#068 - In this episode, Julie is joined by a member of Subscription Box Bootcamp's dream team, Jeremy Bower of the GivrPack.
Tune in as they answer some of the common considerations in deciding your custom boxes for your subscription box business.
Jeremy is the Founder and CEO of Givr Packaging. He holds a degree in paper science (yes, that's a thing). His deep understanding of all things paper and packaging allows him to provide unique and novel solutions for Givr Pack's customers.
Summary:
Links:
https://www.sparklehustlegrow.com
https://www.subscriptionboxbootcamp.com
https://www.givrpack.com
https://www.instagram.com/givrpack
https://www.facebook.com/GivrPack
#068 - In this episode, Julie is joined by a member of Subscription Box Bootcamp's dream team, Jeremy Bower of the GivrPack.
Tune in as they answer some of the common considerations in deciding your custom boxes for your subscription box business.
Jeremy is the Founder and CEO of Givr Packaging. He holds a degree in paper science (yes, that's a thing). His deep understanding of all things paper and packaging allows him to provide unique and novel solutions for Givr Pack's customers.
Summary:
Links:
https://www.sparklehustlegrow.com
https://www.subscriptionboxbootcamp.com
https://www.givrpack.com
https://www.instagram.com/givrpack
https://www.facebook.com/GivrPack
So you want to launch a subscription box and don't know where to start? Girl, you are in the right place. I'm Julie Ball, a subscription box coach and your host here at Subscription Box Basics, a podcast for new and aspiring subscription box entrepreneurs that want to avoid overwhelm. So grab a coffee, some pen and paper and let's have some fun! Hey everybody and welcome back to Subscription Box Basics, the podcast. I'm Julie Ball, your host. And I am joined by a guest today that I've been working with for a couple of years now. And I really am excited to introduce you to him on the podcast. Today is Jeremy from GivrPack. He is the founder and CEO of Givr Packaging. And listen to this. He holds a bachelor of science in paper science. I didn't even know that was a thing until I met Jeremy and he totally geeks out about packaging design in a really fun way. And I brought him on the podcast today because he is part of the Subscription Box Bootcamp dream team, and has been doing Sparkle Hustle Grow boxes, printing them as a custom box printer for years now. So Jeremy, welcome to the podcast.
Jeremy:Hey, thanks Julie for having me. I appreciate it. Yes, paper science is a thing. Technically, when I was there, it was paper science. Then they moved the degree to paper engineering. And this year that the department changed their name to a department of chemical engineering. So it's that paper part of it is no longer as like forefront, but yeah, paper science is a thing I graduated with. I think 11 paper engineers. So there's some of us out there I've only ever met somebody that wasn't related to the program that knew a paper engineer one time
Julie:Like that. It's a thing you guys are like the department of paper and packaging nerds.
Jeremy:Yes, that's right. Yeah. We're that small room at the end of the hallway where like, people are always carrying paper and boxes around, but the other engineering students don't really know what goes on down there, but yeah, it's a thing.
Julie:So funny. Well, I was really blown away by the way your company does customer service the way you do. You're like we actually get to talk to people on the other end. It's not just like placing an order for our custom boxes and you know, there's a place in my heart for the fact that you guys give back. I love when companies have a give back component. So we'll talk a little bit about how you do that in your business model, but some people will be meeting you for the first time, Jeremy. So why don't you give them a little bit more of the background of you who you are outside of your paper science degree?
