When you are a one-woman-show running a small business with three different branches, you begin to realize how important it is to save time at every step of the process.
Several years ago, when I began packaging my soap to sell, I created handmade paper sleeves to individually wrap each bar, cigar-band style. Yes, I made the paper from pulp! Well, you can imagine after a hundred bars or so, I couldn't even keep up making the paper, much less the soap!
So, the handmade paper sleeve fell by the wayside. It was replaced by the printed paper sleeve, which I designed and scored/tore by hand to give it a deckle edge. I continued to use a cello bag and raffia tie to complete the packaging.
After several hundred bars of soap, I realized the inordinate amount of time that the packaging was taking me. But I was really struggling with this notion that a handmade bar of soap had to have numerous handmade components in the final presentation in order to be authentic.
Then it occurred to me that I should really be focusing on the handmade soap (my actual product), and minimize the effort to create a nice presentation in the packaging. And my packaging has recently evolved again, into much easier and less time consuming steps.
There is a little upfront work each time you tweak your image and have to recreate from scratch -- banners, labels, etc. But from here on out, I'll be folding a box, slapping on a couple of labels, and in the soap goes. By comparison, even with folding the box, it is a breeze.
Hopefully, the look and feel of a handmade product has not been lost in the new packaging.
What do you think, and how have you streamlined your packaging process?
~ Dana @
Soap Sense
My last soap butt giveaway was SO popular, I'd thought I'd do it one more time! Yes, soap butts...the last slice leftover from each log of soap that isn't pretty or big enough to be a bar on its own. But it is still great soap!
Another giveaway...for handcrafted soap lovers!
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