A lot of the time, the work we do at RDR requires an understanding of the positive or negative trickle-down effect that packaging can have upon a business. Often, if something has gone wrong for one of our customers, it can have a seriously negative impact on the business they do with their customers. For the team at RDR, the opportunity to troubleshoot in a way that will not only help our customers but the people for whom they provide a service, feels like a huge bonus.
One recent example involved a spice-blending business who were having trouble with their storage bags.
Strength in Tote Packaging Design
This customer, like many others, stores their spice blends in large tote bags – in this case, measuring 5 feet by 3 feet. Tote bags work perfectly for this kind of food storage because they are strong, flexible and make excellent use of space. But in this case, the bags seemed to be more trouble than they were worth.
The problem was that the Tote bags they were using were simply not strong enough to hold the product; blends of spices and herbs used to coat meat and fish. The bags were also sagging, which made them hard to fit onto the storage racks being used by both our customer, and the food companies they were selling to. It was an irritating and time-consuming problem that was slowing down the whole production line, and potentially causing the companies supplied by our customer to look elsewhere.
When we heard about this, our production team sprang into action straight away. We knew that if we could tackle the strength issue, then everything else would fall into place. We started with a stronger material, then designed a bag with extra supports which would enable it to keep its structure. Our customer was delighted with the sample bag we provided, and after testing it to make sure it would do the job, put in a large order.
Save Time, Save Thousands!
With this kind of project, it’s not always possible to cut costs when the solution naturally involves the use of better materials. But just consider the fact that this company stores up to 3,000 of these bags a year; our strengthened packaging design saved our customers hundreds of hours of labour (and therefore thousands of dollars) by streamlining their storage and transportation processes. What’s more, the new and improved design solved the issue for their customers as well, meaning everyone was happy.
Ultimately, this was a customer who needed a problem solved quickly. However, just as RDR has no knowledge of spice blending, our customer lacked the knowledge to tackle the tote bag problem themselves. For us, being able to help fix this problem and get their business back on track was enormously rewarding – and pretty good for business too!
RDR can offer simple and straightforward packaging solutions that won’t break the bank. If you’d like to learn more about the packaging services we offer, contact Ian Ray here, and see if we can help.
