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Day 17 Bonus: "Packaging"

Hey, guys, today we're gonna talk about packaging the packaging is one of those things that a lot of times in the beginning when were first starting it's hard to really know how to get things package, especially when you're ready to step it up and offer some new products like framing albums, that kind of thing, you know? How do we package without growing broke? You know what we invest in, what we have on stock, and what do we just pick up? I do want to mention that a lot of the labs now have custom boutique packaging and so that's an easy way when you're starting to just add that in, but make sure you are adding it into your cost of sale so that you're not eating that, uh, that cost, but that is one way to offer really nice packaging for your prints and your products without having to invest in a lot of stock. Peace is a lot of bags and boxes and the folders for the smaller prints. I invested a lot of packaging for our larger prints, but I have a lot of room and we do a lot of it, and ...

so I don't necessarily suggest that when you're first starting, but I'm going to show you both what I am doing now. After fifteen, sixteen years in the business and also talk about a few things that I did in the beginning to save money. But when it comes to packaging, really think about that first presentation that your clients have of your product. A lot of times, we're delivering it packaged, and maybe you're all on location, and so you're actually delivering it to your clients or they're picking it up at your home studio. However there first receiving their product from you, the packaging has a lot to do with their first perceived ideas of what's inside. I always like to think about the christmas parties that you go to, where you can go in, grab a president if you're number one and the number two can take my president or they can go get another one and you play this game and everybody stealing and the ones that they steal, the presence that they want are the ones that have the most beautifully rat because we have this idea that what's inside is going to be the best and the best wrapped gift. And so think about that when you're packaging for your clients, who wanted to be a beautiful presentation, you want them to get excited about what's inside, I'm ready to package up a high school senior order, and I've done a little bit of it already. But some of the ways that I package up our smaller pieces are, you know, here's a five by seven, and I'm gonna go ahead and put two of them together. I always want to face the prince together when we're putting more than one into a folder or a box, and these folders I get from marathon press, we get also the little wallet boxes from them as well, that tie in to the colors, and I could just put those in the folder folded up, and then we're going to tie it with a bow, we're gonna put a sticker on it, and then we're going to add a tag to finish it off. I've got those five by sevens in a folder now and then labels are really great way to personalize for your product line in your brand. So for high school seniors, we've we've got everything personalizing branded with the brown, orange red and a light blue. I've got that light blue and everything on my product line so that's, what ties everything together and things like the folders and the wallet boxes and some of those things that cost us a little more that we're investing in and stocking, I can have those match throughout the product lines and then tie everything together with ae specific branding for the product line, so this is our real seniors line so I'm gonna go ahead and take this senior sticker and just seal up my folder and then we've got it branded there for the senior line and then I'm gonna finish it off with a bow, so I'll just tie that up and then we've got our high school seniors five by sevens packaged up and those were going to go into our bag and in her bag I've got another large, sicker that's gonna also be our rial seniors brand and a stickers in these tags airway to really customize your look and your packaging without having to invest a lot of money instead of having thes bags already printed with my logo, which would be a huge investment, I can just purchase the labels and I can customize them myself, so I love that we've got labels for all of our different product lines it keeps it inexpensive and it's a way that, you know, we can invest in some of the products that we want to that costs a little bit more money but save some money on some other things that we're doing instead of having the boxes themselves printed and customized and have our logo on them. So were we finished up the senior bag here with another tag, that real senior tag and then I've got one of the high school seniors wallets on here and the way we do that and and customize those for our seniors is with a c I I can order a sheet of wallets where every single wallet is different and so by placing all of our orders on one day of the week I can line up the wallets from the different clients and then I've got those two really personalize and add to the bags another thing that you can do is always make your wallet orders a less number that the client receives than what you actually get from the lab so for example while it's come on a sheet of eight so from the lab if we order four sets we're going to get thirty two wallets on my menu it says thirty wallets for the client and so I've got an extra two so that's another way that you can go ahead and personalize your bags just by using one of those extra wallets and then you still have one for a sample box that you might wantto throw a bunch of wallets and for people to look through the's wallet box has come to us unassembled from marathon press and so I'm gonna go ahead and put it together and it just folds up just like a little box easy to dio and once you've done it once you could do it in a couple seconds and it's gonna tuck in there when we're done I am going to go ahead and brand this one with another senior sticker and we do have the stickers for all of our product lines for lauren or from studio for riel seniors and for real kids are different product lines weddings get packed, it's completely differently, so we're not even gonna go there right now. Right now. That's ready for thes wallets and I've got two sets of thirty to go in the box and I'm gonna go ahead and put those in and that's how we package them as two sets of thirty in each box and you could put each one in a in a different box, but most of our senior girls get eight sets of wallets and so that's quite a lot of boxes if you're not going to double them up, but you can decide they're what you'd like to do, I'm gonna go ahead and put these together. We also on the back of each of our wallets, we are putting a label that has the year and then has our website