Ecommerce boomed in 2020 and is still going strong in 2021 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and that shift towards shopping online is likely to stay for years, if not forever. Even brands that have historically focused primarily on in-person experiences are shifting a substantial amount of their budget to personalizing their ecommerce experience. Every brand is focusing on digital to connect with their customers and to ensure they stay relevant and in business through the pandemic.
Branding and personalization are an important and effective way to improve customer experience and boost brand loyalty. Choosing the right packaging and printing for that packaging is a critical part of ensuring a great customer experience, one that they’ll remember for days, months or even years.
Of course, not all printing is created equal. There are several different types of printing and which one you choose for a project depends on the parameters of the project. For packaging, digital printing should be your choice and there are several reasons it’s better for your business right now.
Traditional vs Digital Printing
Traditional printing presses were designed to run large batches, forcing retailers to commit to larger orders than they might need and leading to wasted packaging when their designs are no longer relevant (e.g. a holiday box or conference gift bag.)
Digital package printing is much more agile, allowing brands to produce smaller and potentially less wasteful batch runs. This also enables brands to pivot rapidly and respond to customer feedback or take advantage of new branding opportunities.
Digital packaging printing companies like Supply Pack can produce detailed, high-quality images that enhance your brand image while leveraging your marketing insights based on consumer data to market to consumers based on their buying habits, geography, seasonality, etc.
The agility enabled by digital package printing allows brands to rapidly respond to consumer demands, while minimizing their warehouse costs and waste and enjoying a faster-than-ever time-to-market, despite the current global pandemic. During these crazy times, it’s more important than ever to be agile and lean by reducing waste and overhead.
The Benefits of Digital Printing
Affordability
With traditional printing, you have to go through an intense process of actually making metal plates and metal dyes for cutting and for printing for machines that are around 70 years old. The process really hasn't changed since then and you have to go plate by color by plate. So if you have multiple colors going on in an artwork, you end up spending money on all these plates every time to run it. And a lot of times mixing those colors would not give you your desired result.
Because of the setup of the dyes and the plates to get that printed, you're spending thousands of dollars right away without even producing one box, and then you're going to be paying a unit cost per box after that. By going digital, where there's no plate process, there's no chemical or ink process.
Flexibility
Our client today wants to customize as much as possible. Unlike traditional printing, digital printing allows for one to change the artwork and sizing and trays of packaging as they see fit. No set up, no plate and die costs. In fact, a client can order 100 boxes all having custom artwork. Image the impact to the end-user? Wouldn't it be nice to receive a box from a well-known brand with your name on it? Or imagine doing 2-3 different size boxes in low quantities? Only the flexibility of digital printing allows this without any additional costs...
Speed
We work in a world where everything is due yesterday. Digital printing is a very fast solution to get packaging to market. Orders can be done and in your hands within days rather than weeks in a traditional packaging environment.
Creative Control
Instead of going back and forth to figure out every step of the process with pressmen, you have more control over your artwork and are able to manage your creative assets and speed up the process.
When you want to design your creative, all you have to do is go on our website, grab a dye, download that dye, and prepare your artwork. Once it’s ready, you upload the creative to the site and the printing process begins.
How the Digital Printing Process Works at Supply Pack
Supply Pack uses state-of-the-art technology to print directly onto corrugated boards in a short run fashion, meaning we can do really small quantities, really economically, and really fast.
We use a UV based ink that's adhered directly and printed onto the corrugate. So there's a massive amount of savings in the initial runs over traditional printing. Many businesses would love to do custom shipping boxes and mailers but the upfront cost or plates and the large minimum orders with traditional printing makes it impossible for smaller businesses.
At Supply Pack, we specialize in serving small businesses and making great custom printing accessible. Businesses can come to us with five different boxes the same size with an order of just five of each. And it would be the same price as producing 50 with no set ups, no big plates, no minimum runs, nothing. The boxes are produced within three or four working days. Everything's printed digitally and everything's cut digitally, to mitigate potential human error and wastage (helping us keep our prices accessible.)
Our process is really smooth, really fast, and really efficient.
We make it easy for small businesses because we know as your business grows, so will ours.