E566: Easy Tips to Save on Packaging Costs

Elizabeth Corbett discusses the biggest mistakes e-commerce brands make with packaging, the opportunities they're missing out on and the easy ways you can save on packaging costs. 

Packaging is one of the most important aspects to improving your customers' unboxing experience.

Its the one opportunity you have to communicate with your customers so you should be investing quite a bit into it. 

That's why we've invited Elizabeth Corbett to the podcast to talk to us all about packaging, the biggest mistakes brands make, and why you should consider eco friendly solutions for packaging. 

Here's some timestamps to get you by: 

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 01:28 – Packaging Mistakes
• 04:11 – Packaging Waste and Cost Savings
• 07:00 – Benefits of Shipping In Its Own Container
• 10:43 – Dealing with Porch Pirates and Returns in DTC Packaging
• 14:41 – Considerations for Sourcing Packaging Materials
• 18:55 – The Impact of Freight Costs on Packaging
• 27:25 – The Growing Importance of Sustainable Packaging
• 33:34 – Contact Elizabeth for your packaging concerns

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

Transcript

Ecomcrew: 
Ready to start and grow your own profitable e -commerce brand? This is the Ecom Crew Podcast, the web's most transparent podcast where we don't hide our brands, our products, or our failures. From creating stellar products to selling both on Amazon and off Amazon. Keep listening for authentic stories, practical advice, and tactical tips for starting and running your own e -commerce business.

Ecomcrew (00:31.758)
Hey guys, Dave Bryant here and before we begin the podcast, I just want to give a quick plug for our new course launching this week, Find a Profitable Product to Sell in 2025. So if you struggled to launch any products this year because of things like Chinese competitors and diminishing margins, then this is the course for you. In this course, which is packed with tons of new content, we'll cover a bunch of different strategies for avoiding Chinese competitors, things like the

kit and book technique and the cockroach approach. We'll also cover ways to minimize your costs, including ways to get around placement fees and even section 301 tariffs, all completely legal ways, both in terms of the government and Amazon TOS. So we're only a few months away from the end of the year and Chinese New Year. So now is actually the time to start developing your products that you plan to launch next year. Keep an eye out for the emails which are coming to your inbox this week or head on over to ecomcrew .com.

All right, onto the podcast. Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. As I was mentioning before we got on the pod, I was saying that we get a lot of outreach for people who want to come on the podcast. And when your email came in about a packaging guru who can help DTC brands, I thought this would be really relevant and valuable to our audience. So really looking forward to what we can offer people listening today. appreciate it.

All right, well, why don't we jump right into it? Elizabeth is, like I mentioned, a packaging guru. You've been doing this for a long time and you help DTC brands to improve their packaging experience. And so let's get right into it. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see DTC brands making, I guess, both small and large when it comes to packaging? And what are some of the opportunities that they're leaving on the table? I think one of the bigger mistakes I see is if they're spending money needlessly from a budget perspective.

So I use a supplement brand for an example. If your supplement brand is going to be sold DTC and it's also gonna be sold, let's say in CVS or Walgreens, well maybe in CVS or Walgreens you need a secondary curtain, you don't need that secondary curtain in your e -comm package. So you're automatically gonna save, I don't know, anywhere from like 20 cents to a dollar depending on your quantities. I think another thing I see is, again, I'll use DTC again is,

Ecomcrew (02:50.304)
Maybe you've got a supplement brand and that jar is meant to be something that sits on your kitchen counter or it sits on your bathroom counter and it's supposed to look nice, right? But that jar is expensive. When somebody goes to reorder, do you really need that jar again? Or could you pivot to maybe doing some sort of flexible packaging as a refill? Two things happen there. One is your packaging is less. You're going to spend less on the shipping and

you're also being more sustainable, right? You're using less material because material is the majority of any cost of your packaging. So like if you're making a box or a bag or a jar, half the cost of that is the actual material, whether that be glass, plastic paper, whatever it is. So to be able to reduce that. And then I think the other thing is just thinking about the actual shipping box. So for example, I, just like everybody else hates getting something in a box that's way too big, right?

