In my experience, being cost effective has always been the highest priority. This is true because I have always worked with small companies, including the swim equipment company that my siblings and I started in high school with our stepdad. We soon realized that the easiest way to cut cost was being more efficient with how we order materials, like catalogs, product inserts, and others.
Catalogs:
Originally, we only made a catalog to prepare for an upcoming trade show. Due to us making the catalogs for the show, we would include labels like “Spring 2017” and “Fall 2018″, but soon realized this mistake. We realized that we needed to start organizing the products in the catalog, and writing the catalog, so that we can use them for as long as possible. This began our process of creating a catalog that is a regularly sized sheet of paper (8.5″ x 11”) horizontally folded, to have 4 pages per individual sheet. Then, we prioritized the order of our products to flow, as you read through the catalog. From then on, if we needed to add products, we would only need to add pages into the center of the catalog, instead of purchasing all pages again. This cut down on labor for designing pages, and on cost for not needing to order more pages each round.
Product Inserts:
The way we package our products is by putting them in plastic bags that fold and seal, with each product having an instructional insert. These inserts are 2.75″ x 8.5″, to fit 4 inserts on a horizontal 8.5″ x 11″ sheet. This is the most efficient way for us to save costs. When we need more inserts for specific products, we can order inserts for multiple products at a time. When we order, we mostly have 1 sheet with 4 different product inserts on it. This means that if we order 1,000 sheets, then we now get 1,000 inserts for those 4 products. This is very useful for when we need more of one product than another because we can place 2 inserts for that product on the sheet and now get 2,000 inserts for that product, while still only ordering a total of 1,000 sheets. Due to the effectiveness of this process, we have saved a ton of money.
Mallory Tilson 