348: How To Design Great Packaging For Your Products With Miriska Harris

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quota, Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m Mariska Harris on the show. And Mariska is the founder of Outlinematic, which is one of the design services that I use to do box design, packaging, and logo design, you name it, for my e-commerce store. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about package design. But before we begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode.

00:26
PostScript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and now for mywebquitajob.com actually, and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, PostScript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

00:54
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klabio, who is also a sponsor of the show. Are you working around the clock to build the business you’ve always imagined? Do you want to communicate with your fast growing list of customers in a personalized way, but in a way that gives you time to work on the rest of your business? Do you ever wonder how the companies you admire, the ones that redefine their categories do it? Companies like Living Proof and Chubbies, they do it by building relationships with their customers from the very beginning.

01:21
while also evolving in real time as their customers’ needs change. These companies connect quickly with their customers, collect their information, and start creating personalized experiences and offers that inspire rapid purchase, often within minutes of uploading their customer data. Now, Klaviyo empowers you to own the most important thing for any business – the relationship between you and your customers and the experiences you deliver from the first email to the last promotion. To learn more about how Klaviyo can help you with your growth, visit klaviyo.com slash mywife.

01:52
That’s KLAVIO.com slash my wife. Now, finally, I want to mention a brand new podcast that I recently released with my partner, Tony. Now, unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. And no topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:21
to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chu.

02:38
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Mariska Harris on the show. Now Mariska is someone who I’ve known for quite a while and we actually had a chance to meet in person at Brand Accelerator Live last year. Mariska is the founder of Outlinematic, which is a design service catering to e-commerce entrepreneurs. do box design, packaging and logo design, inserts, infographics, enhanced brand content, eBooks, you name it, and they can help.

03:02
In fact, their company Outline Matic is where I refer my students for most of their design needs because of their incredible customer service and they’ll do unlimited revisions until you are happy. I still don’t know how they’re able to do that. In any case, in this episode, we’re going to dig deep into e-commerce package design and the right way to do it to maximize conversions. And with that, welcome to show Mariska, how are doing today? Hi Steve, great. Thanks for having me. I’m doing very well. Thank you. you?

03:30
I’m doing well. There’s a lot of fires here, but outside of that, as long I’m able to go outside, I’m okay. Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. And Florida, we don’t have fires, we just have a lot of water. So in Florida, it’s as if there’s no COVID either, right? Life is normal. it’s like, feels quite normal. So give us the quick background on how you got into design, ecommerce, and why you started OutlineMatic.

04:00
Oh, yeah, sure. So it’s actually a very long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. I used to work for a baby company called Bambo. Is that the chair, the Bambo chair? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I had one. Yeah. Oh, you did? Oh, yeah, those little soft chairs. So I actually studied product design and industrial design. And so I did product design for them.

04:27
kind of took an interest because we had a design studio and we worked along with graphic designers, kind of took an interest in the packaging design, looked like much more fun and it was much quicker than product design because with product design you have to do extensive research and it takes months to take something from an idea to even a concept to development to the final product can take more than a year sometimes. So yeah, and I told my husband,

04:55
I like packaging and he was like, hey, why don’t you just try and design packaging for people on Upwork and stuff like that. And I was like, okay. So I tried it and I loved it. And he was like, okay, no, but Upwork is taking too much of our profit. So let’s start our own website. He created a website for us and he said, okay, if we make this and this much, you can quit your job.

05:24
And then you can just do this because it was taking quite a toll on me because I work like normal hours till like 5 p.m. and then I got home and I worked from around 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. in the morning. And then I got up again at 6 a.m. to go to work at like 8 a.m. So yeah, it was quite something. And eventually we

05:53
just started doing Outlinematic and then we also started adding a few more services and we had to appoint designers because the influx of work was getting so much I couldn’t keep up. At a point I was sitting, at the start I was sitting with like 90 clients all by myself. Oh my goodness, that’s crazy. And yeah, so yeah, then we appointed designers and just so it grew from 2015 to where we are,

06:23
today. Is it a husband wife team? Yeah, yeah. So what does your husband do? What is his role? So he well, it was his brain. His idea from the start. And he gets he does all the marketing and gets all the clients and he does all the finances because he’s like he’s a numbers person. So he does all of that and I’m the creative. So I do the work and I talk to the clients and

06:53
and do that and then he gets the clients and he sorts out all of the financial stuff. am kind of curious, since we’re on the subject and this podcast about growing a business, how does one grow a service-based business? You mentioned you started out on Upwork, you know, with your skills. How did you end up with like 90 consecutive clients when you were off Upwork? Oh, off Upwork? Okay, so it was actually a very funny story.

