product’s implementation is about to be accelerated and the time you need to feed the market with a new product reduced by several month. And all that at a cost as big, as the commission banks charge for account transactions.