A, feel is something missing, right? Did I get robbed, right? Did I get cheated or wow, they just wasted a ton of material. I recently and I'm not going to say who it was, but I recently bought something in Costco where you've got your master cart and you're like, that's cool. And then I opened it and the product was half the size of the master box. And I felt kind of robbed.

Then I started thinking about the fact that I was like, I felt deceived, but at the same time I started thinking about, wow, you just wasted a ton of money on your box. You wasted a ton of money in terms of shipping, know, how many on a skid, et cetera. So those are some of the, I guess, the basics. And then the only other thing I would say is I've obviously talked about ways to save money, but also remember that this is your one opportunity to interact with the consumer. So you can save money in some ways,

but remember that this is your opportunity to build a relationship. And sometimes I see that people forget that. And when you have a great e -comm experience, you remember it and you tell everybody about it. That's great. Yeah, it's interesting how you mentioned about the dimensional size of packaging. And a lot of times us, DTC brands, we think about the size of the box and being oversized in the fact that it's going to have a higher dim weight and going to have higher shipping fees.

Ecomcrew (05:11.714)
But we also forget that bigger box also means higher packaging costs. So I think that's a really interesting consideration. It's something that even me, I don't think I ever really take that into account when I'm trying to shave off, you know, a quarter of an inch on a box is, hey, maybe that's an opportunity to negotiate with packaging supplier and our Chinese suppliers if they're the ones producing the packaging. But hey, you know, we're reducing the packaging size. Give us a little bit of a cost savings too. Because a lot of times it's Chinese supplier arranging the packaging.

And once you reduce the packaging size, they don't reduce the cost of the product, whether they're incorporating that packaging cost into the product cost or not. And then there's always the opportunity to in the Amazon speak to ship in its own container. Is it something where you have the opportunity to do that as well? That doesn't fit for everything. Right. But like I just bought my husband a solo stove for our wedding anniversary. I know. So sexy. We've had them on the podcast.

really? husband was pretty excited. Anyway, I would have been disappointed if that didn't arrive to me in its original container. That would be crazy to put that in something else. But I'm actually working with Culligan Water and working with them on two really big projects, like 130 SKUs. And there are a couple of their SKUs that we are redesigning the packaging so that it can work.

as a ship in its own container. It saves them money, it saves Amazon money, and then obviously Amazon passes some of that savings on to them. It's interesting you brought that up because I'm definitely as a brand seeing a lot of emails coming in from Amazon trying to promote ship in its own container. So it does seem like they're putting a lot of effort behind getting sellers to shift to ship in its own container. For me personally, actually, I had not known about this program before this year. So I guess the first question is, has it existed before this year?

And number two, can you give a bit of an overview on the program and some of the things that brands need to be aware of when it comes to shipping its own container with Amazon? It's actually existed for a while. Total guess. I know it's been in discussions for at least seven or eight years. So it's been a really long time, but I think it's taken a long time to get here. And there are a lot of things where I think people are still trying to figure out how to do that. So, for example, my husband and I have two 70 pound yellow labs. So

Ecomcrew (07:29.838)
We have Chewy on SpeedDial and our Chewy dog food bags, which I know I'm sure I could buy on Amazon too, but those come in a huge, I mean, they're big bags and they come in big corrugated boxes. I know that Amazon has identified pet products as an area, as like, what could we do to address that market? Because it is a lot of packaging. I'll be the first one to say that. And I don't want to change having to go back to the store because I'm buying 50 pound bags of dog food.

having them delivered to my house is definitely the way to go. But I know that Amazon has done a pretty good job of identifying certain markets where it makes sense to try to move people to ship in its own container. You know, the things that I'm working on for Colligan are things like dispensers and pitchers. And when you're designing the packaging is to have that conversation. So my company does everything from structural and graphic design all the way through manufacturing of

packaging. And so that's one of the first questions that we're asking is, how are you going to sell this? Right? Is this going to be in retail? Is it going to be in DTC? If it is in DTC, is it possible to maybe design packaging that can work in both and think about the concept of shipping its own container? There are a couple of really key things that are super important whenever you're developing packaging.