07:22
We didn’t know exactly how to go about getting clients. So what I did was we went on a bunch of groups on Facebook and we just like kind of promoted me as a designer for people who want to work one-on-one with a designer. And we like pasted the website link and everything there. And one day, you know, these closed groups where you have to like

07:51
get someone to approve you. Yeah. They kind of take you off if you do anything that you’re not allowed to do. So the one one day, one of the people that we worked with, we begged her to just write a review on one of the groups, just tell them that she worked with us and that she was happy and for the price and everything. And she wrote such a nice review on one of Scott Falker’s page groups.

08:20
And that thing kind of went viral. Like, I don’t know how, and it got shared and people just started reaching out. And from that post, that post was what made us like get up from the ground. Okay. Yeah. So, and after that we tried it again, but it never worked ever again. Like for some reason that one post kind of just

08:47
a lot of people saw it and reached out. yeah, after that, we did try it again and it work. we eventually we got affiliates and stuff. So we actually got people who sell on Amazon, but are also gurus and who sell online. And they eventually started referring people to us and referring their students and people like you who refer to their students. So that’s kind of how we grew to where we are now. It’s just like

09:16
word of mouth, people sharing. We never even run Facebook ads or anything. It’s just like people just mention us. Wow, okay. Just in case people are listening, Scott Volcker is a good buddy of mine. He used to run the amazing seller group, but he recently did a complete brand change. I think it’s now called the brand creators group, I believe. Yeah, I think that’s But that group was very large. I want to say it was like…

09:45
60 or 70,000 people maybe? Yeah, yeah. I remember like around 60,000. Yeah. So if you were to do it all over again, you mentioned you tried to replicate this strategy. So you tried doing this in other groups and it just didn’t pick up as well? Yeah. Interesting. And so you have no idea what- And people banned us from their groups. No, but even if you had someone else leave a testimonial? Yeah. Oh, they got you got banned or they got banned or- They got banned, yeah. Oh, no.

10:15
Yeah. So then they were some people got only got warnings. Other people just got like straight out banned. I think at the time I remember vaguely that there were a bunch of fiber people that just bombarded all the posts with comments, their links. And I think it kind of upset the page creators and the group like owners and stuff. So I think eventually they just kind of

10:45
took all of that off. You know, they, if you were from Fiverr or wherever, it was kind of said like, okay, you cannot promote anything on here. This is just to help people out. And eventually people came around the owners of the pages and they were like, they didn’t delete the stuff anymore where people said for packaging, you can go to outlinematic.com. They really helped with this and this. So

11:12
they didn’t take that off anymore. then that started helping us quite a bit. But yeah, we didn’t let people like leave a kind of a testimonial on the pages anymore. Right. So when it comes to design services, it’s difficult to scale. You mentioned you have all these clients and there’s only one of you who’s the brains. How does one scale a design based business? So

11:40
we had to appoint more designers and then the work would kind of be divided between the designers. everything still, I still had to let everything go through me because I was just worried that the quality was not going to be where I wanted it to be. And then, so I would kind of play middleman and just give the work to my designers and let them

12:10
give it back to me and then I’ll send it to the client. So that’s what I eventually did. And is it still like that today because it’s okay. Yeah, it’s in some cases it is for the junior designers. It still comes through me and I would make like adjustments and stuff like that.

12:29
But we have other senior designers that work directly with the clients now as well because it took up too much of my time. I couldn’t handle all of it anymore. So now, yeah, at least now there’s like copy paste three of me and that helped quite a lot. Well, I’ve always been curious actually. I mean, I’ve been recommending you guys out for a while now, but I’ve always wondered like your pricing is very, very reasonable.

