If you’re a business owner or the employee in charge of purchasing supplies, it’s essential to find the items that meet your needs. Selecting the best packing materials for your mailroom is critical, yet often overlooked. The packaging for your products is a traveling representation of your business. Whether you’re mailing a gift to a donor or high-level executive or shipping a purchase to a customer across the country, you want to make the best first impression possible. Let’s take a look at some of the essential features of today’s poly mailers and what they can do for your company!
The Durability of Poly Mailers
Regardless of what you’re shipping, you want it to arrive safely. The first step is making sure you aren’t let down in transit. Research has shown that packages will likely be dropped, tossed, or handled an average of 27 times per one-way trip. That leaves a lot of chances for something terrible to happen to your shipment. The good news is that, by purchasing the right wholesale mailers, your precious cargo can arrive safely and securely.
While cardboard boxes feature an edge crush test (ECT) stamp documenting their strength, there is no standard for measuring the durability of poly mailers. Instead, businesses must rely on their best judgment.
The durability of your poly mailers depends on internal padding, size, and thickness. When considering padding, it’s important to remember that there are several types of envelopes available: padded envelopes, bubble mailers, poly mailers, and poly bubble mailers.
- Padded envelope: A padded envelope is a traditional manila paper envelope reinforced with foam or additional paper padding on the inside. Padded envelopes are perfect for mailing certificates or documents but are not suitable for more delicate items.
- Bubble mailers: Bubble mailers are a step above padded envelopes. Instead of being padded with paper or foam, these paper envelopes are reinforced with bubble wrap.
- Poly mailers: Poly mailers are made with durable plastic, or polyethylene film, rather than paper. These mailers are perfect for shipping softer items such as clothes, fabric, or even for covering small boxes. Poly mailers are not only affordable and lightweight, but they’re also moisture resistant and easily customizable.
- Poly bubble mailers: Poly bubble mailers are a combination of bubble mailers and poly mailers. The durable plastic exterior provides protection from dirt, water, tears, and punctures, while the internal bubble wrap adds additional cushioning to better protect more delicate items.
Sustainability
With our culture’s focus on the environment and sustainability, providing recyclable packaging can be a great public relations opportunity for your company — as well as just a nice thing to do for Mother Earth! Did you know that the majority of poly mailers are recyclable? Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly common knowledge and leads the majority of wholesale mailers to be discarded in the trash, where they will eventually wind up in landfills — or worse. The good news is that poly mailers can easily be recycled, it just takes a bit of knowledge to find the correct location.
Wholesale mailers typically fall under the same category as plastic grocery bags. As you may already know, the majority of local recycling centers aren’t equipped to accept plastic bags. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a quick and easy alternative! Many grocery stores and retail chains now serve as collection points for plastic bags and poly mailers. To find the location nearest you, visit www.plasticfilmrecycling.org and enter your zip code!
Efficiency
There are few things worse than wasting time and money. Two of the biggest perks of purchasing wholesale mailers are the amount of time and money that can be saved compared to other packaging methods.
Ordering your poly mailers in bulk is an easy way to shave a few dollars off of your shipping costs each month. Not only is it more cost-effective to purchase larger quantities of mailers at a time, but you’ll also save money by reducing the amount of time spent placing several smaller orders compared to one large order of wholesale mailers.
But wait — there’s more. Packaging and shipping using traditional cardboard boxes take time and supplies that are often unnecessary. Shipping softer items such as blankets, bedding, clothing, some electronics, and paperwork can usually be done just as easily — if not easier — by selecting the appropriate poly mailers rather than a different type of packaging. Purchasing wholesale mailers that offer an easy-peel, self-sealing closure will not only reduce funds spent on tape and other packing materials, but it will also reduce the time spent sealing the package itself.
As the old saying goes, time is money. By choosing poly mailers that help increase your company’s efficiency, you’re saving valuable time — and money — that can be better spent elsewhere.
Quality
You get what you pay for. It’s another saying that you’ve probably heard your whole life because as cliché as it may seem, it also tends to be true. Though we’ve already touched on the importance of saving money by increasing efficiency, it’s also vital to avoid becoming so focused on the bottom line that you allow the quality of your materials to decline.
Cardboard features a stamp indicating its Edge Crush Test value or ECT. This test determines the strength of the cardboard and is standard across the industry, allowing consumers to compare brand to brand. Unfortunately, such an analysis has not yet been developed for poly mailers. However, there are several thickness options to consider, and it’s essential to be realistic about your expectations when selecting a product.
As we mentioned earlier, you get what you pay for. If you’re shipping a $50 sweater and have the option of selecting poly mailers that are 2.17” mil thick for $0.03 each, or 2.5” mil thick for $0.04 each, you’re still spending less than 1% of the cost of the sweater if you select the more durable option. While saving money is nice, so is considering the overall price of your item and the frustration of it arriving damaged, or not arriving at all.
On-Brand
Gone are the days where plain white poly mailers are your only option. Now more than ever, companies can take advantage of the technology available to create custom-designed packaging for their products. While larger brands may choose to select a mailer that has been custom printed with their logo or other design, smaller companies or individuals looking to create consistency for a particular project can easily find wholesale mailers in a variety of colors, prints, and styles all at affordable prices.
Shop4Mailers makes it easier than ever to find the best wholesale mailers and shipping accessories for your project or business. Whether you’re looking for brightly printed poly mailers to store jewelry or clear wholesale mailers printed with suffocation warnings that comply with the Amazon FBA seller requirements, you’ll be sure to find what you’re looking for at Shop4Mailers.