One is, does it protect the product? That's probably the number one thing. And I've seen lots of people make the mistake of designing something that's really fancy and really beautiful, but doesn't protect the product, right? Does it represent your brand and does it meet your budget? And if you hit those three things, everybody wins, right? I win, my customer wins, everybody wins. So the protection of the product is really the number one thing. And it's one of those things we discuss. So as we're designing, we're keeping that in mind.

and any good structural engineer has that in mind. And then there are a number of tests that you go through that Amazon has their standards. There's also something called ISTA, which has their standards in terms of determining how that package is going to ship and how it performs. And there's kind of two core ways. One is how is it going to perform on a skid? So if something's coming from China, for example, how is it going to perform in a container or a truck or a rail car?

Ecomcrew (09:45.964)
And then how is it going to perform if it's shipped as a single item, like Amazon, whether that be on Amazon or UPS or the USPS, know, whatever that is. So those are conversations to have, you know, that I'm having with my customers, figuring out how to do that and how to design it in such a way to do that. There are a lot of benefits, honestly, to designing for shipping in some container. One is Amazon, obviously, incents you. But the other thing is, is if you can design something

that can work on a shelf at Walmart and also shipping through Amazon, you really win because you're not having to design two different SKUs. And that is possible. Not always, but it's definitely possible. And I know it's a bummer that somebody slaps a label on your brand. I get it. Okay. I mean, that's the only bummer part. If you ask me about the whole thing, but overall from a cost and a sustainability perspective and the incentives that you would get from an Amazon, and I'm assuming that walmart .com does the same.

or over at Costco .com or Sam's Club .com because those are doing a lot more shipping direct to consumer as well now. So a couple of questions on shipping your own container. So two things come to mind. Number one, how do you eliminate porch pirates? Because that's always a big fear for us. So we sell a relatively high ticket item. And if it shows in big clear letters, this is an expensive item inside somebody walking by outside of our house, well, they may be inclined to go grab it. So number one is how do you eliminate?

Orch pirates. And is there anything to taking the consideration there? And then the other thing is, that with Amazon, seems, you know, roughly probably 5 % of overall returns are just people buying an item and changing their mind and shipping it back to you. And if there's a big UPS label put on that product, often what happens is now it gets added to unsellable inventory. So how does a brand eliminate having that label?

be put on shipping in its own container and then every return that is simply changed their mind return reason get put into unsolvable inventory and or disposed. So I'll go to the porch pirate first. So if it is a high ticket item, I would not do ship in its own container or I would do ship in its own container that is honestly plain craft. And in that case, what you're going to have to do is figure out how to make the opening experience better.

Ecomcrew (12:02.158)
So maybe you're saving money by maybe making the exterior of the box a craft. And then when you open the box, maybe there's printing on there, there's a message, there's a QR code, there's something to build some sort of experience. One of my favorite, my husband subscribes to meandies .com. He just loves the fact that I tell everybody that. But when you first subscribe to meandies .com and you get like a 12 pack, it comes in a plain brown.

box, right? It looks plain, but when you open it up, it's really cool. It's got like their signature colors are black and purple and it's got a tray with one pair of underwear on that. And it says, wait, cause their whole thing is they want to make sure that that one fits and everything's good. Then you lift up the tray and then there's your other 11, but it's actually a pretty cool experience and it's men's underwear, right?

So I'm sorry to be weird. So that's a good example. I redesigned Tiffany's e -commerce packaging. used to be Tiffany's e -commerce packaging was literally a plain brown RSC, whatever the blue box is, wrapped in a thousand levels of bubble wrap, shoved in there, and that was it. I mean, it was still in the blue box, but it was not a great experience. So when we redesigned that experience,

What we did is we kept the craft exterior because you don't want anybody to go, that's Tiffany. I'm going to go pick that up. But when you opened it up, it was a beautiful blue and white inside, had a great message. It had custom tissue, custom note. So you got to have that experience. But if you just looked at the box from the outside, it had a little return address on it. was very, very simple. Nobody's going to look at that box and think, wow, that's awesome.