12:58
and you also do unlimited revisions. How are you able to offer the pricing that you do? Like I’m looking at competing companies out there and they charge, like for example, if you go with 99 Designs, it’s like 3X more, right? Yeah. Is there anything, like how do you guys differentiate yourself from some of the other services? So, the prices at the start were very competitive and then the other people started increasing their prices and we also increased our prices but

13:28
up to a point where we were like, okay, but we still want to help people who’s just starting out. So with the price to what you get, it’s a bit hard to explain, like with the unlimited revisions, people, some people are very reasonable when it comes to that. They’re like, you know, this looks nice. I don’t,

13:58
want to go back and forth, you know, you can finalize a file within like three back and forth revisions. we, most of the clients are like that. we, you know, we appreciate that, but then you get other clients where there’s literally like probably around 40 to 60 back and forth. They take unlimited revisions to the next level.

14:27
Sometimes it’s not worth it for us, but it kind of cancels out the easy clients, if that makes sense. There’s a nice balance between people who ask for lot of revisions and people who are happy with what we send them within the first few drafts. How it usually works is we send a first draft.

14:53
to make sure that all of the information on the package is correct. And if they like the layout and the design from there on, if they provide feedback and they’re not too sure about what we send them, then we send them more concepts. And usually from that concepts, there’s a final design in there somewhere with just a few tweaks. And that’s usually the way it goes. So obviously in some cases,

15:22
some packaging designs take up a lot more of our time. But once again, it just comes down to it kind of can evens out at the end because some doesn’t some, you know, yeah. So it really depends on the client. mean, one thing I like about you guys is that you pretty much specialize in e-commerce and that’s primarily where your experience is. Whereas if you go out to like a different service of just designers, you know, I guess in a broad based sense,

15:51
you know, lot of those people aren’t going to know the concepts of e-commerce. So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about e-commerce packaging at this point. So first off, why is packaging important? And you’ve done probably thousands of packaging designs. What are some of the most important elements of your package? Oh, yeah, well, we definitely have done thousands. Maybe more than tens of thousands, whatever it is. So first of all, why is packaging important?

16:20
And yeah, you have any stories about conversions and whatnot, feel free to share those too. Okay, sure. Well, there is this one article I read the one time I can remember the website, but I just remember that these people, we didn’t do the packaging, but they mentioned that because of the brand overall that they had and changing their packaging, they had an increase of 200 % in their sales.

16:48
So packaging is important because it sets an image for your brand. mean, you have your logo. Your logo is everywhere. And then you have all of these little elements eventually that tie in together with your overall brand. And packaging is one that’s very important. The one thing that people like to mention if

17:12
If you look at all these influencer videos and stuff on Instagram where people get products from companies, the one thing they love is that unboxing experience. And that’s something that’s very important to people because that excites them in a way that’s almost the same as what the actual product excites them. So if you, for example, get the new iPhone, people are always excited to see what’s going to be new in that actual packaging, you know.

17:42
what’s because the packaging when you open their packaging it almost tells a story like when you open it you look into this nice new screen and when you lift it up it’s everything that comes together with that but just opening that box and the way it kind of feels in your hand that vacuum that it makes when you pick it up that that stuff excites people when you look at these influencer videos on social media

18:09
when people open their boxes and the one thing that they always says, oh, look at the nice packaging. Oh, it’s so nice and colorful. If you look at fat foot fun, yeah, fat foot fun. It’s a subscription box. People love those boxes. They keep those boxes to put the product store, those products or something else back into those boxes because it’s just such a nice design, a nice giftable design. And that’s one thing that’s

18:39
that we’ve seen with e-commerce packaging is it converts very well if it’s like giftable style packaging. You know, it’s not this information overload packaging with all this copy and different images that just overruns you. It’s just a nice looking package that kind of excites you to see what’s inside. It’s almost like you’re gifting a gift to yourself.

19:09
For example, if you order like foundation or something online and you know, you’re like, okay, it’s just foundation. It’s just a, you know, a little bottle full of stuff. But when it gets to you in a nice matte black box with a ribbon and you open that ribbon and you open the box and there’s tissue paper on it. And it just, makes that product feel so much more valuable.

