This holiday season, we've decided to invest our time and a little money into creating special gift bundles and providing professional packaging of our goods. We often tell the artists we work with how important consistent branding can be, and we've decided to take our advice and elevate some of what we're doing. Customers and fans know us from our MADE fair events, retail shop, and developing online store and website. While the products we curate from local artists are the stars, we want our customers to know that they can count on the top-notch service and attention to detail we always strive for. We are putting our stamp on it.
Several things go into deciding what products to highlight and the technical side of it all. Here are some of the decisions we made to make it all possible.
Packaging & Presentation
We have some pretty high standards when it comes to presentation and self-promotion. Maintaining brand identity and sticking to an image and story is essential. HandMADE Montana is about the artists and our unique collection of goods. When packaging up products to ship, we wanted to be able to tell our brand story and let our packaging speak for itself.
In addition to picking up a variety of tuck boxes from The Boxery (best price we found), crinkle paper from Papermart, we added in some customized water-activated tape (WAT) from Sticker Mule designed by the talented Josh Quick.
The first layer in our packaging is trimmed-down, recycled sewing pattern tissue and our signature mint color crinkle paper. Products are added along with the packaging list, sticker, and a handwritten note thanking customers for their purchase. Now comes the fun part. Our custom WAT gets cut and applied to the box for a uber-professional look.
Once we received our first roll from Sticker Mule we were looking forward to future orders and continuing to use them as our source for this part of our custom packaging needs.
Shopify Apps
We did some research to determine what would work best for our need for both an in-store experience and online sales. Shopify has been amazing, and with a bit of help from various tutorials, we have developed a unique and high-functioning website.
We wanted to make curated gift boxes of some of our favorite things this holiday season but had a few technical requirements to make them work with our system. Whatever app we found had to sync with our inventory and reduce inventory once a bundle sku was sold. We often don't have enough products to set aside some specific for our online store and what we have needs to remain on the sales floor. We discovered an app called Simple Bundles that made the process simple. One creates a bundle product listing, then you go into the app and assign which products go with the bundle. Super simple!
We found an Easy Tabs app that allows us to provide information in an organized way without a lot of backend coding required for some options. We wanted customers to read a brief description of the gift bundle, see what is included, and have the chance to see more details. We all have gotten so used to online shopping using our phones, and we wanted to ensure reading through our products was manageable and not overwhelming.
We officially launched our gift bundles today and can't wait to see how they do. There is always a lot going on around the holidays and we hope to reach customers looking to shop local and purchase a story along with a gift. Let us know what you think!