So that would be from a porch pirate perspective, that is the very best way to do that. And we do a lot of packaging where the inside is really the experience and the fun part and the outside is pretty plain. So that's always an option. In the case of the Amazon, I would tell you that that is a challenge that I don't have a big answer for. I think one of the things I would ask for, so everybody that I work with that sells on Amazon and not a lot of them are larger players,

Ecomcrew (14:11.854)
you know, do the deal with Amazon where they're basically, you know, they take a little bit less money, but then they're not doing returns. And the unfortunate thing is I think that that's probably the best path in this case. I would also be really interested. mean, maybe you can share with me, like in the case of your products, what percentage of your products are returned that are sold through Amazon? Yeah, and approximately for our brands, it can range anywhere from five to 10 percent. And yeah, about half of those seem to be

And this is just kind of spitballing it. About half of those are brand new returns, which are simply either customers changed their mind or something else happened where they did not actually physically open the product. just returned it. No, it seems like there's got to be. So if Amazon wants people to go to SIOC, which they do, right, they absolutely want to do them. It saves them time. It saves them money. It saves them labor. mean, there's so many things. It seems like there's got to be.

a negotiation as part of that, if you're willing to do that. I don't have, mean, I'm sorry, I don't have the full answer, but it seems to me that that should be part of the negotiation because you're absolutely saving them money. You're saving them a ton of money. I do wonder too, if there is a certain kind of allowance they allow for, if it's a UPS label on the box, okay, we will return this or we will accept that return and put it back into sellable inventory and we'll stick a UPS label over top of the existing one.

If it is shipping its own container. So yeah, maybe that's something we'll have to do a little bit of research on after the fact. But yeah, that's an immediate kind of fear that comes to mind is, man, if we're doing shipping its own container for every single product we have, it basically means that all of these sellable returns that would generally go back and sellable inventory are now unsellable. So we'll have to do a little bit research on that. Anybody listening to, if you know, please let us know in the podcast comments.

Thank you. I'd like to know that too, because I'm a big fan of Sci -Oc, but that's a good challenge. One of the other things which you kind of brought up is having different packaging for brick and mortar and for D2C. And some of our audience members do do both brick and mortar and D2C. I would think the vast majority do not do brick and mortar. But if somebody is selling brick and mortar and D2C, are you typically seeing that they're having different packaging for D2C versus brick and mortar?

Ecomcrew (16:30.958)
Maybe not 100 % different packaging, but there's additional elements. So for example, I do a lot of food packaging and a lot of food packaging that I do is natural products and we do a lot of packaging and flexible. So pouches. So if somebody's doing DTC in, let's say I do a lot of nuts packaging, they're doing DTC. actually do a really fun e -commerce box for somebody where the outside is craft and then you open it up and it's just super colorful and really fun.

And then somebody is buying different flavors. I also do some stuff for peanuts. But those items, when they're going into retail, oftentimes have displays, like full displays, or sometimes display -ready cartons is what is more likely. So we call it a DRC. Some people call them PDQs. I've heard them called lots of different things. So it's basically a carton where you have like maybe five or 10 items in it. So that's something that would be a little bit different. And most

Often, to be honest, somebody ends up having those as inventoryed as different items, right? Because somebody's pulling that and maybe they've got two or four DRCs per master carton. And if somebody's got just the pouches of nuts, those are bulk packed in terms of servicing DDC. So that would be a really good example of where somebody might have different, not necessarily different packaging, but just a kind of a different setup. And then I would say same thing for

If you're looking at, I do a lot of nutraceuticals and supplements packaging. And in those cases, sometimes it's pouches, sometimes it's rigid. And by rigid, it could be like a glass jar, it could be a custom plastic jar. And in those cases, sometimes they're inside a secondary carton. And sometimes they're inside a, again, some sort of display -rated carton. That would be a better example. And then I have worked with people who end up having, and this goes on your porch pirate thing,

where maybe you've got a higher end product. So the retail version is what we call a litho lamp. It's beautiful. It's four color print label laminated to corrugate. So it's a really nice box on shelf. And then that same product sold through somebody like Amazon is in a plain corrugated box. Speaking of cost, I know this is going to be really hard to give a ballpark figure for, but what percentage of overall cost do you think a brand should be spending on packaging? So if you have a,

Ecomcrew (18:55.918)
let's say a $10 item, that's the FOB cost, you're buying it from China for $10. What would be a ballpark figure of what a good amount to spend on packaging would be? Should they be going as cheap as possible and it should not even be, you know, even a percentage point or is 10 % closer to a ballpark figure of what a brand should be spending? I've always been told it was four to 7%. That range that you're seeing. I've always heard it was the four to 7 % range. That's just kind of like the rule of thumb that I always heard.