19:37
I mean, even if you look at perfume bottles and things, the perfume bottles cost more than the actual perfume that’s inside. mean, that’s like that for a reason. It gives people that experience and it excites them in a way. So let’s talk about, I you mentioned a lot of things just now in that statement. So when it comes to packaging, let’s say you’re designing a package for somebody, do you usually guide them? Because oftentimes I know like if you’re brand new to this, like

20:07
people often don’t know what they don’t know, right? So you mentioned before, like a package shouldn’t just be a bunch of photos and value props. It should be something that’s giftable. How do you, let’s say I’m a client coming up to you. How do you guide me towards like the appropriate package design? Let’s say I’m selling, let’s say, you know, I’m in the wedding street. So we can use myself as a case study. Let’s say I came to you with these embroidered napkins. How would you suggest that design packaging? How would you guide me? Okay, sure. Well,

20:35
First of all, the product is definitely going to help us guide you into what packaging they’re gonna do. Because if you’re gonna do something like tools, then a giftable packaging is not really the way to go. But in your case, where you’re in the wedding industry of napkins and stuff, having a nice giftable package is definitely the way to go. Because I have seen yourself before and that’s definitely so, say for instance, you,

21:04
order a bunch of stuff for your bridesmaids or something like that and how nice is it to just get a nice looking box with that product, those napkins inside. So I would definitely do something like very clean and maybe like white matte box with you know not necessarily the product name on side but

21:31
you can even say something on that box in a four embossed foil, like something exciting inside or will you be you know, something like that, that will excite them before they even open that box with whatever is inside. yeah, depending on what the product is inside is what you’ll do on the outside. is this a type of box that you designed, first of all?

22:01
or do you do more, I guess, descriptive packaging? What do you guys specialize? Can you help someone design a box that’s classy, that doesn’t really have graphics on it? Except for Lickaloo. How does that work exactly? done jewelry and stuff before. Yeah, it depends on the template. So in your case, where it’s the napkins and stuff, I mean, I’m not exactly sure how it works in your case if people…

22:30
order like because it can be personalized, right? Yes, it can. But the like for a classy box, it would I was thinking what you were just describing, maybe with just our logo on it. And that’s it, right? Or I guess what I’m trying to understand here is like, if I want to do a fancier box, like how does that actually get designed exactly? Oh, I understand. Yeah. So that’s in some cases, people won’t need us.

22:57
for something like that, it really depends on the amount of artwork that you want on the box. So for instance, if you just want your logo on the box, that can easily be done by a supplier. You just send them your logo in vector format and they would probably just impose it on a standard sized box. But in some cases where we have designed jewelry boxes and things before for something that’s a bit more custom that

23:27
you can’t get a standard box for, we would not design the template, they would provide the template and something different will go on each panel. And so you would need someone to design that.

23:43
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

24:11
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

24:41
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. Now back to the show. So let’s talk about jewelry then. So, okay, so let’s say, so when you say they give you a design file, that’s essentially like an open, unfolded box, right? Yes. A flat template, yeah. So that jewelry design that you were just talking about, how did you work with the client to design packaging for that?

25:08
So in that case, the client had a few Pinterest links of things that she liked. And she said, this is kind of the look that she’s going for. she sends us the template from the supplier. And then we would design on each different panel what she wanted on there and just provide like a 3D kind of mock-up of what the final design would look like. Because you can’t really fold a box like that.

25:37
in our folding program. So you have to do like just a mock-up to kind of give them an idea of what the end result will look like. Because if you just look at the flat template with the stuff on there, it doesn’t look that great. But as soon as you put it on a 3D rendering mock-up file, then it’s easier for them to see, to bring their vision more to life. And yeah, in that case, so that was also actually not a very

26:07
hard project because it’s simple elements, but it’s still intricate in a way where it has to be positioned correctly on those panels because when it comes together being a box that’s produced, if the things don’t line up, it’s not going to look good at the end. we kind of have an idea because we’ve worked with so many templates, we have a very good idea of how a box

26:33
looks like once it’s folded or manufactured so we know where to put what elements on that template. And that’s what’s important most of the time when working with things like these very giftable style boxes. I’m just curious though for this jewelry, like whenever I think of jewelry I just think of literally a plain box. Not a plain box but… Oh yeah, I understand what you mean, So what was actually on this box?

27:02
It was like a golden frame around on the top. Yeah, golden frame. then you are a special or so I can’t remember the wording, but there was nice wording on the top. And then on the sides were these, like curly kind of designs. So very classy design, not graphics or images, right? But just okay, I understand. Very classy design. Well, and then on the inside, there was a little paper that

27:31
like was almost like a translucent paper that was designed to lay on top of the jewelry and give like this effect of so you can kind of see the jewelry jewelry through it but with a with graphics on as well. Oh so you designed on like vellum? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So if you were creating a box for like a non giftable item what are some of the important elements that need to go on the packaging?

