When you are starting up a new company, there are more questions than answers.  I am going to lay it straight this doesn’t change when you get further down the road either.  You are always learning and trying to keep up or get ahead of everyone else.  The reason is that if you don’t you will simply get left behind.  It is no joke that there are always thousands of people and companies trying to crush you.  They may not even know it but they are working on it.  So that is why you need to be wise in all of your decisions.  If you are getting into eCommerce then you need to start off making well thought out and good decisions that are based on money and time.  Those are the two things you will most likely be short on and you need to make sure that each decision is based on will it cost more or less, and will it take too much time or not enough.  These two areas are linked and they also come into play when you are shipping items. 

When you decide to start shipping your product many people think they need the best looking boxes and the fanciest of tape.  Everything must have a handwritten note and be perfect.  Hate to break it to you, but Amazon changed that outlook about 5 years ago.  Only boutique items need that and even then most stores are not shipping them pretty.  So first off, get that out of your head because if your competition is shipping in a plane, box that costs 10% of your fancy set up they will win and win big.  You will be out of business faster than you know it because you are losing 90% of shipping each time you sell an item.  That company can spend it on, advertising, SEO, or even faster shipping.  That is what you are giving up when you make bad decisions that cost money.  Your competition takes that money and puts it to use.

So think about this when you are deciding to purchase your packaging supplies.  If you are spending all your money on a nice box and not buying the right tape you could be losing thousands of dollars a year.  I mean it, tape thickness means the difference between one strip used or 15.  Imagine spending 15 times the amount of tape costs over an entire year versus getting the right kind and using less, spending less time and money.  It is the decisions like these that are making companies pack up and go home. So shop around and don’t buy from the first store on Amazon.  Go online and find a good shipping company that specializes in this and use their discounts to undercut Amazon by up to 30%.  That is huge and can be the difference between life and death and that all comes from packaging supplies. 

I know it sounds like a nitpicky area, but it is not.  Think of the competition always and every minute you spend doing some is an opportunity cost on something else.  The same goes for money.  Every dime you waste is a dime you are not getting an ad out or hiring someone who can take 30 hours off your week to enable you to be smarter and work more efficiently.