Offering a gift-wrapping service in your webshop: costs and how to sustain it
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
6 min reading time
More and more customers are asking if their order can be gift-wrapped. Here's how to turn that into an affordable product instead of free evening work.
Sometime at the end of September, it arrives: the first order with a note in the comment field. Can you include a card? It's a gift. You carefully wrap it, handwrite something on a card, and the customer is happy. Six weeks later, you have five such requests per day among your orders, and every evening you spend an hour with ribbons and tape.
That's the moment you have to choose: you either turn it into a product with a price and a fixed method, or you stop doing it. Below you'll find what a gift-wrapping service practically entails, what materials you need, how to calculate a fair price, and how to prevent it from falling apart in November.
What your customer is actually asking for
"Can you wrap it?" isn't one question but three different ones. All three cost you different amounts of time and material:
No prices in the package. The customer sends the order directly to the recipient and doesn't want a packing slip with prices. This costs you zero euros and ten seconds of attention.
A personal message. A card with a handwritten or printed text. Costs you a card, a pen, and a minute.
Actually wrapped. The item goes into gift packaging, which then goes into the shipping box. This is the only variant that involves materials and serious time.
Also, differentiate these three in your webshop. If you only offer "gift wrapping + €3.95", customers will also select that option if all they really wanted was a packing slip without prices. Then you're doing work no one asked for.
Three levels, three prices
Level
What you do
Additional time
Material costs
Discrete
Packing slip without amounts, neutral outer packaging
< 1 minute
€ 0
Card
Card with message, loose in the package
1 to 2 minutes
€ 0.20 to € 0.50
Wrapped
Item in a gift box, seal, card
3 to 6 minutes
€ 2 to € 8
The times above apply if your materials are within reach and you have one fixed way of working. If you're still looking for the right box size for each order, it will double.
What to get (and in what sizes)
The biggest time-saver isn't in prettier wrapping paper, but in fewer choices. Choose two to three box sizes that together cover eighty percent of your assortment, and stick with that. A few concrete options from the Gift Packaging & Gift Boxes collection:
Flat and small. The Black Flat Gift Box with Window of 12.5 x 8.5 x 1.5 cm (€1.99) fits vouchers, jewelry, and anything thin. The window shows what's inside, so the recipient doesn't have to unwrap anything to understand.
Additionally, you need a closure that completes the package without you having to fuss with bows. Scotch Crystal Tape 3M, 2 pieces (€6.00) is barely noticeable on a smooth box. If you want to show that the package arrived unopened, Security Seal Stickers VOID, 60 pieces (€9.95) work. And if the customer picks up the gift themselves, it goes into a cardboard bag (€3.00).
Calculate your rate correctly once
Consider an order you put in the cube box. Box €2.99, tape and card together about €0.40, five minutes of work. If you value your own time at €30 per hour, that's €2.50 in labor. Total €5.89. If you charge €3.95, you lose two euros per order — with thirty gift orders in December, that's sixty euros plus your evenings.
Two ways to rectify this. You charge a rate that covers the costs (€5.95 or €6.95 doesn't feel unreasonable for a gift), or you keep the rate low and increase the threshold for free shipping so that the average order grows accordingly. What you shouldn't do is offer it for free "because it's customer-friendly": customer-friendly is a service that still gets delivered on time in December.
How to keep it manageable during peak season
Wrap in advance. On a quiet evening, assemble twenty boxes, with tape and cards next to them. Wrapping then is just filling and sealing.
Set a single closing date. Communicate until what date you offer the wrapping service. After that date, remove the option from your checkout page instead of having to say no.
Work with a maximum. Fifteen gift orders per day is a realistic ceiling for one person. Put that ceiling in your planning, not just in your head.
Let the customer type the text. A text field at checkout saves you back-and-forth emails, and you won't make any errors in transcribing.
Store your packaging separately. Gift boxes stored with your regular stock will get scratched. One shelf, one place.
And when you'd better not offer it
If you mainly sell heavy or irregularly shaped items, a gift box is rarely worth the effort: it won't fit neatly anywhere, and the shipping box will only get bigger. In that case, choose the alternative: a shipping box that already looks like a gift, such as the Pink Shipping Box 15 x 10 x 4 cm (€1.99) or the Holographic Shipping Box 20 x 13 x 3 cm (€3.99). One package instead of two, no extra handling, and the customer can already see from the outside that something nice is inside.
If you sell items where discretion is more important than presentation, skip the visible packaging and stick to a neutral box with a card inside.
Get started
Start small: choose two box sizes, one tape, one card, and one rate, and see after two weeks how many customers select it. In Gift Packaging & Gift Boxes you'll find the windowed boxes, the cube sizes, and the luxury boxes; in Packaging & Shipping you'll find the shipping packaging around it, and in Tape you'll find what you need to seal it. If you're unsure which size fits your items, email the dimensions of your best-selling product to info@verpakkingdeals.nl — and we'll help you find a combination that will last you all autumn.
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