Packaging is one of the easiest costs to undercount. You buy jars by the case, labels by the roll and tissue by the ream, then use them one at a time. Because the purchase and the use happen weeks apart, the cost of the packaging rarely makes it into the price of the product it wraps.
Packaging belongs in your true cost the same as the wax or the fabric does. Here is how to get it there, one unit at a time.
Separate product packaging from shipping packaging
- Product packaging goes with every unit wherever it is sold: the jar, the lid, the label, the hang tag, the backing card, the bag.
- Shipping packaging depends on the order: the mailer or box, filler, tape, the packing slip and any thank-you insert.
Product packaging belongs in each product's recipe. Shipping packaging belongs to the order, because its cost changes with how many items share the box. Keeping the two apart stops you counting a mailer on every item in a three-item order.
Divide the bulk price correctly
The per-unit cost is the price you paid, including shipping on the supply order, divided by the number of usable units. A worked example with made-up numbers:
- A case of 144 jars costs $86, plus $14 shipping: $100 landed.
- You usually lose a few to chips or bad lids. Say 4 per case, leaving 140 usable.
- Per-unit cost: $100 ÷ 140 = about $0.71 per jar, not the $0.60 the case price suggests.
The most common mistake is typing the price of the whole pack into a field that expects the price of one. A $24 roll of 500 labels entered as $24 per label makes a product look wildly unprofitable. Entered correctly, it is under five cents a label.
Count the small extras
Tiny items add up when they ride on every unit: a sticker seal, a care card, a twist tie, a desiccant pack, a strip of tape. Make a list of everything that touches one finished unit. If it gets used up and you had to buy it, it is a packaging cost.
If it leaves the studio with the product, it is part of what the product cost.
Where packaging cost can come down
- Buy at the next price break only when you will use the extra before your design changes or it goes stale.
- Standardise sizes. Three jar sizes across ten products buys better pricing than seven sizes.
- Cut what the buyer does not notice. Extra filler and oversized boxes cost money and rarely add delight.
- Keep what they do notice. A good label and a tidy closure are part of the product. Cutting them can cost more in perceived value than it saves.
Get packaging into your cost, step by step
- List every packaging item that goes out with one unit.
- For each, record the landed price of the pack and the number of usable units in it.
- Divide to get a per-unit cost.
- Add each item to the product's recipe in the amount one unit uses.
- Keep mailers, filler and tape as shipping packaging, not on each item.
- Re-check whenever you reorder at a new price.
In Keepsel, packaging is just another material in a product's recipe, priced per unit from what you paid, so it flows into the product's true cost on its own. From the Maker plan, shipping supplies such as mailers and filler can sit on a product as shipping items, so give them to the product that ships in that mailer rather than to every item in a mixed order. When a supplier's price changes, every product that uses the item re-prices with it.