on it. So that's going to go on the back there and I'm going to add those two that box and close that up and then that'll go in our bag and be ready for our senior and now I've got one more senior order to finish up the small prints here, and this one we've got we didn't have a cz many small print, so I've got his two folders and eight by ten and a five by seven here in a box and with those same folders and label's gonna box set up that also has a label on it got a label everything and for our senior girl we used the brown tool to ty and for a senior boy I'm going to just use regular ribbon and we could just leave the box just like that it's very manly but since we know mom's probably going to be picking it up I'm gonna go ahead and put some ribbon on it and we'll just tied it together in our colors and then we will be adding that this one to a bag a cz well that'll be labeled and then I'm gonna add his wallet to it as well to personalize it. Yeah okay, now we finish that up and that looks cute for mom so I'm gonna add uh and his his boxes here to his package and then we've got some tissue that I'm gonna add to both and just kind of q t those up there's the boy there's a girl and there we have those ready to go and I can look well we need to add a wallet his bag to um because I want to be able to look right away when these are ready for pickup and be able to see whose they are right away so we'll add the boys while it here but that's how those air going toe look finished and now we will wrap their large prints now we're going to package a group of eleven by fourteen for this senior client she's got four that are gonna be hung together and I'm gonna show you what we do for that first of all I'm going to add over the image and this is framed and backed and we I use a local framer to finish things for us for many years we did things right in house but I don't enjoy framing and now we've got somebody that's just around the corner and he actually gives us a nice little discount for finishing up our frames for us so we just take him right over there so there's a grouping for these and the way I start with this is I'm going to just add the peace right from the lab that's going to protect the print so that's going to come right in your lab order and it's going to go there and it's you know it's not pretty but it's protective and it's fine every once in a while you'll get something that is, you know, not usable from the lab he might ripped the tape off of it wrong and not be able to use it, so just make sure that if you're going to do this and protect your frame prince that you go ahead and save the ones that you're not using for whatever reason, and then you've got a little stack of them to be able to use if you do happen to ruin one, but that's it, I'm gonna start with that, and then we've got framed corners, and when you get frames from your frame company, most of the time, they're going to have frame corners on them so you can just repurpose those the network's great, we do have extra frame corners in a studio that come from you line, they're inexpensive, and we just get a stack of them so that we can fold those up and have those nice new corners on there they come and they're actually perforated, so we can do different wits of frames, and so I'm just gonna fold this one up. I've done the other two, I cheated a little canda, so I know that I'm going to go to the second hold on that, and we'll just add that to our next corner. Here we go and a third and the fourth corner, so that's going to protect those corners for us, and again, you don't have to invest, though in those right away, you're gonna have those from your frame company, so just repurpose them and that's totally fine now next, what we're going to dio as we're going, teo bubble wrap this and sometimes I don't choose to bubble wrap. Sometimes they do. It really depends on how far the client is traveling or if they're going to ship it. Of course I'm gonna bubble wrap it, then this client happens to be coming from about three hours away to pick up their portrait ce and so I am going to bubble wrap it for them so that it's nice and finished for the ride home, so let's, go ahead and do this. Our bubble wrap is also from you line pretty much everything that we have this just a standard packaging supply that's going to come in like large rolls and bulk is going to be from you lines that's going to air bubble wrap our corrugated cardboard, which I'll show you in a minute, those frame corners, we've got some shrink wrap and those kinds of things and that's all coming from you line the pretty stuff is coming from either a c I or marathon press so let's wrap this one with bubble wrap and the bubble wrap from you line that I get there several different kinds, but it comes perforated at every twelve inches so you can find the right size for your prince I don't keep in multiple sizes, so we've got this with that's probably twenty four inches and it comes in a giant roll. So beware if you decide to order something like this that you've gotta have the space to store it, but we're going to use this and I'll show you on one of our even larger frames how we just double that up. So we're going to do that, but we're going to go ahead and put the bubble wrap around this eleven by fourteen when you finish wrapping, you can put it another one of those labels on it, or you could just put a piece of tape and that's fine, too, and then we're going to finish it off so that it's pretty because we want to be pretty when they pick it up. We're going to finish that off with corrugated cardboard. Now you can just wrap with corrugated cardboard or something simple like that. If you're covering with something covering the print, we don't glass most of our prints, so we want to protect them in some way and then with those frame corners weaken, just do the corrugated rap if somebody's just picking up or we're delivering to somebody in a lot of times if I deliver to someone I want to present it like this with the corrugated raft, but I actually let them on wrap it and I take the corrugated rat back home with me. Because I can either repurpose it or I can chunk it if I need to but I don't want to leave all that packaging with them so it is to be pretty but it's also to protect and so you know think about that as well whether you're delivering or if you're dropping off you're gonna want to leave it as it is but if you're delivering in there on wrapping don't leave it all with them so we're going now wrap this in our corrugated cardboard and I'm like I am going to turn this print upside down so that it's based in to our cardboard put some wrap around this way do have some wrap that we used for various reasons you line again somebody just place this bubble wrap right in here and wrap around it because that's going to keep it all closed for me on and get lots of packaging happening today