A couple big packages were delivered to the office today — one that was scheduled for today, the other wasn’t expected for another week (card boxes). I grabbed my phone, box cutter and started cracking these open.
I’m going to need tuck boxes when I start selling the first trading card box set on the shop, so I checked in with TheCustomBoxes and before I could begin browsing their website the little chat box in the corner dinged and I started chatting with a rep. The rep was very courteous and helpful — even more impressive was the fact that they were able to accommodate my custom specs for the dimensions of the box without any issues.
It was just over $300 for an order of 300 boxes, wrap around custom art (1C), which was designed in-house by myself, with an aqueous matte coating. The boxes came pre-glued and flat… but there were some issues.
Some of the card boxes were damaged straight outta the box. The package came from Pakistan and took a bit of beating… I once worked as a dock worker for DHL, which is the carrier that handled this package and lemme tell you, there’s a reason I’m obsessive about quality packaging! Luckily not too many of them were ruined but another thing I was worried about was the quality of the print and the trim of the boxes.
The boxes are naturally off-white and I opted for a 1C (K) custom art printing, so the white edges are very obvious. Luckily, when the box is folded up it looks decent aside from the glued edge protruding ever so slighty. The print came out just okay, with the finer text and logos a bit distorted and blurry, but at least the trim was preserved and everything seems to be uniformly aligned throughout the entire job. The saving grace for these boxes is the aqueous matte coating, which is by far my favorite finish across all paper and card stocks.
Overall, I’m still just okay with this vendor. I would use them again, but mostly to test out their consistency. I have one more card to design before I send the next batch of trading cards off the printer. Once I receive them, TCS (Trading Card Set) 2019-2020 will be available on the Etsy shop (ETA, a couple weeks from now).
As for the other package, I was really happy with these.
Very similar to BCW boxes, these budget mailers came from Packola. Unlike TheCustomBoxes that has a damn broken website, Packola has a wonderful website with a great user interface and awesome 3D view of the products they offer, complete with animations and custom options. I ordered 100 of the 7 x 5 x 1.5 inch budget mailers, which came up to about $80 plus shipping which totaled up to $106. Took over a week to get here, but I’m really happy with the way these came packaged - none of them were damaged, so that’s already a big plus in my book.
Very easy to work with, quick to assemble, they look good and will protect the contents in transit. What more can you ask for in a mailer?
I put together a mock-up order with a trading card set and acrylic standee. That’s just regular red packaging tissue keeping the items nestled comfortably in the box, but I’ll probably order some newsprint packaging paper to better secure the contents and use a layer of tissue on top for that nice presentation. Hey, packaging aesthetics matter!
Slapped on the new Murakumo Comics logo stickers I got from Sticker Giant and the package is pretty much good to go! Anyway, that just about wraps it up for this report!