Hi I would like to find someone to help me with packaging. looking for branded 8th and quarter bags, primarily looking for packaging that showcase the fruit/flower. I am also looking for packaging for various edibles: chocolate bars, 1g chocolates, gummies, otterpops style packaging. and finally looking for someone who has the ability to make custom printed gelatin capsules.
I have like 3-4 products I need to get looking official.
I buy a LOT of packaging & advertising materials. I can refer you to the right sources for most things, but not bags. I can refer for boxes, labels, brochures, posters, custom tins, custom plastic, etc. Designers, agencies, freelancers…
What kind of volume are we talking about, here? Unit pricing really starts to fall hard past a certain volume. Some things can be ‘gang-run’ together to meet volume thresholds, and other things can’t. If you’re small, it’s best to buy pre-made packaging and apply labels, instead of going the custom ‘printed-on’ route.
Do you have designs, a designer on your team, a freelance designer you trust, or a design agency you already work with? Packaging co will generally give you die-lines, and a designer needs to lay designs on to those.
Budgets?
I have a contact. Message me
depending on the quote, what I’m out the door for initial designs and consult, I’d probably start off by ordering an assorted 500-1000 units. as for designs, kinda, I already have names and I’ve been doing the Avery label route for a bit, so there’s some sort of decent jumping off point for a consulting designer. I want to kick it up to the next level.
@COVID-69 has some beautifully branded stuff, I would trust him on this subject. 500-1000 units is not going to be enough to get anything crazy done. I would maybe check out this thread Freedom in packaging and up your small scale sticker game. If you go for better quality paper and pair it with a great printer you may be able to accomplish what u want until your ready to do several thousand at a time
Edit: if you have designs ready to go and have bags or other packaging in mind there are tons of commerical print shops out there that do stickers for like 25¢ a piece on vinyl which is a nice premium feel without breaking the bank. There are also companies that will print directly on the mylar bag for you. Ive gotten design work done and 250 stickers printed through sticker zombie for ≈$150 shipped I think it was 50$ for just the design work
At that scale, you want to…
I think labels will cost you under $1. It costs practically the same amount of total money to buy 5,000 labels as 1,000, so you may as well to get unit costs substantially lower.
Why? There’s a minimum amount of profit printers need to make on a job. At your scale, you’re paying them to set-up machines, prepare files, etc. you’re not paying for paper and ink. You can get label costs down to $.01 at scale.
We love LightningLabels. Talk to them. At your scale, it may be best to use VistaPrint. Or SmartPress.
For packaging, start with MarijuanaPackaging. Everything on MP and more can be found on Alibaba / AliExpress but shipping will take longer and it’s a more intense process (Alibaba, at least).
For faster shipping & lower MOQ’s, look at DHGate, specifically for listings with free DHL shipping. You can add ‘free dhl’ to your search query.
For bags, check out ClearBags.com
I can connect you with an international-based designer who does great work for cheap. Probably $50 per label design depending how complicated you make it and what kind of design assets you have already. That’s stupid cheap.
Or, you can find your own highly talented but stupid cheap international designer on Behance (search for products like yours and find profiles of designers making designs you like), or using 99designs. I found mine on 99designs.
You may have come to the conclusion already that trying to do too many SKU’s too early is a mess… economies of scale don’t work for you here.
Product selection is an expensive key value proposition. Focus on other value adds. Do 1 thing really well and add more items as revenue and team grows.
If this is more for fun / it’s not about profit for you, ignore those last 2 bits and do what you want.
I forgot about @ky_cbd ’s freedom in packaging thread. Definitely check that out. It sounds like that kind of thing may not be in budget, but it might be depending on your motivations / goals.
I’m currently considering his thread there not for the cheap stuff like labels or the complicated stuff like boxes with custom finishes, but for the things like vinyl stickers that printing co’s charge out the ass for — @ky_cbd made me realize how cheaply you can do some of these things yourself.
At that scale get friendly with mom and pa home town printer hungry for business 
mine has great connections in the printing I dustry that I don’t think a print shop formed solely for cannabis projects may have…but I could be wrong
Yes and no— I personally found one that took a HUGE bet on me in the early days. More of a regional firm (of which there are ~2,000).
I’m willing to bet they didn’t make any money on me until this year (~1.5 yrs in). I’m very controlling and in general a pain in the ass to sell custom solutions to. They were patient and spent a lot of money sampling stuff for me, and wasted a lot of time in general.
Now I spend about ~$20k to 30k/mo with them and I’m very loyal because I know they invested heavily in me even though it wasn’t an explicit arrangement. A lot of these guys see this as the way to grow themselves because it’s tough to differentiate / poach customers. So they make early bets on little fish.
Other small ma & pa shops are hustlers. I’m not knocking ‘em… just be careful. In general, print sales reps go above and beyond for customers… they care so much about making you happy it’s almost annoying, even if you haven’t spent a dime. Relationship business, I guess.
Thanks for responding- feel free to hit me at nrussell@pmc-sc.com.
You can see our full catalog of packaging at www.custompackco.com/catalog
Cheers
We can do USA made bags with stickers in house, or outsource these to have them Full Pantone printed. Pantone is cheaper even at this quantity, but a longer wait.