Jeremy:Yeah, I actually, I kind of live and breathe paper and packaging. So I started in the paper industry at 17. I was working for a sustainable chemicals company that made basically they made chemicals for paper mills to use, to clean up things. And then I started working at paper mills that took trash to make tissue for away from home. Everyone that's listening to this podcast has used some of the products that pass through mills they're in every gas station, rest area, all over the country. From there, I kind of fell backwards into the box industry. I was recruited for a process engineering role in a box plant and helped to write a couple of patents for codings on boxes that keep those boxes out of the landfill. Because if you send fish produce, bananas, that kind of thing in a box it's wet, there's typically paraffin wax on that box cannot be recycled. It has to be landfilled or burned. So we wrote two patents that issued for codings that perform just as well, but we're fully recyclable repurposable and sustainable. So from there I got into account management, which is basically if somebody hands you a book of business to manage for on behalf of the company. Did that well start at selling my own accounts, opened up some business, got into sales management, general management. And then, I saw kind of some holes. I, I realized that all of these big brands that I was managing, so I had business with Hershey's chocolate. We had Unilever Reckitt, Benckiser all these big companies. One time a year, we'd have these meetings about sustainability and all of these brands wanted to know, you know, what's our environmental impact. What, what is, what are we doing as a company to make things more sustainable? And so we would spend six hours in preparation of this call, putting together all these metrics, we'd have the meeting and then we'd never talk about it, right? So I knew that there was a need for a more environmentally conscious. And what I'll say is a more net positive packaging company. So we started Givr Packaging with the goal of being that packaging company that can do this, the things that everybody needs, everybody needs a box. Everybody needs a folding card and everybody needs printing or many people need printing. And on the back end doing some actual goods. So all of, all of what we do, every box that we make is, is calculated for the fiber usage. So if you order 10,000 boxes, we go in and say, that box is this size. It is this much weight we call it basis weight we can calculate based on and just general industry understanding how many pounds of fiber that was. We know the average fiber we get from the average tree harvested. So we're making some assumptions there and then we calculate. So if you buy this many boxes, it uses this many trees, we run and up to the next tree cause you can't plant a partial tree. And then we multiply that by 20 and we make a contribution to the Eden reforestation project for offsetting all those trees and what they do. They take. They have I think 12, the different countries that they focus on based on need. And then we'll plant those trees, grow. Those trees, teach the local culture how to manage those trees. And they actually pay in some instances to guard those forests that they built in perpetuity have contracts written contracts so they can have guarded forests. So those trees will never be harvested you know, to the best that they're able to guarantee that they'll never be harvested, they'll always be protected. So we do all of this giving outside of the supply chain. So we're not taking trees, planting them in, you know, a tree grow so that they can be mowed over again to make more paper. That's self-serving. And I knew that there's, there was room in how we buy packaging as, as the packaging company, how we buy paper, there was room to negotiate the margins in order to do that without charging more in the market. So we kind of leveraged the paper science, talk to the suppliers, made these deals. And now we're offering, you know, everything from somebody wants 10 boxes that are really high in printing all the way up to, we have customers that are doing multiple truck loads a month and we're offsetting all of it. I think the last calculation we did, we're pushing near something like a hundred thousand trees. And the metrics are almost 4 million pounds of oxygen made. And I think half a million pounds of CO2 absorbed, something like that, the numbers change all the time, so I'm not super spun up on it. But yeah, we're, we're trying to be net positive. We want to be able to use something that everybody needs all the time packaging and do good and offset everything we do that's bad- taking down trees.
Julie:And I love that. And you've talked to me too about that our specific boxes, not, I can't speak for everybody else's. Ours are recyclable too. Yep. Everybody's. Every box that we do is fully recyclable. Yep. Awesome. That's definitely something that as a business owner, we should be thinking about that impact. And when we partner with companies like yourself, it just makes it like it's baked right into the program. And I love that. And I can't, that's one of the reasons we choose you guys and we want to share your story and share your service with our bootcampers and our audience in general. So Bravo, I love the fact that together we are funding the guardians of the forest.
Jeremy:That's, you know, that's a great way to put it. We should make a documentary about that.
Julie:Yes. I love it. Love it. Awesome. And then just from a personal perspective, you guys are based in Florida, right? But you have print shops all over, is that right?
Jeremy:We're headquartered in Melbourne, Florida. I can see what's called the Indian river, which is just inside of the ocean here from our office, which is great. And then we have manufacturing partnerships all over the country where we find the best option local to wherever it's being shipped. And we have contracts and agreements with them. So we get fantastic pricing, pass it on to our customers so we can not ship something entirely across the country just to say that it came from us.
Julie:Yeah. I'm glad you said that. Because when I first started, I did use a different, I have tried a couple of different custom box printers over the years to be very transparent. And one of the first ones that I used was out of California and like, it was just one of those things. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was just trying to find someone who worked in subscription boxes and the cost to ship for all those boxes. And I think I only bought 500 at the time, like from California to North Carolina was just, I had some sticker shock, but I'm like, well, I don't know what else to do cause I didn't have any other partnerships. So, I think that's really important to sit to mention that you, you seek out these really reputable print shops and that you make these partnerships and you're vetting them. And they're an extension to your team.
Jeremy:Yeah. Not only are we vetting them just from, you know, what they offer, but we get into their plants. I mean, they're letting somebody who knows the industry into their, into their world. And we can say, we like this. We don't like this. Here's how we're going to do better. And that's how we offer, you know, customer service to the customer because we know everything from, from leaf to box.