so this will work I hope you don't hate that noise not quite as bad as shock ward I'm just going to wrap that in this sticks to itself and so I don't need to do much other than just that that's going to keep those ends tucked in for me all right? So I've got that in there face down I'm gonna bring the ends together and then we're gonna tie one of our big bows around this all right now we're tying our big bo around and I'm going to get those already to teo and there we have it now I've got three more of this size to dio and then when we're done I'll have those all tied together as well, right now we've got all four those pieces package deaf and I'm gonna add my tag, I've done my hole punch and with the tool I could actually just slide these tags on and I don't even have to ty it again they're just going to stick, so I like the tool a lot, so I like when we have girls s o that's done now those four pieces are ready to go and those are going to go out into our waiting room. This is one of our high school senior clients that came in, and with every high school senior session we offer a free family portrait session and I love doing that because it's people that we've worked with before they already kind of know the deal and it also allows us to answer any objections about something that the client has already done for past seniors or maybe hasn't done yet for other kids and you know, we get that answer sometimes I don't want to create a shrine did this kid because I've got up these little ones or or whatever the case may be, this happens to be a middle girl and I did her older brothers seen pictures two years ago, so they've been through the system with me, which is great and you know, there weren't any questions that I didn't have those objections, but they're also great to work with those kinds of clients as well for the family portrait sessions because he have done business with them. We've got those smaller prints and packages and folders and then in bags and everything's ready to go for them when they come to pick it up working with the family that we just package has been super fun because they aren't worried about being all matchy matchy for all the kids they did something different for the older boy who graduated, and now I'm something special and different for the middle daughter, and this is the third son who is a sophomore in high school, but they didn't want to do something nice of him and for him, even though he's not going to be graduating for another two years and so that's a really easy thing to do and teo mentioned to your clients at the senior session when they're talking about what they're going to hang of each kid and do they wanted to match? And you know you can talk about doing something really special for the high school senior and then doing something else for the other kids when you do, they're free family portrait session in the fall so this is going to be wrapped for the youngest and I am going tio after the client comes in they're going to see their main portrait's on easels when they walk in through the door and so afterwards I'm gonna package the other campus along with this one and we're just gonna put it in one of our large rice studio bags and this's a gigantic windbag but but we love these bags and and this is a great way to package up your campus pieces and even framed pieces you can put these inside of these bags and these we do get customized from rice and you know they're not cheap and all of this you have to make sure that you're building it in into your cost so just make sure to be thinking about that and you know don't just get excited about the packaging and doing something beautiful in that way without considering what you're charging people for their product now we have everything cut and by that I mean we've got several large prints that the client's going to be picked king up and we've got everything waiting for them out on easels I'm about to go take this one out so that's out there for them but we've got the frame corner is ready to go we've got our bubble wrap cut to size the size that we need to wrap it are cardboard and even our bow so everything is ready to roll, and we've got those pieces for each one of the large pieces will be presenting so that they come in, they can see them right away and it went over them make sure everything's okay, and then we can get them packaged up for them quickly by having everything ready to roll and help them get them out in the car, package him up. The last thing I wanted to share with you is something that we add to the back of all of our prince before they're framed and you guys saw framed pieces already finished, and so I wanted to make sure that we took a step back and you got to see our certificate of authenticity, and this isn't something that goes on the back of every single one of our prince, and I sign this and this is instead of signing the front. I know some of you may sign the front of your images, and I used to do that back in the day because it was like the artist's signature, you know, all that good stuff, but it kind of moved away from it as I ruined a lot of prints because I don't have a great signature, and then I did it digitally for a while. And then I got away from that, too, because even though it was my signature still in my mind and it's just a personal thing, it's not right or wrong. If you sign your prints and you love doing that, please continue to do that. But I stopped doing it because in my mind and the way I grew up, it felt a little bit like olin mills. When I started doing it, I did it because I was told teo, I guess, and then it just, you know, just kept feeling that way to me that it was and that's what it felt like to me because that's, how I grew up, you know, that I grew up in a windmill studio is not in private portrait studios, so I add the certificate of authenticity to make it that artist print sign it data. It tells them how it was finished for lifelong durability that it's going to last forever, and then it also says a little bit of something about my copyright. It just says that lori nordstrom studio is proud to hold the copyright of this image as set forth by the united states copyright law. Eso how's that for you, and then it says, please enjoy this custom original portrait created just for you, so I kind of like the finish of that our clients do know that this goes on their prints. But, of course, if it's frame it's going to be covered up. But that's, okay, it's archiving and its archiving, that original work, so that to me still makes it kind of that artist peace without signing the front of it. So that's, just my version. We do this, uh, just on a sticker. Again, you can tell I love stickers, but this is going to go on the back of the print, and I'll go ahead and put that on for you and turn that over. I'm gonna add that certificate, and then I will sign and date that.