After what seems like forever, but has definitely been at least six months !, we are nearing the date for our new packaging reveal!
One of the challenges of being a small business is minimum order quantities. If you’re interested in starting your own business, get to know that term, minimum order quantity or MOQ. You can get anything you want with a high MOQ, which means about 5,000-10,000 units. To put that into perspective, that’s what big international corporations purchase !
So, for us small, tiny, minuscule businesses, we must have a minimum order that matches the size of our company – small.
Trying to find packaging companies that work in small order quantities is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but, eventually, through a few contacts and after months of searching, I found a company in Italy with beautiful packaging that had exactly what I wanted.
A couple months later, my gorgeous new bottle packaging arrived at my manufacturer. Amazingly, I discovered this same company would also create the secondary packaging (i.e. the outer box). Hurrah! Something easy with the product development process.
But – J/K. When I contacted them to make my purchase, I found out they don’t have a box for my bottle, and, in fact, they will be discontinuing my bottle.
Wait – what?! When I need more inventory I’ll have to search and change everything all over again? Months and months of dead ends and stress again?!
Seriously. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry at this point, so, I did both.
Then, I pulled up my bootstraps and moved forward.
My focus had to be on getting the product I currently had manufactured and then to market. I would deal with this new packaging challenge another day.
My learnings? Express the frustration with a shout, cry, thump on the table, whatever you need…then take a deep breath and move forward. It’s not time to worry about future issues, it is time to focus on getting the current goal achieved. Once that’s done, then circle back and see what to do!
Always remember, even at times like this, there is no limit to what you can achieve!
Ilsa
xx