Modern cardboard containers can do more than protect items on the way to consumers. These unique cardboard boxes can also serve as the basis for innovative and attractive Halloween costumes this fall. By recycling these materials, you can reinforce green-friendly values with your children while saving money on store-bought products. From traditional favorites to handmade conceptions that figuratively think outside the box, the team at Custom Boxes Now has compiled a list of five of the best costumes for this harvest season.

TOP COSTUME #1:  The Ever-Popular Robot
Square and rectangular boxes of different sizes form the basis for this traditional costume. Depending on your do-it-yourself skill, you can use duct tape or staples to connect the various parts of the costume. Best of all, your young child can decorate the outside with tempura paints to express their own robot vision. For older children, metallic spray paints can be used with supervision to create a more realistic version of these costumes. Dryer vents can provide bendable arms and legs that still look amazingly real for a homemade effort.

TOP COSTUME #2:  Dino Power
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The future of cardboard and corrugated packaging may rest with some of the giants of the delivery business. Amazon has already moved toward sending lightweight packages with the help of the U.S. Postal Service; now it may be contemplating hiring local delivery personnel to manage last-mile services in urban and rural areas. By working with these individuals on an as-needed basis, companies like Amazon can significantly reduce their costs for shipping items over extended distances. The packaging required for these new shipping methods, however, will have to meet even more stringent requirements to stand up to the potential inexperience of these new delivery providers.

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It’s safe to say that consumer behavior trends can and should have a large impact on the way companies package their products. Even the shape of your product packaging can have a huge influence on the way consumers perceive it, whether people find your goods in stores or buy them online and see the packaging for the first time when they open the box. The design of your packaging is crucial as well, including the way you position your logo and how you consider the general tastes of your target market. The materials you package your products in should also be chosen with the latest behaviors and trends of your target market in mind. If you want to keep up with your targeted consumer market, there are a few things you simply have to keep in mind to make sure all your bases are covered.

Here are four of the most important considerations businesses should make when it comes to product packaging:

1. Convenience
   Modern consumers demand convenience in their busy and hectic lives, and this doesn’t only apply to the products themselves. A shopper is more likely to purchase a product if its packaging seems more convenient than a competitors’ packaging. It’s a good idea to keep up with current innovations in product packaging and see if you can incorporate more convenient solutions that make the whole consumer experience more positive from start to finish. There are always ways to make things easier.
2. Design
   The way you design your products’ packaging should, of course, be aesthetically appealing to customers and include your logo to enhance brand awareness. Things like universal design are also important to consider if you want to broaden your market potential.
   

   The key is to consider your targeted consumer markets, pay attention to their behaviors, watch the latest trends and customize the design of your products, packages and overall branded experience accordingly. People don’t want to feel like they’re being pandered to, but they do want to feel as if their wants, needs and preferences are being taken into consideration.

3. Health
   It’s obviously important to avoid packaging materials that are thought to be harmful to human (or animal) health. Health is an especially important consideration for the food and beverage industry, where keeping products fresh and preserving perishable ingredients is paramount. Avoiding any materials that have been associated with choking hazards is also important. If you want to let your customers know how much you care, just make it clear what actions you’re taking to preserve their health.
4. Sustainability
   People are more concerned about the environment than ever before. Just think about how unpopular Styrofoam has become since people became more aware of its environmental impact, for example. Today’s consumers are more likely to be turned off by packaging that isn’t considered sustainable and environmentally friendly.
   

   This means avoiding materials that are not biodegradable or recyclable, and promoting the environmentally friendly choices you have made, such as using any percentage of recycled materials in your packaging scheme.

Consumer experts are always talking about the latest retail packaging trends, and every year it seems things are evolving and advancing at a faster pace than the year before. With 2014 well underway, and retailers already gearing up for the next holiday shopping season, many branding and packaging trends have surfaced and shown themselves to be very important in the retail industry. We’ve compiled four of the top trends that retailers and industry insiders should definitely consider (if they aren’t already):

TREND #1: Benefiting from Compliance and Eco-Friendliness
From patient safety to environmental sustainability, retailers have more factors to consider in their packaging than ever before. Some of the latest trends in packaging and branding include more innovative unit-dosing designs on drug packaging, more eco-friendly food and beverage containers and more sustainable manufacturing processes. While these may seem like a lot of effort, the positive public perception to such changes can more than pay for the initial and ongoing investments. The key is to make the changes as publicly as possible in order to take advantage of the PR benefits.

TREND #2: Integration of Technology in Branding and Packaging
In the information age, many consumers already know what they’re looking for before they go to make a purchase because they’ve already done the research and considered all the facts. The most obvious way to make sales in such an environment is to offer high-quality products and maintain a positive public perception about your brand identity with as much good information as possible available for savvy consumers. This is the hard part. One simple solution to take advantage of consumers’ increased use of information technology is to integrate user-friendly apps into the branding and packaging of your products. Things like scan-able, interactive links can make your packaging more useful to consumers, and help them feel more confident in their purchases.

TREND #3: New Methods for Reducing Shrinkage
Shrinkage is a big problem for retailers, whether it’s caused by the theft, damage or loss of products, or for any other reason. The more shrinkage that occurs, the fewer products there are to sell, and the smaller the profit. We are seeing many retail industry trends that increase the security of products without negatively affecting the experience for consumers. Packaging that reduces the opportunity for theft and shrinkage while simultaneously enhancing the customer experience is a major trend, for obvious reasons.

TREND #4: Smarter Safety Solutions in Packaging
While it may seem absurd or even funny, the fact that many people are injured or even sent to the emergency room every year due to overly complex, protective packaging is no laughing matter. Oftentimes, packaging engineers are more concerned with increasing security and reducing theft than they are with the safety of consumers. It should go without saying that this is not good for the public perception of retail brands. Now more packaging engineers are striving to come up with designs that protect them from theft and shrinkage while keeping consumer safety always in mind.

By Matt Ruggle

Sometimes there’s some confusion over what can be recycled and what can’t. For example, a corrugated cardboard box you get in the mail that contains that thing you ordered from Amazon.com last week can be recycled, but the lettuce you got from the grocery store last month cannot.

There’s a great multitude of rules and exceptions, and typically, your local recycling disposal truck driver will know the ins and outs. Unfortunately, those guys are notoriously difficult to catch when they’re in your area, so if you prefer, here’s a website that will tell you more than everything you need to know:

http://www.recyclingfactsguide.com

This site covers more than just cardboard, so please take the time to read everything pertinent to your own life. You’ll be a much better-informed consumer, and you’ll help make the world a better place.

If you’re interested in purchasing boxes with a high percentage of post-consumer recycled material, feel free to contact Custom Boxes Now!

By Matt Ruggle

Every now and then we like to share ideas with our readers on what they can do with old cardboard boxes. As it turns out, so does Martha Stewart.

She wrote an exhaustive list on her Radio Blog some time ago, telling seventy things – seventy! – you can do with your cardboard boxes at home. Among the notables are: diorama, ironing board, paint shield, coffin for Halloween, and dog house.

A corrugated cardboard pinata also made Martha’s list.

It’s nice to see the queen of at-home projects helping to get cardboard repurposed on a broad scale!

Read the entire list here:

http://theradioblog.marthastewart.com/2010/07/70-uses-for-cardboard-boxes.html

Of course, if projects aren’t your thing, we certainly encourage recycling cardboard through your proper local channels. Or, if you need some cardboard boxes freshly created just for you, perhaps with your own custom print, well, obviously, Custom Boxes Now! can help with that.