And then there are other things to think about when you're looking at your packaging versus just the cost of, let's say, a box. So I'm working with somebody recently where they sent us their existing packaging and the way that they had their packaging was there are different ways to create a box in the bottom. So you can have something called an auto bottom, which means that when it's flat like this, you literally just pop it and it pops open. Right. Real easy.

or you can have that same box can have something called a 123 bottom where you're actually, you know, physically assembling the bottom pieces. I worked with somebody recently, I was starting to work with marketing. said, Hey, can I talk to your ops people, your supply chain people and figured out that by changing that box from a 123 bottom to the auto bottom and a couple other things on the insert, I'm helping them eliminate two people from the end of the line and pack out faster. So in their case,

I'm actually helping them reduce costs, look at speed, and try to incorporate that thought process into cogs versus just thinking of the cost of the box. And in that case, I think going to an Autobot is going to cost, it has like three to five cents to the box. But if I am eliminating two people from the end of the line in terms of manual assembly, that's huge.

Interesting. So thinking of packaging, not just in terms of the actual packaging costs, but the labor cost as well. Absolutely. Interesting. I'm trying to marinate on how I would approach that conversation with a Chinese supplier where I don't know if they would take that cost into consideration, if it would be a secondary consideration for them. But it's an interesting thought process is getting them to take on maybe some of the packaging costs if we're saving them work.

Ecomcrew (21:15.008)
Yeah. And so I'm actually working with a number of folks who've been moving packaging from China to other countries. So Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, and I'm finding, and I don't know if this is true for any of your listeners, but in Mexico, in the case of working with Mexican facilities, absolutely open to that conversation and have been able to make those changes and recommendations and they completely appreciated them. So speaking of the China versus everywhere else conversation,

When should a brand think about sourcing from outside of China? I guess there's a couple of scenarios. There's number one, the products being produced in China. Is there ever a scenario where that product is being produced in China that they should be thinking about having the packaging done outside of China? And then if you're having a product produced outside of China, should you still be buying your packaging from China because they're just hand over fist cheaper than anywhere else in the world? Or are there other options in terms of sourcing?

countries for getting the packaging done? Like, obviously there are, but are they ever practical from a cost perspective? If your product is being made in China, you should make the packaging there, right? It just, doesn't make any sense to ship it in from anywhere else. So that I would say, I mean, unless it's something for super, super high end products, I'm talking like watches and that stuff. There are very high end papers that are brought in from Europe. That's a completely different scenario for making boxes. That's

That's very different. mean, almost all the high end shopping bags and boxes are all made in China, right? It's just, it's from a labor perspective. That's what makes sense. But if anything that you're manufacturing in China, that's if you're making the product there, you should make your packaging there. If your product is made somewhere else, I think it's worthwhile to look at offshore as an option, not just China could be Vietnam again, Thailand, Malaysia. It can be a lot of other places, the Philippines, and it's worth looking at it.

There are certain things you can pretty much only get in China. Like I do a lot of packaging that involves tin. It's pretty much the only way I can get it. I do a lot of packaging that involves glass from a cost perspective. And there's very few parts in the world that you can even get glass. So Europe, some, but super high end. Mexico does some, but they only want to do it for big liquor bottles. Kind of don't want to do it for anything else. then in China, so China and Taiwan are the two biggest areas in terms of if it's glass.

Ecomcrew (23:39.48)
Plastic can be made all over the world. So there's a lot of options for that. But the issue with China right now is, believe it or not, freight costs have skyrocketed. Yes, yes, they have. I skyrocketed. And I'll give you one guess as to one of the reasons. Do you know? I would guess some of the supply chain route disruptions, whether it's in the Middle East or through the Panama. That would be my top of mind guesses.