Julie:Yeah. Awesome. I like how you put that. Okay. So the audience that we're talking to through this podcast are primarily new or aspiring subscription box business owners. So they're on the front end of their journey. So one of the things that I know you said that you hear this a lot and I do as well is you know, where to begin. And one of those things about where to begin with your box is choosing the size. Now we're going to talk about some other things, you know, the differences between custom prints versus just a stock, basic box, but let's start about size. And I want to hear your take on it, but real briefly, my take on it is to get the smallest size box that can fulfill the mission that you're trying to do. What's your take on it?
Jeremy:Yeah, that's it. I mean, you don't want to ship any air. If you can get that box so tight, it's filled with product, you can barely get it close. And it's like as dense as possible, the post office person has to like bend over when they get it. That's what you want. You want to maximize all that cubic volume so that when you're shipping, whatever it is, you're shipping, whoever's receiving that gets product density galore. Because when they open that box, they don't want to see the Amazon downside where you open up a box, you bought a cutting board and it's filled with, you know, like five gallon buckets worth of air. That's not what we want. So we are always going to drive anybody that is unsure of size into the most cubicly efficient box possible. So we don't want you to ship any air. We don't want you to have any unneeded pack fill if we can help it.
Julie:And one of the things you and I were chatting back and forth before here is what you suggested. I love this is to really know what your product mix is going to be before you nailed down that size. So for like a really easy example for me is we use a six by nine by three inch box. And one of our core categories is a book every single month, since we've started, we've included a book. So darn right. I did a bunch of research on personal development books. Like what size are authors, putting their books out into the world? And I found that a very big majority of them were five and a half, eight and a half, which was going to fit in that six by nine box. Now of course there are outliers. Sometimes people go straight to a hardback book and they might have a trim that's, you know, 6.1 by 9.5 or something like that. And I understand that and I just have to be disciplined not to pursue that size. Like when I'm researching, is this book going to work for Sparkle Hustle Grow? One of the first things I do beyond, you know, is this the right topic? Is this the right, a good fit? The author is looking at the size of it. So you had mentioned to me about making sure that you have a good feel for how many products you're going to put in there. What size products you're going to put in there?
Jeremy:Yeah. One of the things we get is,"Hey, I need a box. I'm going to put XYZ in it. What size do I need?" You know, and often that is, I, I have a mug or I have a jar or I have, something we want to help. But when you say coffee mug, I've seen coffee mugs that I could wear as a helmet. I mean, so this coffee mug that we're talking about could be any number of sizes. So if you give us, I mean, if you give us the biggest dimension of the biggest product you have, we're going to do everything we can to get you into the right box without having you spend one extra nickel. And that's one of the benefits of talking to a real person, right? I mean, if you're just dealing with a website, maybe there's a chat bot or something, but sometimes it just takes a ten second conversation to say, here's what you need. I understand. We're going to make it forward.
Julie:Yeah. And you had shared a sizing hack that about USPS that I didn't know about. You want to tell them about that?
Jeremy:Yeah. So, cubic dimensions are based on the outside dimensions of your box, right? So if you have a nine by six by three, that represents the inside dimensions of the box where you can actually fit product.
Julie:That's so important to know that that's inside.
Jeremy:Right? It's the inside dimensions. Don't order a 10 by eight by four, I think that's the outside. Um, so what you ask P S allows you to do when calculating cubic volume, they allow you to round down to the lowest, to the next lowest quarter inch. So for example, or nine by six, by three is nine and three eights by six, and you know, an eight by three and an eight. So we can round down to nine by six by three, even though those are not the actual outside dimensions, we're using E-flute for much of the, for many of these mailers. So even the double thicknesses on it rounds down to those cubic dimensions. So our nine by six by three comes out to I think it's 0.999 cubic feet, which is the threshold one cubic foot before you have to go into the next tier. So we're like basically as efficient as you can get with shipping that tier one box. So yeah, that's a hack most people don't realize.
Julie:And if you are listening, you're like, what is he even talking about? If you go over to Pirateship.com. They've got the cubic rate shipping calculator right on the website. So you can play around with numbers. Like if you're going to do six, nine by three or 10, by eight by four, you can get some of those numbers and start, start putting them in that calculator. And it's going to spit out what tier that you're going to fall in. So that's really one of the steps you should take, because that tier is going to be a part of the pricing equation when it comes to what your postage is. Now, I want to take a step backwards. You said, E-flute, tell everybody what that means.
