Per item or per bundle? Here's how to calculate when bulk buying is worth it
- , by Verpakkingdeals.nl
- 5 min reading time
A bulk pack is not automatically cheaper. With four calculation examples from the product range, you can see how to weigh up the unit price, consumption, and storage space before buying in bulk.
One roll of tape costs €3.00. A box of 36 rolls costs €108.00. That's also €3.00 per roll. And a six-pack of the same rolls costs €21.00, or €3.50 each — more expensive than buying individually. So, bulk packaging is not automatically cheaper, and that's precisely why it pays to do the math before ordering a box of a hundred.
Below are four calculation examples with prices from our product range, plus the three costs you almost always forget to include. Grab a calculator; it's not a complicated sum, but it will save you money.
The only sum that matters: price per unit of use
Never compare the price of the packaging, but the price of what you actually get out of it. For boxes, that's the price per box; for film, the price per meter; for stickers, the price per sticker. Divide the total price by the number of units, and you'll have your comparable figure.
That sounds obvious, but in practice, people compare €5.00 with €12.95 and choose the cheapest — even though it can be a forty-fold difference per meter.
Example 1: Bubble wrap
A roll of bubble wrap 50 x 500 cm costs €5.00. That's 5 meters of film, so €1.00 per meter. The bubble wrap roll 500 mm x 500 m costs €12.95 for 500 meters: just under 2.6 cents per meter.
The price difference per meter is enormous. But the large roll costs more than double the money at once, and it's physically substantial. If you use half a meter of film per package, the small roll will last for ten packages and the large one for a thousand. If you ship five packages a week, that large roll will last you four years — and then the question of whether you can store it properly all that time becomes more interesting than the cents per meter.