28:02
Okay, so yeah, also depends on the products. Say for instance, you have a tool like hard and rugged kind of product. Obviously you can do like, you cannot do something very feminine and soft. That’s something that has to showcase what the product is made of. It has to look rugged and tough. So you’re going to use colors that’s going to

28:32
say that like dark colors and a lot of tools have the black or a very dark color along with a bright color like a yellow or an orange or a green you know your standard two colors and then you would have to say what what the product is what it does top features of the product and something good to always say is that it is a high quality

29:02
rugged tool and people, if you have a warranty, it’s good to place the warranty on there. Think of things that you would look for if you’re looking for something, you would need to put maybe a size on there or how many of what’s included inside of that box. And in some cases, it depends on the product, but an image to show what’s inside.

29:30
is also helpful, especially when it’s like a bundle sort of package. You have to show in some way what’s inside, especially if it’s not something that’s very familiar that you see every day. So people can just see what it looks like. But in the case of a tool or, you know, yeah, a more functional sort of product. Yeah. You would definitely have to say what it is, what it does.

30:00
If it’s a multifunctional thing, the size or the quantity of what’s included, the top features of that product, maybe just a short how to use at the back. So there’s a quick tip guide or something like that on the back. So when people get it, they don’t necessarily always want to go through an instruction booklet, but just maybe a quick setup thing on the box. Yeah, maybe an illustration or something to show.

30:27
if there’s an assembly, just how to put it together or, you know, to show maybe what’s inside with either an illustration or just a few images, but like not too overwhelming, not too much, but just enough so people can actually know what’s going on. they don’t have to wonder what’s inside. Okay. Can we talk about the logo real quick? A lot of people get hung up on the logo. Do you have any like tips on just logo design?

30:55
Because I know the students in my course, sometimes they’ll take a first stab themselves without a designer. And I always look at them and go, oh, maybe you should hire somebody, perhaps, because it just doesn’t look right for some reason. So when you do logos, do you have, I guess, some sort of script or template that you kind of walk somebody through to help them decide how they want their logo to be created?

31:22
Yeah, it always depends on the client in this case. If someone doesn’t have a clue, we’ll just ask them a bunch of questions to kind of get an idea of what it is that they’re looking for because most of the time when people say they don’t have an idea of what they’re looking for and you just provide them with something, they actually have something in their mind and whatever you send them, they won’t like it. So it’s always better to just to get something out of the client so you can have just

31:51
even if it’s just a little direction to base your designs off of. So usually it would be things like if they want it to relate to their product. In some cases, people will sell in a certain category and then they will definitely want their logo to tie into that category. But you get different types of logos. So we’ll ask them,

32:20
if they want a certain type of logo, like an abstract logo where it can be applied to maybe more than one category. If they want something with a mascot, you know, like a little character or something, or a combination with a graphic and a word or a typography style logo where there’s something clever incorporated into the actual word and then they can maybe use that one.

32:47
letter or graphic separately and then also along with the word if they want something minimalistic or playful and then we’ll also ask them about the layout. At the end we do provide different layouts where the logo would be if you have for example a graphic and a word you’ll have the graphic on top of the word on the sides just the graphic just the word like different layouts and then also colors. So yeah we always try and get

33:17
as much information as possible out of the clients. But the thing that I would say people should just look for when they’re thinking of a logo is not to get too personal with the logo and not too detailed with the logo because you always have to think of where this logo will be applied. Say, for example, you have to embroider or emboss or foil this logo onto something. If you have something with very extensive detail,

33:47
It’s going to be very hard or impossible for suppliers to put that logo onto something. And it might even increase the cost. If there’s a lot of detail in that logo, flat, minimalistic logos is definitely what’s trending at the moment. like clever typography style logos, which is also flat and minimalistic, but it’s, there’s maybe like a little.

34:15
clever Easter egg there, you know, that’s hidden, but kind of ties in with the brand. Yeah. Like the FedEx logo. just recently realized there’s a little Easter egg in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So is that what you advise in general? I mean, I’ve seen logos with like, like you said, like little stuffed animals and whatnot, but you’re right. It would be hard to put that logo on a variety of different things.

