13 January 2021 by Calan

Hi all,

I thought I’d write a quick post about our packaging, firstly so you can get an early peek at what it looks like, but also because we see it as a work in progress and would love some feedback on how we could improve it.

To offer a little context, packaging is slightly tricky. If you have a small, high value product, like a phone or jewellery, or something that has huge margins, you can spend a lot on the packaging to make opening your new product part of the whole experience. Companies like Apple, or Harmon Kardon, whose packaging I love, can get away with this, but it’s not a luxury we all have. For a larger product at a lower price point, like many household products, spending too much on the packaging would require either an increase in the retail price as packaging costs can quickly eat up a lot of your available margin. To give you some idea, using a really nice box with a lift-off or slide-in sleeve can easily cost as much as $3 or $4 which, when doubled by your favourite retailer, ends up costing the consumer a fairly significant amount. So next time you buy a really nice piece of clothing that comes boxed in one of those lovely presentation boxes, there’s a good chance you just spent $10 on the box alone.

Adding to that, there is the issue of the environment and we want our packaging to be as friendly as possible to the planet. For this reason we hoped to use recycled pulp for our protective tray inserts, but it turns out that it adds around $7,000 to the upfront tooling costs which is a substantial amount to absorb when starting out, but something we can look at for future orders.

With that in mind, we chose to use a standard cardboard box for our outer packaging which is fully recyclable. Internally, to protect the Loogun during shipping, we are using a single protective plastic tray into which the Loogun will clip. This ensures the device is protected while moving around in transit or when the package is dropped. The tray will be made from polyethylene terephthalate (commonly PET), which is slightly more expensive, but is the most commonly recycled plastic around the world.

The images below are of the current packaging and tray insert design, take a look and let us know what you think. If you’d like a more detailed look at the content on the box, you can see a larger flat image here. Please do send us some feedback, either by email or by commenting below.

The main colour used for the design is our new brand colour. We’re busy redesigning our website and materials to reflect this.

The images below are of the protective insert tray that the Loogun will clip into. In terms of the colour, it will be made in solid white to keep it neutral and neat. The recessed clips hold the Loogun in position, and the smaller indent you can see is where we are adding a small screwdriver to ensure you don't need one to hand when you receive your Loogun.

That's about it. Please do add a comment below or drop us an email with some feedback, I'd love to know what you think.