18. My #1 Last Minute Holiday Packaging Hack

Today, on Product, Packaging, and Profit, I’m sharing an easy way to position your product as a must-have gift without custom packaging design. This is something I learned while designing packaging at Kohl's. These two simple additions to your existing packaging make your products feel giftable and get shoppers to ask "Who would love this?"

Things you won’t want to miss:

• Simple additions to your existing packaging can make your products feel giftable

• Why not everything need to be in holiday packaging

• My number one holiday packaging hack, listen to find out

• How to take the holiday packaging hack to the next level

• Why this is the most cost-effective holiday packaging option

• Where you can get what you need to position your product as giftable before your next market

Intro

Hello and welcome to Product, Packaging, and Profit where we help product-based businesses turn packaging design into a competitive edge to attract customers, grow sales, and boost profits. I'm Kelley Kempel. After 20 years of designing packaging for national retailers, I founded Hidden Path Creative, a graphic design studio that supports entrepreneurs with branding and packaging to get their products seen and sold.

Episode Transcript

I am dropping into your feed today with my number one last-minute holiday packaging hack. I know that you are all Getting ready for the holidays if you're not already, and you've got all of those last-minute to-dos that you're checking off of your list.

And if holiday packaging is one of those things that fell off of your list, well then listen up because I have the quick and easy way that you can add some holiday flare to your products to position them as gifts and get shoppers to buy. So this started about a week or so ago. I have a client that I'm starting to work with on some packaging for next year, and she emailed me and said, Hey, you know, I'd be interested in adding some holiday flare to my packaging for this year.

Do you know of any places where I can get some stock holiday packaging? Because we're at that point in time where. If you wanted to do custom holiday packaging, we would've had to start this months ago. And I know a lot of my listeners are in the maker space where you're doing in-person markets, you're selling online, you're getting started with wholesale, and so doing some custom holiday packaging is probably a little too big of a lift.

But is there anything that we can do right now to position your product as a gift? Give it that little extra holiday packaging boost. Now, when I worked in retail before I started Hidden Path Creative some of you may know I was at Kohl's for about 10 years and every year at Kohl's we did a holiday packaging campaign.

We didn't. Put every single product in holiday packaging, but for each area of the store, a couple of products were selected as the big gift drivers. The must-have gifts of the season and those items were in holiday packaging. So think about that as you're looking to add some holiday packaging, and giftable packaging flare to your mix.

Not everything has to be in holiday packaging, but pick a couple of your top sellers, those items that you do, you already do a lot of volume in, but maybe you wanna do a little more volume in this holiday season. Those are the ones that we are going to want to add some holiday packaging to. And when it comes to holiday packaging, what we're doing is we are positioning your product as a great gift to shoppers.

When somebody walks by your table at the market, or when somebody is on your Etsy page, we want them to see your product and not just think, what is this and why do I need it? We want them to jump those questions to, wow, this looks like a great gift. Who can I buy this for? And when you add holiday packaging to a product, that's what it does.

It shows off the product as a gift so that shoppers immediately think, Ooh, who would like this? Ooh, who can I buy this for? So this is where this top holiday packaging hack comes in. This was one that we did at Kohl's every year, and it's a very easy way. To add that holiday packaging without adding too much cost, but you'll get a really big return on this effort.

So the first thing that we are going to do, this is the, probably the easiest part of, of the process is we're gonna add a bow to your, to your product. We're gonna add a ribbon with a bow and think about it when you wrap presents for your friends and family. You wrap, you might get a bag, and then you're gonna put that finishing touch on the package.

Sometimes it's a pre-made bow. Sometimes it's a ribbon that you wrap around and you make curly cues. Sometimes it's that curly cue bunch that you stick to it, so you have plenty of options when it comes to ribbons and bows. So find a ribbon that is the right size and compliments the packaging that you already have.

You can pick a color that's in your brand colors. You can pick a color that compliments your brand colors if you wanna go. Classic, you can always go with a red ribbon and a bow. Red ribbons and bows always scream, holiday. They always scream Christmas. They always scream this is a great gift. Can't go wrong.

And then you're, you're gonna get some of that and you're gonna put those on your, top sellers. So number one last-minute holiday packaging hack is to get some ribbons or some pre-made bows and get, get some nice ones like there are some beautiful little mini fabric pre-made bows that are really sweet that just have some adhesive on the back that you can attach to your boxes, bags, bottles.

You can get a full ribbon where you're tying it around, you can make it your own. That's the great thing about this hack is you don't have to look like everyone else. You can still look like yourself in your brand, but that ribbon, that bow just immediately tells customers that this is a great gift.

And if you want to take this up a notch, and I'm guessing that you do 'cause you're just like, Hey, wait, that was easy. I'm just gonna add a bow to it. What's next? Get a two from hang tag. And add that too from the hang tag to your product with the ribbon info. This is because as we talked about a couple of minutes ago, that ribbon positions the product as a gift and it takes the customer from saying, what is this?

To who, who needs this? Who would love this and that too, from hang tag? Plays on that same psychological trigger. You have a two with a blank spot. Our minds are primed to answer questions and fill in blanks. So when you have those two from hang tag with that blank spot, shoppers immediately go, oh, who could I write to?

They don't. They don't say, oh, who could I write to in there? To, they say, They think, who would this be a great gift for? So it's just that added emphasis on this is a great gift. And who would you love to give this to? and just like the ribbons, you can make it your own. So the easiest way is to purchase some pre-made two from hang tags.

Or you can go on a website like you printing. They have, they have a listing for a two-from tag and you can just upload your logo. They put your logo on the other side, and then you've got two from on the, on the front side and you've got a beautiful branded two from hang tag. If you have. Half an hour, you can design it yourself in Canvas, upload it to you, printing and coordinate it with your ribbon.

Easy peasy. I love this. This is one of the easiest ways to show off your product as a giftable with without breaking the bank because you're not doing custom packaging here. Any of this packaging. If your products, if you put this on your products and product, you still have them left over at the end of the season.

You can take the ribbon and hang tags, ribbon, and two from tags off, and you can save them for next year. So this is the easiest way to do it, but I, in my experience, have seen that just adding these two elements, To your products, to your product. Packaging really highlights them as gifts and gets people excited to buy and give them as gifts.

So I hope this helps. This is something that you could do today. You could do this week before you go to your next market on Saturday. You can do this for any of your last-minute wholesale orders that are going out for the holiday season. And you can put this on products and take photos of them and add it.

To your Etsy or Shopify listings and show it off to customers as, Hey, this product comes with giftable packaging. So, so exciting, so easy to do. I hope that you get to try this, and if you do try this, please send me, send me your photos. I wanna see what you do with this tip.

All right, so if you want more insight on what you need for product packaging, please check out my free Ultimate packaging checklist.

It's filled with the steps and tasks you need to take your packaging from none to done while ensuring you have the right information. There are even four product-specific required information checklists for cosmetics, food, candles, and clothing. The checklist is available@hiddenpathcreative.com slash checklist.

In Closing

Thank you for listening to Product Packaging and Profit, a podcast for product entrepreneurs looking to level up with packaging. We hope you'll join us next time to hear more about how packaging can help propel profitable product businesses. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us wherever you're listening, and be sure to come back for the next episode.

Until then, this is Kelly Kempel of Hidden Path Creative, and don't forget what's on the outside matters too.