What’s stopping you from taking over the world?

You’re smart. You’ve started your own business and you’ve got a product that really makes people fall over themselves to get it in their cupboards or offices or nightstands.

Perhaps you perfected it through bake sales. Perhaps you sheepishly brought it out for a lark at parties. Perhaps you’ve been plotting your conglomerate takeover through simple niche luxury items for decades in a machiavellian attempt at fiscal domination. Or maybe you work for a company that did all that twenty years ago.

We don’t know why you’ve stumbled on this logistics run-down. But we’re glad you’re here. Because you now need a faster, sleeker and more efficient way to get your product to your customers, thanks to your massive success.

We’d like to congratulate you, and we’d love to help.

The following article discusses the importance of good eCommerce packaging. Whether you’re here because you’ve decided to transition to a new logistics provider, or you’re here because you’re an industry insider looking for a leg up, we hope we can guide you in the proper direction.

How to win at eCommerce in 2023

Despite a global pandemic, supply chain disruptions and an atmosphere of economic uncertainty, the state of eCommerce is largely healthy. By 2024, B2C eCommerce marketplace sales are expected to hit $3.6 trillion.

This is good, of course. But it raises challenges for fledgling online retailers. With the market dominated by a handful of colossal megacorps, startups must work hard, work fast and pull out all the tricks they know to get noticed.

So. What should you consider when competing with larger companies?

One of the things you learn quickly in eCommerce is that niche markets are the ticket to building a good foundation for your business. There are two ways to gain traction in a niche market:

1. Make something truly unique, so much so that it is unavailable through anyone but you.
2. Build a brand that becomes associated in the minds of thousands of consumers with whatever they’re craving.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that a third-party logistics (3PL) provider can't help you with the first strategy. The uniqueness of your particular product or service has already been decided, by you, before you clicked on this page.

The good news, fortunately, is that for the intrepid business person – the person who is willing to go all-in on their business – the second strategy can be given a huge leg-up by a 3PL.

It all comes down to packaging.

The tension between the novel and the recognisable

So, how can packaging give you a leg-up?

Essentially, your packaging can build your brand and offer unique stylisation. These are two concepts that you need to hold in tension as you market to customers. And it's this tension that makes it vital to have a logistics provider that you can trust.

First, let’s discuss this tension and what you need to do to take advantage of its positive repercussions. Then, we’ll talk about what kinds of companies to look for.

Whether you’re already established or looking to break into a market, you have to have a brand that people can recognise. 

Branding works because of the way our brains work.

Branding started more than a century ago, mostly with food labels. The theory goes that when humans were first constructing civilisation, they mostly created their survival needs by hand. People had, up until the industrial revolution, really, prepared their own food, often growing and cultivating it themselves.

Now, with people far removed from the process of ensuring the safety of the items they consume, they have replaced the delicate and time-consuming work of seeing food made with their own eyes with an association with a food label. If you trust, say, Jolly Green Giant to bag your frozen peas – and you’ve eaten them for years without incident – this creates a psychological safety net.

Branding works for other products too – not just ones that keep us safe and fed. Anything with which we develop an intimate relationship for our personal routines in our homes must be trusted. Branding allows us to make trust-based decisions quickly and easily.

This is part of the reason why large brands have taken over the eCommerce industry. Everyone wants a name and a symbol they trust. You know you won't be wasting thousands of dollars on a computer if there is a recognisable fruit on the outside cover. You know… that sort of thing. 

So packaging becomes vital to your business. When customers open the box or bag you send them, you want them to feel a warm pang of familiarity. You want them to feel they can rely on the quality of what you send them. You want to feel like a cornerstone of their household. 

Yet packaging also has to introduce some level of novelty.

Research shows that changing the music  in a restaurant gets patrons to order more food. In fact, making small changes to a business keeps things lively. And for customers, it keeps things addictive.

If a consumer feels they might find something special or new in a package that’s delivered, they're likely to order more often. And if they feel they’re in on the ground floor of big changes, that can sometimes only increase brand loyalty.

So, in an ideal world, your packaging will have a personal aesthetic – perhaps symbols or colour palettes that make your customers feel like they can trust what’s inside. And yet your packaging should also offer something new and different with every order.

That… is a tall order. What kind of company could provide all of this?

What to look for in a 3PL

This all leads to the attributes to look for in a 3PL that will help you compete against the larger companies trying to take your foothold in the online retail market.

To create the niche branding you’ll need to thrive in the world of online retail, look for a 3PL that can help you with packaging. And once you've found it, make sure it can provide the following two characteristics:

Customisation: you want a flexible provider. You want one that's willing to adapt your product packaging precisely to order. High quality ensures that your brand looks and feels the same every time. Flexibility and customer service allow you to control (while also changing over time) what your brand looks like via a unified aesthetic.

Novelty: we're talking about the little touches that customers love to see. It could be a "thank you" note, a money-off coupon or even a small free gift. If your 3PL can include these freebies at the packing stage, you can play off the tension between building a brand (advertising your unique look) and introducing novelty (small changes that keep customers interested).

Conclusion

Fortunately, there's a 3PL that can give you everything we’ve described in this article. At Stowsafe, we've spent years in the business of flexible packaging and logistics. If you need something done a certain way – whether that's packaging, picking or shipping – you can bet we'll be able to do it.

Want to know more? Learn about our eCommerce order fulfilment process or get in touch to book a meeting with one of our experts.