Jeremy:E-flute is probably the thinnest material, you'll find for a subscription box, and it is, it is a 16th of an inch thick, not to be confused with folding carton, which is solid fiber board. So when you say corrugated, it's the way the material in the middle of sandwich by the two pieces of bread on the outside. So it's like a paper sandwich. Folding carton is solid fiberboard. Like your Tylenol box, like a, like a pancake mix box. There's no, fluting, there's no air in there. So E-flute is the most common finished flute for subscription box mailers and there's B-flute and C-flute and double-wall, but most of what you're going to get, especially if you're on the group buying platform is going to be E-flute. And that works for 95% plus of all of the subscription boxes that we see. That's very efficient,
Julie:Is that what we use?
Jeremy:Yes, you use E-flute.
Julie:Okay, good to know.
Jeremy:Surprise.
Julie:I leave those big decisions up to you cause I just trust you and your team.
Jeremy:Thanks!
Julie:So yeah, you could tell me that I had doubled T S-flute and I'd be like, okay, whatever. Okay. So let's move on to, so we talked a little bit about, you know, size, like where do you even begin with that? And then let's talk about, custom print, which is what you guys do versus stock sizes, where you could buy, you know, in so many different places, Amazon, Uline lots of packaging places. Do you guys sell stock sizes as well? Or do you just do custom?
Jeremy:So yeah, we do stock sizes as well, but I will say the stock program that we have is really geared towards printed stock boxes. We can do plain, but I'll never have you buy from us if we can tell you to get it somewhere cheaper. So Uline is almost always going to be more, more cost-effective, especially when you're buying 50 or a hundred, some small lots, if you do not want printing, right. If you just want plain, and in many cases, that's the right move. So, you know, there's Sticker Mule, there's branded tape. Sometimes we'll recommend to companies, Hey, if you're not using 50 a month or something, it might not make sense to do anything that's branded go buy, you know, 250 plain boxes get 250 stickers, and that's going to give you a better runway. And maybe you adapt between box zero and box 250, you know.
Julie:Right. No, I think that's a good point. And you know, when I think about it, I think about budget. So obviously, you know, you could likely put together a plain box with some DIY elements for cheaper than boxes at those lower levels.
Jeremy:Right.
Julie:As quantity levels, you want to think about target audience, like how important is it to your target audience to receive a custom branded box? So my husband, Kenny, he runs Together Unplugged and he's gone back and forth. A couple of times has done some really beautiful custom printed boxes, you know, and talking to his audience and looking at his budget and his margins. He determined that in this particular case, a plain craft box, which kind of goes well with the kids box audience, with some really great custom branded tape from Sticker Mule was a viable option. And, you know, we've got plenty of bootcampers that start there. And then as margins improve as quantities increase, they move on to the custom box route.
Jeremy:Yeah. I mean, Kenny's branding is so on-point and it pops against that craft. I love that. Look that light blue over that graph is fantastic. And a lot of brands can leverage that. I mean, I don't know what a roll of, of what tape costs. It's you know, maybe 15 bucks maybe less, I don't know, but, um, you can get a hundred boxes out of that. Will it take, and that's all your branded packaging budget right there. You know, for 15 bucks you can get some branding on your box without spending the$1to$2 a box. It takes for a fully branded digitally printed box, unless you're trying to get a lot of shock on boxing. Wow. Or if you want everybody to see a pretty pink box in all the way through the postal system, you know,
Julie:And I think to think about like that audience, are you trying to provide a luxury experience if you're a higher priced box? I think it's a little bit expected that you're going to have the unboxing experience where you have that custom box built into it. But to be very transparent listeners, like Jeremy's not on this podcast here to sell you on custom boxes, we're here to explain how it works, because there's just a lot of questions on like, it's a fun, but scary journey of saying, okay, my concept is going to turn into a physical box, like can be a real product now. And so that's what we're doing here today.
Jeremy:Okay. And you can, you can spend money quickly on custom boxes. And in many cases you don't have to.
Julie:Agreed. Agreed. Okay. So we covered where to begin. We covered a little bit of pros and cons of custom versus DIY. Let's talk about printing. Like there's, there's two different types of printing that we wanted to talk about digital versus flexo. And I'm going to hand the mic over to you because you can explain what those mean, what the difference is, and maybe steer people in the right direction of like, if this, then that.
