DEMO — fictional range. Local brief only, NOT SENT. No personal data is collected or transmitted.
BUYING
What a quotation needs in order to be a quotation.
Most packaging enquiries stall because the buyer has a product and no journey. This is the list worth completing before the first message.
- The contents
- Size, weight and whether it can move inside
- The journey
- How far, how many transfers, and what sits on top
- The pack type
- Case, tray, rigid box, or a combination
- Internal dimensions
- Not external, and the tolerance around them
- Board grade
- With the liner named, because it changes both strength and print
- The print
- Process, colours and the substrate it will run on
- The quantity and the split
- Because tooling is divided by the run
- The inspection
- What is checked, how many, and under what conditions
Why the journey comes before the pack.
Because it decides the pack. The same product needs a different case for a local parcel and a container, and the difference is not the size.
The most useful sentence in an enquiry.
"These go on a pallet four high and spend three weeks in a container." It tells the supplier what the pack has to survive, and it is the sentence most enquiries leave out.
Why written beats verbal.
The expensive conversations in a programme are the ones about what was agreed. A brief that exists only in a meeting leaves every disputed detail open.