Once up on a time you were a teeny tiny start up and you produced anywhere from one to a handful of products and few cartons.

And then your company caught on, and you grew.

Look at you!

You kept growing.  And adding products.  And each time you added a new product, you added a new carton for the product to go in.  Because that makes sense.  What else would you do?

And now, here you are.  You are successful.  You have a lot more products than you did when you started.  And consequently, you are managing a huge inventory of cartons.  And some of those cartons are an awful lot like other cartons that you are making.  Is that a problem?

Well, it’s not a problem per se, but there might just be room for improvement.

So here are three reasons that it is a good idea to conduct an audit of your carton SKU situation.

1. YOU MAY SAVE MONEY – When you partner with a vendor that has your best interests in mind (like we do) they can potentially recommend redesigns of similar cartons to accommodate several products. Consequently, when you consolidate and order more of a uniform size, that can save you big bucks.2.
2. YOU MAY GAIN BACK FLOOR SPACE ON YOUR WAREHOUSE FLOOR – With less types of cartons, you may find that you can reconfigure your warehouse space and free up space for other purposes. Like what, you say?  What about expanding your front office space, or a foosball table.  Or a lounge.  Everyone wants a lounge, right?  All joking aside, having extra space may just free you up to go out there and create even more of the great stuff you are already making.
3. THE PRACTICE OF AUDITING IS JUST A GOOD HABIT TO GET INTO TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE ALLOCATING RESOURCES EFFICIENTLY – A good partner vendor is not just there to take orders. The best partners challenge you and bring you new ideas.  Especially when you are just so busy being awesome at making the stuff that you make.  You may not feel that you have time to be a packaging crate and carton expert.  Totally understandable.  Again, that is where your partners come in.  A good packaging partner can and should regularly be challenging the status quo for you and bringing you new ideas.

If it has been a while (or ever) since you looked at your purchasing processes for your cartons, we hope we made a good argument for why now is the time to give it a look.  And if you’re looking for someone to conduct the audit for you, we are more than happy to do it for you.