Jeremy:Yeah. So this is a conversation that I think cannot be over discussed in the packaging world. So let's talk about what digital is. Digital printing is basically the equivalent of a home printer scaled to be able to print six feet wide at more like 150 feet a minute. Yeah.
Julie:Just super fast.
Jeremy:Super fast. Yeah. Perfect. So it's, it's just that it's CMYK four color process applying ink to your box directly. Um, and it's building 95% of the Pantone color spectrum and the inks are super expensive, but they're super pretty, very high resolution. And you get a very well curated branded box experience. For comparison sake and remember this number for later, digital inks are about$500 per liter. Okay. So for a two liter bottle of digital ink, that's like a thousand dollars. Yeah, by comparison, we'll talk about flexo flexo inks are, can be as low as$10 for a five gallon bucket up to maybe$50 for a kit of like metallic inks or something like that. So it's a very, very different ink set, very different cost basis. Flexo boxes as a printing process are basically like the hand stamp that you get. If you went to a nightclub or concert, it's that technology, it is a rubber photo polymer stamp dipping into an inkwell. Then printing that image on your box. Now these presses are doing it at 8,000 kicks an hour, and they're, you know, 10 feet wide and the print plates are humongous. So they're moving a lot faster than stamping your hand at the club. But the technology is the same. The inks are waterborne with little pigments of basically different colored rocks that are suspended with some science in water. And they're put into an inkwell put on this rubber plate and then impressed onto your box. Some of the upsides for digital, there are no print plate costs in either case you could have, you could likely have cutting die costs that are used to cut out the shape of the box, but there's no print plate costs. There's no stamp costs for digital.
Julie:So the print plate is like your design, right?
Jeremy:Yeah. The print plate is the thing that you are impressing onto your box. So if that hand stamp is a smiley face, that smiley face print is what is going on the print plate. And that can be...
Julie:It's not changeable.
Jeremy:Right. It's not changeable. Very good. Yeah. That's, that's a good point. Every time you change that image, the print plate needs to be bought again in print plates can range from, you know, 500 to$1,200 per color. A single print plate can only apply one color. So for the four, if you wanted to do a four color process, so a box that has a bunch of different colors that are overlaid with a bunch of different dots, you're looking at like$5,000 in print plates just to get started before you print your first box. And flexo printing when doing four-color process is limited to about 120 lines per inch. So 120 dots per inch resolution. Where digital we can get up to now we can get up to about 1200. So basically 10 times the definition. So from standard definition to high definition.
Julie:Thinking of like, I'm trying to visualize this because I'm so not a technical person like that. It'd be like watching an old school TV versus now like an HD TV.
Jeremy:Yes, exactly. If you ever watched an old sporting event that was live in the nineties or watched it today, that's the same distinction, right? It's went from, I dunno, 720P up to 4k. It's basically the same span, but it's just a, you get a lower quality image reproduction because the printing press is such a mechanical beast. There's a lot of moving parts. So it's harder to get those tight resolutions, whereas a digital press that sheets are held down by vacuum the inks, literally shoot out either a 12 to 24 or a 36 Pico liter dot. So that's like billions of a leader dot. They just shoot it out onto the sheet, it cures. And then off you go. So yeah, there's, there's upside to flexo because the per unit box costs when you don't account for the plates are typically half.
Julie:Okay. So, so if you could look at it from a long-term perspective, realistically, I like to run numbers. So say I know my box print, isn't going to change for the next 12 months. So I could build, I could, you know, build those plate class costs in over a 12 month time span in my, you know, in my spreadsheet to figure out like what the difference would be if I wanted to do a cost analysis between the digital and the flexo.
Jeremy:Absolutely. So if your artwork makes sense for flexo like we have a customer Smartass and Sass who uses the flexo box, you know, those guys, right? And they're, they're boxes, well-branded, it's one color and it's fully covered print and they use flexo. So they, you know, they're using just one color. It's a very cool teal color. The art doesn't change. So in their instance, buying that print plate up front made sense because their box costs because their art is not driving a photo realistic image. Whereas some of our customers who print, you know, cartoon graphics or photo realistic images of fruit or vegetables or anything, that's really photo quality, not only can, flexo really not get their resolution wise, but the plate cost to do it are going to be probably more money than they spend on boxes in two years. So it just, it's, it's hard to shell out that much cash without knowing if you're going to change something. I mean, literally if one little thing changes on that plate, the entire plate set, not usable. So it's a lot of risk. So we don't, in fact, the way digital is coming up now, the big brands that used to really invest in print plates for all of their, you know, all of their on shelf or their retail stuff. A lot of that stuff is moving to digital because there's no setup penalty they're willing to pass that cost of the box, being higher into their cost of materials instead of just absorbing 5, 10,$15,000 in tooling to get box one, because they know that they can adapt and change and do variable data, which is one of the other benefits of digital.