That's one of them, but honestly, the biggest contributor to air freight costs is Tmoo and Shine. I never know how to say it. say Shine yet, That's probably the right way. I have no idea how to say it. So they have built this model where they're just flooding. mean, you have all these US consumers who think they've gotten this great deal and they have managed to use some in the United States, I don't know about Canada, and US…

If you are coming back from a trip and you spend less than $800 on all kinds of whatever it is, books, tchotchkes, whatever, you don't have to pay tax. They're using that law to get around taxes. So all of these people are getting all of these products without any tariffs or duties. It's brutal. And they're filling ships and they're filling planes and they're honestly filling it with junk.

So it's very frustrating to me. I wish that the U .S. Congress would address this. I know that they know about it. There's been discussions about it, but that's one of the big things that's driving that up. then obviously fears about war in the Middle East have driven up fossil fuel costs. So that hurts as well. But I recently looked at something where I'm looking at items that a year ago cost five cents to get here and now are costing 10 to 15 cents per unit.

And I know it sounds like a small amount, but it's not, it's brutal. So that is my biggest challenge in consideration from that perspective right now. Well, we definitely have a hot take there that you are saying Cheyenne and team you products are crap. I'm so sorry. I said junk. I said junk, my hot take. To be honest, I've written about them in a not flattering way on LinkedIn before too. So I guess they can come hunt me down. Well,

Ecomcrew (25:58.006)
As a husband who has about five different packages coming a day from T .U. right now, I can probably agree with your sentiment. it is really interesting. So actually, my wife is actually a corporate banker as well. And she deals with a big freight forwarder here who deals with T .U. and Cheyenne. And it is amazing. Their business has absolutely skyrocketed over the last couple of years just from that business from T .U. and Cheyenne. And I never even thought about the ramifications for air freight costs, but it makes total sense. is. It's totally filled in.

You can't get, you just, you just can't get on a plane. I always tell somebody, you know, used to be able to say earthquake would be five days if I was looking at something. And now it's like two to three weeks. So at that point, are you better off just doing a fast boat? Because it's a little less money. It's one week more. But if I get on the fast, I'm in a much better place that your product is going to get here when we think it's going to be here versus sitting and getting bumped from flights. Very good point. So

I know that a lot of your expertise is in sustainable and green packaging. Why should an Amazon brand care about sustainable packaging? First of all, it's become table stakes in terms of your consumer. Absolutely. Consumers understand wasteful packaging. We talked about it a couple of times already. It makes a ton of sense to right size your package from a cost perspective, whether that be the cost of the box or the cost of the shipping. But it also makes a ton of sense from a sustainability perspective.

know, consumers don't like wasteful packaging. They don't understand everything. So if you're going to do something that's sustainable, it needs to be understandable. So I'll give a really good example. Everybody keeps talking about regenerative agriculture, and that's great. The majority of consumers have no idea what that means. They can't explain it. They know it's supposed to be good, but they can't explain it. But if you choose, let's say you're using a paperboard box.

and you want to make it 30 % post -consumer or maybe you want to make it FSC certified, customers understand that. They understand recycled content. If it's something that goes into a plastic jar, you have tons of options for recycled, for example, RPET for recycled PET, they get that. They also understand recyclable. So those are things that customers understand and they honestly expect now. They should.

Ecomcrew (28:22.688)
Absolutely. Whenever I'm working with large customers and we're working on rebranding, completely redoing packaging, it's very common for somebody in their ESG team to be in the room. When we're doing that, it's really table stakes in terms of your business. It's also table stakes if you want to be acquired. It makes you much better. It's a much better story for companies looking to acquire you. Is there often a material substitution? Are people switching from plastics to

Paper for packaging a lot, are you seeing that? Or often is it simply if you're already in a corrugated box, you're switching to recycled paper versus not? It's a lot of different things. So I don't see a ton of people going from plastic to glass because glass is actually not that sustainable. It takes an amazing amount of water and energy to make glass and it takes an amazing amount of water and energy to recycle glass. And it also, particularly for making anything offshore, it's so heavy.

right to ship, has high breakage, it's difficult to work within warehousing, it's difficult to ship within the US. If you've got an e -comm brand, I would just tell you don't do it. I mean, you're just asking for problems. And there are a lot of other options that you can do. can move to, if you're going to create something, I would create something that's recyclable and has recycled content. And that could be plastic, that could be film, that could be, it can be glass, could be tin, it could be paperboard, it could be corrugated.

