The new boxes arrived from the manufacturer yesterday. The
outside box was totally beat up, but once I looked inside I was happy to find that the
new boxes were intact and exactly what I had envisioned. I was ecstatic knowing that
nothing had gone wrong in the process from design to communication, materials
selection, manufacturing both boxes and inserts, printing the different
labels, packing, and shipping the order. Best of all, I was able to source custom boxes in the US, so didn’t have to have them shipped all the way from China.
The boxes are shiny black with red and white logo and name,
and are made out of a reasonably sturdy recycled cardboard. According to the
manufacturer, the ink is eco-friendly, probably much more so than the inkjet
cartridges I use. I’m looking forward to having to print fewer labels using
those things. It’s nice to know that recycled/ecofriendly materials don’t all have to look like bare, raw, brown cardboard.
Inside the box is a standard corrugated cardboard liner that
pads and protects the bottle. I’m really excited to start using these boxes,
which I can do as soon as my first production run of bottles comes back from
the printer, also local, in Seattle.
These boxes are so nice that I’m gradually going to switch
everything over to this basic type of design. I’ll probably have individual
fragrance names printed only on the larger “retail line” boxes and use generic
boxes with pre-printed stick-on labels for the others. We’ll see. I’m loving
all of the possibilities that are opened up by having found a good custom box
manufacturer.

