How to Improve Your Product Appearance and Operational Productivity with Shrink Packaging

The look of your product is your calling card to customers. To reduce buyer's remorse and create a great first impression, you need your product packaged as professionally as possible. If you want to protect your precious cargo during delivery, draw attention to your product's best features, and provide easy access when unpacking, shrink packaging is your best packaging option. Let's take a look at how you can improve your product's appearance and operational productivity with shrink packaging.

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Give Your Product Higher Durability with Shrink Packaging

The biggest favor that you can provide for your product's appearance is to keep it from getting scratched and scraped during shipping. For this reason, shrink packaging works very well for companies with wide distribution networks. Because shrink packaging is one of the less expensive options for packaging overall, any company can afford it.

Shrink packaging hugs your product very closely. While the heavier outer packaging will protect your products from big damage, those hidden corners, nubs and angles that cannot be hugged tightly to the outside walls of your box need another type of protection. Shrink packaging acts as a second skin, taking all of the little lumps so that your product comes out of the package looking like it just came off of the showroom floor.

In order to maximize scrape protection with shrink packaging, make sure that you have a very tightly wound layer of packaging around the product. You may be able to achieve this through heat shrink wrapping for especially angled products. The most important aspect for protection is the thickness of the wrapping. Experiment by sending a few test packages to yourself with different thickness levels of shrink packaging and note the measurement that stops product damage. In most cases, 75-gauge packaging is enough; however, if your products are especially rough, you may have to graduate to 100-gauge.

Improve Your Operational Productivity by Choosing the Right Shrink Packaging Option

While you may know some of the basics of choosing the right packaging, such as staying away from PVC if you are transporting food, there are many other characteristics of shrink packaging to consider.

• PVC - This material gives your product a look of high clarity and has a reflective shine. Use this shrink packaging option if you want to prevent scents from escaping the packaging and colors from bleeding. PVC is a great choice for bath bombs, soaps, digital media and mid-sized hardware. Although PVC is not recommended for direct food contact, you will find many food gift baskets wrapped in PVC packaging.
• Polyolefin - This is one of the strongest materials that tends to resist punctures, and unlike PVC packaging, polyolefin can be used in contact with food. Although you do not get the glossy shine of other types of packaging, the matte finish sometimes proves a better option for products that you want to serve in a less gaudy fashion. You can wrap irregularly shaped items very easily in polyolefin, and you can use it for investment grade artwork.
• Printed shrink - This is a heavy, usually 100-gauge, printing option that gives you an extravagant look and a very secure package. You can easily add designs that protect your products and serve as a great visual for holidays.