I always ask the big things. It's like, is it right sized? Is it recycled? And is it recyclable? And if you've hit those core three, the other thing is right now there's continues to be a lot of research in terms of making substrates even more sustainable. So tons of research right now going on on compostable film to get to the point where pouches are fully compostable. A lot of challenges still, the nature of compostable films, it starts to break down as soon as it's made.

So there are lot of difficulties with putting, let's say potato chips in a recycled film bag that then goes to Florida with high humidity. Guess what? The potato chips don't hold up so well. So that's something that still is in development. That will happen soon. There are a lot of things that still need to be done at the municipality level. Not every municipality can recycle everything. You're lucky being in Vancouver. I'm lucky with Seattle. In Seattle, I have curbside composting. have

Ecomcrew (30:47.054)
curbside recycle everything that you can think of. Not every city has that. So those are things that need to continue to work. there are, like for example, in pouches, I try to move everybody I'm working with now. was like, have you thought about going into a 40 % post -consumer pouch? You don't have to sacrifice anything about performance or how the product looks. And your upcharge is pennies. It's nothing. so 40 % post -consumer pouch, just to kind of imagine this.

A plastic pouch, which is a simply 40 % recycled plastics. Would that be the gist of it? Yes, exactly. Okay. I'm learning a lot here. Totally off topic with DDC brands. So are you saying, I'm just purely curious now from the green side of me, well, things like potato chips, eventually, will I be able to take that bag sometime in the near future and put it in a compostable bin? Do you think that's the way things are going? Yeah, I think that will happen. Are we a ways away from there?

My gut says two to five years, maybe one. It's just the, yeah, it's just, remember my very first thing was if it doesn't protect the product, it doesn't work. Right. So for me, that's the compostable thing. It's got to protect the product and it's got to make it so it doesn't get stale. It's the number one thing. So nobody wants, you know, a gummy or a potato chip and it's stale. That's the worst. Right. It's so disappointing.

All right, well, we'll stay tuned for that two to five years, hopefully. That would be great. Maybe sooner. I'll let you know. All right. Fingers crossed. Well, that was fantastic, Elizabeth. I think our listeners got a lot of value out of that. So to end things off, what can you do for DC Brands? Who's your ideal client and how can they get in touch with you? Great. So I lead the enterprise division of a company called AE Global, headquartered in Florida.

So I got back and forth from Seattle to Florida, because I wanted to find a way to have the longest flight and still be in the contiguous United States, just kidding, and be working. I know that you would like that, because that's a long flight. And what we do is we work with brands, everything from starting at the structural or graphic design part, all the way through prototyping and then managing production. About 75 % of what we make is domestic and 25 % offshore. And we talked about kind of what drives those decisions.

Ecomcrew (33:04.844)
We work with all kinds of brands. I work with good for you brands from a food. So I do a ton of food packaging, health and beauty brands, everything from folding cartons to custom shampoo bottles, and then a lot of CPG work. So pretty diverse range of products. And we work with everybody from startups to, you know, billion dollar companies. Perfect. And best way to get in contact with you website, LinkedIn.

LinkedIn. way to reach me. All right. Awesome. Well, that was fantastic. And everybody listening, get in touch with Elizabeth for any of your packaging needs. And until the next one, happy selling. hope you enjoyed this episode of the Ecom Crew Podcast. If you haven't done so already, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. It helps more than you know.

Did you know that eCom Crew has a ton of free content including eCommerce courses? Head over to eComCrew .com slash free to check it out today. That's going to do it for this episode of the eCom Crew Podcast. Until the next one, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.