What does a packing table really cost? Three budgets of €50, €150, and €400 calculated
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
5 min reading time
Three complete packing sets with real prices, adding up to a total: what can you buy for €50, what can you add for €150, and when is €400 justifiable?
You ship five to ten packages a week. Everything's going fine: boxes under the couch, tape in the kitchen drawer, scissors nearby. Until you realize you're spending seven minutes per package searching, unrolling, and tearing. Multiply that by forty packages in November and you're spending almost five hours on actions that yield nothing.
The question then is: what does it cost to solve that? Not "what is the ideal warehouse", but concretely — what can you buy for €50, what additional items come in at €150, and when is €400 justifiable? Below are three sets with actual prices from our assortment, totaled.
What a packing table needs to be able to do
Regardless of your budget, you do four things with every package: protect (filling around the product), close (box shut, tape on), label (address, possibly price or return information), and check (is the content correct, is everything sealed). Each budget below makes one of these four steps faster or more reliable. Material that doesn't touch any of the four is nice but not necessary.
Around €50: the essentials you really need
This set is for someone just starting out or only sending a few packages a week. The main difference from "I pack with whatever is around" lies in the dispenser: unrolling tape with two hands and cutting it with scissors is the slowest action in the entire process.
If you want to start even cheaper, a single loose roll is also an option: KINZO packing tape 50 meters x 48 mm costs €3.00. But for six rolls at once, you pay €3.50 per roll and have peace of mind for six months.
Around €150: a fixed spot and fewer individual actions
You take this step when you ship packages in multiple sizes and when packing gets a permanent place in your home or business. Here, you primarily buy choice: a second box size, void fill material, and something to seal and label with.
The pricing gun isn't just for show. As soon as you work with multiple items per order, or also sell at a market or in a store in addition to shipping, pricing with a gun saves you more time than anything else on this list.
Around €400: buying by the box instead of by the roll
This step is not for everyone. It only pays off if you consistently send more than twenty to thirty packages a week, OR if you have one peak period per year where that number is met for a few weeks.
Don't calculate it in comfort, but in cents. Tape is the clearest example:
Six rolls for €21.00 is €3.50 per roll.
A box of 36 rolls for €108.00 is €3.00 per roll.
Difference: €0.50 per roll, or €18.00 over those 36 rolls.
You only earn that €18 back if you actually use up those 36 rolls. If half remains until next year, you haven't received a discount but tied up money in a cupboard. You ask the same question for the sealing machine: it pays for itself in time, not material, and therefore only if you use it often enough.
A useful rule of thumb: buy in bulk if you use it up within six to nine months. After that, glue and film start to suffer from storage, and then you still compromise on quality.
What you don't need to buy
A separate packing table, for starters. A kitchen table with a bin underneath works fine, as long as everything you need fits in that one bin. Also, no second tape dispenser "in case the first one breaks", no five box sizes if three also work, and no void fill materials of types you never use.
What you should invest in: a second pair of hands during peak times, and enough stock of things you are guaranteed to use up. Tape, boxes, and void fill always run out. Machines don't.
Customize it yourself
All boxes, tape, void fill, and envelopes are grouped under Packing & Shipping. If you mainly send flat, light items, check Letterbox Packaging; if you prefer to buy in bundles, you'll find them in Wholesale Packaging for Webshops. Do you want us to calculate which budget is right for your quantities? Send your situation to info@verpakkingdeals.nl, and we'll help you think it through.
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