Julie:Yeah, we do digital with Sparkle Hustle Grow. And one of the reasons was, you know, we had, in the past, we had two different versions of the box. We had our VIP and then we had our regular box and we were running those in the same digital batch. And we were able to scale our quantities higher by combining those two files into digital. So, and just please tell me, like, when someone contacts you about custom boxes, you'll have this conversation with them and help them figure out the best scenario for that, right?
Jeremy:Yes. Yes. We, every time. We have, you know, there's Emily and Mary Beth, myself, we all are kind of aware of how to steer people into the lowest cost option. And in many cases we say, you know, for what you're trying to do, you may want to explore flexo. And in fact, here is the price with the tooling costs. So you can say I'm out, you know,$2,000 or$2,500 but with the future being, you know,$500 less or whatever it is. So yeah, we'll, we'll help you make that analysis. And we won't, we won't steer in the wrong direction because that's one of the other things, you know, we can offer all of those different print methods where a lot of other companies don't have the capability or even the understanding how to build that artwork.
Julie:Gotcha. So the best way then to contact you guys would be through email then or a phone call.
Jeremy:Yeah. You can get to us anywhere. You can get to us on the phone, you can go Facebook and you can tag me, or you can take Givr Packaging Instagram. Now that we have Tiffany on board. She's right on top of it, email we're on top of that. So the fastest way is email or social media followed by distant third of calling me on the phone, but I will get back to you.
Julie:Awesome. So, but you do have the opportunity to talk to someone from your staff. We'll make sure that we include all of your contact information in the show notes so that someone can easily start that conversation with you. All right. So the last thing I wanted to talk about is single versus double- sided. Now so if the listeners, if you didn't know this for the first four years of our business at sparkle hustle grow, we only printed on the exterior. We had a plain white interior, and that was because of costs. We, we felt like we needed to do get to a certain point with our margins and our quantities before we invested on that interior. Now I know that it is a beautiful experience when you have that interior printing, but don't beat yourself up if you cannot afford that right from the get-go. So let's talk a little bit about Jeremy, how that, how the pricing works.
Jeremy:So, yeah. So when you're, when you're dealing with digital, you, you're not penalized by number of colors in the same way that you are for flexo because in flexo every print plate requires a set up manually. That plate has to be mounted. That has to be put into the down. With digital, you can print all black, all pink, all yellow or entire rainbow in the press does not care. The press is just shooting out ink, whether it's all one color or every single color in the press. So the thing you are penalized for, and I mentioned this earlier, the cost of the ink is ink coverage. So if you're just, if you're just printing a small, like quarter size circle on your box, the relative ink cost is going to be lower than if you're printing a fully covered box...
Julie:That makes sense
Jeremy:where the relative in cost is going to be more in terms of deciding between single and double-sided, there's really a continuum of value there. So if you are just starting out and you have a hundred boxes that you want, and you're not sure when you're going to sell them, unless you think that you're going to double your sales by having the second side, don't get the second side. It's very cool, but it's also very expensive because when we're printing a hundred boxes, for example, those hundred boxes go through the machine, you know, in a few minutes, and then the stack has to be flipped. And then the other side is printed. So there's a lot of manual time that goes into that hundred boxes. So basically you're doubling the cost because the paper cost is such a small portion of a small run. It's mostly, you know, it's mostly ink and it's mostly time labor. So the cost is basically doubled to have a short run of two-sided print compared to a short run of single-sided prints. So unless it's just going to make it rain for you in terms of sales, just stick with the single side and really maximize that.
Julie:And then at scale, that changes though. So say you have your short run of a hundred boxes, but now, you know, a year or two later, you're at a thousand boxes or 2,500 boxes. How does that change the ratio?
