Packing an order

The first order arrives, you go to pack it, and there is nothing in the house to put it in. This happens to nearly everybody, and it is a genuinely bad evening: the sale is made, the customer is waiting, and you’re driving around looking for a box the right size. Half an hour of shopping beforehand prevents the whole thing.

What to get, and roughly how much

Before your first order, get:

• Boxes in two sizes. One that fits your most common item snugly, one a bit bigger. Ten to fifteen of each is plenty to start. Boxes are usually sold in packs, so this is a small shop.
• Padded envelopes, if anything you sell is flat and unbreakable. Far cheaper to send than a box, and the postage reflects it.
• One roll of proper packing tape. Not masking tape, not office tape.
• A marker and, if you don’t have a printer, nothing else. You can buy postage at the counter.

That’s the list. You are not setting up a packing station, you are making sure the first ten orders don’t need an emergency trip.

Where to buy it

Canada Post's own shop is the simplest answer. They sell boxes in small, medium and large, padded mailers, and packing tape, in ordinary packs rather than pallets, and it turns up at your door. If you’ve joined Solutions for Small Business, your membership number saves you a little on supplies as well as on postage.

Locally, Cabot Shipping Supplies on Burbridge Avenue in Dartmouth sells corrugated boxes and shipping materials across Atlantic Canada, and Jaspro Services covers HRM and the South Shore. Neither publishes minimum-order terms, so ring them and ask what they’ll sell you in small quantities before you drive anywhere. That’s a two-minute phone call and it’s worth making.

Today, in person, a post office, a UPS Store, U-Haul, or a hardware store will all sell you boxes off the shelf. More expensive per box, but if an order is already sitting on your table, that is not the number that matters.

Why we don’t send you a box of boxes

People ask, and it sounds like an obvious kindness. It isn’t, and the reason is worth understanding because it’s the same reason your shipping costs what it costs.

Canada Post can charge by the space a parcel occupies rather than its weight. If we posted everyone the same starter kit, most of you would be shipping small things in boxes that are slightly too big, and paying for that air on every single parcel, forever. A kit that costs us a little would cost you a little on every order you ever send.

The right box is specific to what you make, and only you know what that is. The shipping guide covers how the dimensional pricing works if you want the arithmetic.

If your items are small and similar, look at Canada Post’s flat rate boxes. Four sizes, the postage is included in the price of the box, and it isn’t based on destination or weight up to 5 kg. For a lot of makers that removes the sizing problem and the pricing problem in one go.

Void fill without buying void fill

Void fill is the stuff that stops things rattling. You almost certainly already own enough of it.

• Paper. Newspaper, brown paper, the flyers that come through the door. Scrunch it loosely. Tightly packed paper transmits shocks rather than absorbing them.
• The packaging your own supplies arrived in. Every box you receive is next week’s void fill. Keep a bag of it by the door.
• Cardboard. Cut a flap to sit between two items so they can’t knock together.

The test is simple: pack it, tape it, and give it a gentle shake next to your ear. If nothing moves, it’s done. If something shifts, it will shift for four days in a truck.

Fragile things need space around them more than they need special material. Something breakable should not touch the wall of the box anywhere. Two centimetres of scrunched paper on every side beats a thin layer of bubble wrap.

We’re not going to tell you to add tissue paper, a sticker, and a handwritten card. If that’s already how you work, lovely, carry on. It isn’t a requirement and it doesn’t make the parcel arrive better.

What actually happens at the counter

If you’re dreading this bit: it’s five minutes and the person behind the counter does most of it.

You bring the parcel, sealed, with the address on it. They weigh it, measure it if it looks large, and read you the options and prices. You pick one. You pay. They give you a receipt with a tracking number, and that’s the number you send your customer. You can hand over a parcel with the address written on in marker, and that is completely normal.

If you’ve joined Solutions for Small Business you can instead buy the postage at home in Snap Ship, print the label, and drop the parcel off with the label already on it. Faster, and your discount applies automatically. But the counter works fine, and plenty of people never do it any other way.

Two things that cause a surprise at the till. Weight above 750 g rounds up to the next half kilo. And a parcel gets a surcharge once any side goes past a metre, or the second-longest side past 76 cm. If you’re posting something big, expect the price to jump at those points rather than climbing smoothly.

The whole thing, once

Buy two sizes of box and a roll of tape this week. Keep a bag of paper by the door. When the first order comes in, you’ll pack it in about four minutes and wonder what you were worried about.