34:39
Yeah, I mean it really depends where you’re going to use that logo. Say you just have a website and you sell, for example, baby products and you want a stuffed animal that has a lot of detail in your logo. You can do that because you’re just going to use it on your website. You may be going to print it on a card or something. But as soon as you have to embroider, emboss or mold a logo, I would just steer clear of anything with extensive detail.

35:07
because it just it makes it very hard for suppliers to do that and to prepare a logo for something like foiling or embossing can get impossible with in cases like that What about inserts? I know you guys do inserts for Amazon packaging as well. Do you have any guidelines on what to include in an insert? Yeah, I would say I wish to thank the client for their purchase

35:33
And then people to help with getting returning clients maybe provide like a coupon or if you want to get emails out of it, maybe have people register their product somewhere, asking to leave you feedback if it’s on Amazon or on Google or on any type of review. But yeah, the most important things I would say is just to thank the client and you obviously

36:00
do an insert to get something additional out of the client, like an email or somethings or another purchase. So definitely think how would you design that? So it’s one thing to like give a discount or one up, but how do you present it in such a way where someone might actually look at it and take action on it? So obviously you want that to grab attention immediately. So you would definitely use words that

36:30
are bold and clear like free gift or something or have like a bow on there or have a star badge with VIP and say like register for this and this. Definitely something to grab attention with like graphic and big words. guess I don’t know if you know the answer unless you talk to some of the sellers like what’s worth the best for Amazon sellers for example.

36:58
For Amazon sellers, they usually do both. They request review. That’s like a standard thing on the inserts. And then they would usually on the one side, they will have thank you and request to review. On the other side, they would have like a coupon code or like a VIP registration, something to get people to leave their email or

37:26
You know, so you have to email them to get a coupon code or register to get a coupon code in that way they get emails. if the one won’t work, they still have a shot at the other one. So that’s why they put both on the insert. think so if you put the request review on the one side and you put the register for VIP coupon on the other side.

37:52
you still have a chance of getting one of those too, at least. So I want to kind of give the listeners a holistic picture of the process. So I go to my factory, I’ve already decided what I’m going to sell, and I want to create packaging for it, custom packaging for it. So what do I ask for? Do I ask them for just like a design template? Or do you interact with the vendor? do you still use the person as like the go-between?

38:21
Do you ever interact with the factory directly or? Oh, no. No, we don’t work with the factory at all. We just work with the client. OK. And then so when people usually come to us, they will have an option for custom packaging, but they maybe won’t have a template yet. But at the end, we’ll need a template or a size. So how the process usually works is depending on what they’ll need.

38:49
We start with the logo. We provide six different directions to choose and combine from. We finalize the logo and then- What does it mean to provide six different directions? Oh, so it’s just, we send them in PDF with numbers one to six and six logos for them to choose and combine Oh, got it, got it. Six versions. Okay, got it. Yeah, six versions. Yeah. And then, so then they’ll provide us with the packaging template or a size and from that,

39:19
we will create a first draft. So obviously the supplier will usually send an AI or PDF. Okay. AI stands for Adobe Illustrator, just in case you get this. That’s correct. Most of the time people don’t have a template yet because they still have to put an order in with the supplier. As soon as you put an order in with the supplier, then they’ll provide you with a template.

39:48
I would recommend people just make sure that they can do custom packaging with the supplier or they’ll have to get a third party company to do the packaging with to print the packaging. I know you get companies that print the packaging and then you get other companies which pack your product into the packaging. And sometimes people think that we do that, but we only create the artwork. Right. Right. Yeah.

40:17
So we create the artwork and then we provide the files that the client can provide to their supplier or manufacturer for the printing of the packaging. So once you get your template from the supplier, it will be sent to us. We create the artwork on that template and we also provide like a folded version of the box so people can see what it will look like. And then there’s like… mean like a virtual model? Like a 3D model? Yeah.