Jeremy:Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So in fact, the difference in price between a hundred and 10,000 boxes single to double, the 10,000 quantity can often be less expensive two-sided than the single-sided is for a small quantity. So there's when the volumes go up, the price goes down drastically, but this add in the second side, even at scale does not double the cost. So a lot of the cost is amortized over the bigger volume. So you don't have to split that cost of her small amount so that the ratio goes to like 1.6 to 1.7 times the cost of a single sided print to have that second side at scale.
Julie:Okay. So that's like 60 to 70%.
Jeremy:Yeah. Right, exactly.
Julie:Cool.
Jeremy:So it goes from a dollar to a dollar-sixty to add that second side just in round numbers.
Julie:Yep. And that's why we waited, you know, we, it, it didn't make sense when we were running shorter runs of our boxes. And when we added it, we were sure to build a bunch of hype around it. We launched the new box, our double-sided box at our, in our anniversary month. So it was like, you know, it's our fourth year anniversary. We're so excited. We're printing on the inside now we're leveling up. And so we kind of baked it into our marketing. And what we did with our interior is we created steps. Like this is how you use our product. I always tell people, you need to train your customers, how to use your product, how to make the most of their subscription so they can get the ultimate value. And so that's what we used our interior printing for was, you know, step one, do this, step two, do this, and just kind of made it almost a celebration inside. We have confetti and, and stuff like that. So when you're thinking about it, don't think of it just as printing on the interior, think about how you can leverage it from a marketing or customer experience.
Jeremy:Yeah. Absolutely. Make it worth it. Yeah.
Julie:Yeah, exactly. So before we close it up here, one of the things that I would say when I was deciding about boxes and quantities and you know, how many sides to print that type of thing. One of the conversations that I remember having with you, Jeremy, where's the next price break? And I was really, really impressed that you were able to have that conversation with me very transparently and saying, if you buy 2000 boxes this month, this, or in this round, this is what it's going to be. But if you buy 10,000, this is what it's going to be. And you kind of watched me along that path of where my price breaks were. And I just wanted to, you know, publicly tell you I really appreciated that because it allowed me to think bigger and figure out how to improve my margins and push me a little out of my comfort zone. Maybe I only wanted to order 5,000 boxes one particular run, but maybe you said, well, Julie, if you order 7,500, or if you order, you know, 9,000 whatever that number was, here's how your business can improve because your margins, your cost per box is going to go down. So I just really loved having that conversation with you. And I would encourage our listeners to think about that when you're making your projections. Think about, okay, how many boxes do I need in the next three months? How many boxes do I need in the next six months? And if I buy for the next six months, what could that cost savings be? Just to get those extra, to get that quantity level up. You know, granted I'll have to find a place to store those boxes, but those are the, the decisions that you have to make as you're scaling, as you're stepping into your CEO role and trying to figure out your financial.
Jeremy:Yeah. I mean, and ask us, say, Hey, if I buy 2000 boxes, how much, what is that going to look like in my house? It will say, Oh, it's 40 by 48 by six inch stack. Yeah. Can you put that in your living room? And you could probably do it. How many pallets is it? Right. I know I can get 2,400 9x6x3 E-flute down a pallet.
Julie:Yeah.
Jeremy:So just ask us, we're happy to help you. And we're happy to also, we're happy to help you find the most efficient way to, to ship that. A lot of times it's not FedEx, it's on a pallet that gets delivered to your warehouse. We're happy to have those conversations.
Julie:Right. That's awesome. Well, all right. Tell everybody your website or where they can find you on socials, where they can have those conversations with you.
Jeremy:Yeah. So our website is givrpack.com. You can find us on Instagram@givrpack. You can find us on Facebook at Givr Pack, Twitter GivrPKG. I am@boxmakr with no E that's box M A K, R and yeah, I think that's it. I think that's,
Julie:And for our boot campers that are listening, Jeremy is in our private Facebook group for students. So he is in there to have those conversations with you. And as part of our bootcamp, we do have some special rates. So something to think about, if you guys are thinking about joining bootcamp in the next round that you have direct access to our dream team and some special offers. So Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today for giving us great information and for giving back to, you know, replenishing natural resources and doing like the most amazing customer service I've ever had from a box printer. So thank you for all of that.
Jeremy:Of course, happy to help, always here to help.
Julie:Awesome. All right, everybody hope you learned a lot on this. Hit us up with any questions. You can reach me in the DMs of subscription box bootcamp. You can reach Jeremy at all the places that he mentioned, and we'll make sure that's all in the show notes and we'll see you in the next episode.