40:47
from different sides and things, so can see what the folded thing would look like at the end. Because you won’t believe it gives you a much better idea of what it’s gonna look like. Because if you just look at that flat design, it’s not very intriguing, but as soon as you see the folded version and the effect it has once, because sometimes you’ll do something on the corner of a template, and as soon as you fold the box, it gives such a nice…

41:15
effect to that packaging and you’re not able to see that if you don’t see a folded version. So that’s definitely why we send that so people can see what that result will look like. And yeah, it’s unlimited revisions until they’re happy with the design. And then we prepare the file for printing, which is creating outlines of everything so the suppliers or printers won’t need the font.

41:45
and linked files and things are all embedded into that file. So they can just use that one file to print the packaging. It’s interesting. I always have my students not pay first, like work out the packaging before they actually pay for that first order, just because like there’s iteration involved in the package design as well, right?

42:10
Like they’ll still send you like they’ll print one for you, for example, and then show you what it looks like. And then ideally you get a sample with it fully packaged before you actually place that bulk order. Yeah, in some cases it does. It does work like that. And then we don’t mind working on an estimate of the packaging size before they have even a final size or something. We can always just change that. So but

42:37
I’m just speaking like what we have in most cases, but yeah, it’s, mean, if people want to do their packaging before they put it in order, that’s not a problem for us. We just change the template when it’s necessary at the end or change the size or something like that. And one thing we didn’t touch on, and maybe we can just touch upon this briefly, like enhanced brand content, you guys offer those services as well. Any sort of design tips or templates that you

43:06
use when just doing enhanced brand content? Yeah, the one thing that I have personally experienced with enhanced brand content is that when it’s very visual and it has some quick points to information that I was maybe looking for that I didn’t see in the listing, that always helps me make a choice when I’m purchasing something Amazon. And even in

43:35
on online stores if there’s that little bit more information. But I would definitely say it should be very visual and very big wording to get to the point, not a lot of copy to read through, but rather just maybe icons to quickly, so we can quickly make that connection between the feature of the product and then this.

44:02
and maybe then a little bit more information about that feature. Things you could maybe not have mentioned in listing images or the listing copy at the top. You can always put that in at the bottom. And which is also helpful is where there is some different images of the product in use and maybe a quick start guide even there. But yeah, definitely just big visual

44:33
maybe some just nice images about the product just to help people make that final choice between yours and a competitor’s listing. Okay. Mariska, we’ve been chatting for quite a while now and I want to be respectful of your time. Where can people find you if they’re looking for design services? Okay, so they can go to outlinematic.com and we have Do you want to spell that for everyone? Yeah, sure.

45:01
It’s O-U-T-L-I-M-E-M-A-T-I-C. So outlinematic.com. Yeah, we have a free consultation so people can book a 15-minute consultation with us and they can run us through their project and we will maybe have a few recommendations for them and help them if they have any questions. But we also have fixed pricing on all of our design services and

45:29
If there’s something that they don’t see, they can just reach out to us and we can provide a custom quote for anything that they might not see on there. Yeah. So, uh, I just want to say a couple of words here too. I personally liked fixed pricing because I’ve worked with people in the past where they charge by time or like they’ll have these little add-ons for certain things. just, like personally to know like how much I’m paying upfront. And I think for you guys, it just kind of balances out, right? Sometimes you have.

45:59
people who are more demanding, people are less demanding, and it all just evens out. But I just like knowing and having that peace of mind from the beginning. Last question, actually, I’ve always wanted to know this. How did you come up with that name, Outlinematic? Whose idea was that? What’s the history behind it? So we registered our company very long ago. We just wanted to start something. So our surname is Harris, and we started our company, Harrismatic LLC.

46:27
We wanted to do designmatic, but the domain was already taken and we were going back and forth between names and we couldn’t come up with something that fits design. And usually when you fill out a brief or you do a scope of a project, you call it an outline and an outline can be that or it can be the outline of the template. we just kind of got stuck with outlinematic.

46:55
And yeah, that’s how we came up with that name. Nice, nice. Well, Mariska, it’s a joy to speak with you today on the podcast. And if anyone’s listening here, if you ever need design services, I’ve worked with them in the past and I highly recommend them. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. It such a joy speaking with you as well. All right, take care.

47:17
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now I can’t stress how important packaging can be to establish a strong brand. And I really like the people over at OutlineMatic who are willing to work with picky people like myself. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 348. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandon card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot.

47:46
So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash dv. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-I-P-T dot I-O slash dv.

48:15
Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.