If you’re not familiar with the term, industrial packing suppliers are companies that help other business entities with packing and shipping their products. While some business entities want to handle all of that on their own, others may lack the technical expertise.
The logistics and daily operation necessary to do large-scale packing and shipping can seem daunting. Many companies don’t want to tackle it on their own, especially if they’re new to their industry.
Industrial packing suppliers are out there, so you should have no trouble finding one as a business owner or operator. However, you need to make this selection very carefully.
If you pick the wrong industrial packing supplier, that can cause a complete disaster. They might lose your shipments, damage your products, or do something else equally reckless or damaging.
Let’s talk about what you want to avoid when selecting the industrial packing supplier with which you decide to partner. You don’t always know how one of these relationships will work out, but some notable red flags that can clue you in to the fact that you’re dealing with a disreputable company.
Watch Out for Negative Reviews
If you don’t have any firsthand experience with an industrial packing supplier yet, then you probably don’t know much about them. Looking around online and checking out some relevant reviews make sense before you contact them.
You can go to their website and probably see excellent reviews, but you can’t completely trust them. They’re likely biased since the company presumably cherrypicked those ones from its most successful business relationships.
Instead, trust the reviews on Google. Any distinctly negative ones should give you pause. You should also look to see if an industrial packing supplier representative reached out to the company or individual who gave them the bad review. You can at least feel a little better about this business entity if you see that they tried to make the situation right.
A Poorly Constructed Website Should Put You on Your Guard
Next, you can spend some time looking over this company’s website. You can think of it as their digital welcome mat. If the site takes a long time to load and has many misspellings in the copy, that’s probably not the best sign.
The site should have excellent UX. You might want to see dropdown menus or icons you can click on to follow the company on various social media platforms.
You’ll want to see full-color, professional-quality pictures of their facility. Videos and slideshows work wonders as well. The more of this you see, the better impression you should have before you ever contact them.
You Need a Pricing Structure That Works for You
When you reach out to them and start discussing the details of a possible partnership, you need to get a price quote for their services, which will work for you. Even if you feel like you’ve found a respectable entity that you can envision having a long-term partnership with, if you can’t afford them, you will need to find someone else.
Many of these companies will work with you on price. They may not lower their prices for various services, but they may, at least, be willing to rework the amount that you pay at each of the packing and shipping process’ critical junctures.
Avoid Industrial Packers That Haven’t Worked in Your Industry Before
Before you sign anything, you should also make sure to ask them if they have worked in your industry before. Maybe you manufacture something delicate, like glassware. If so, and you find out that this particular company has never packaged and shipped something like that before, you may have to rethink the partnership.
You will probably want to partner with an industrial packing supplier that knows the ins and outs of your niche or industry. If they admit they know nothing about it and haven’t worked with a company like yours before, then that’s probably when you’ll walk away from the negotiating table.
Stay Away from Companies with Surly or Unpleasant Representatives
Finally, you should stay away from any industrial supply companies that have unpleasant representatives. Ideally, you want to deal with someone who’s friendly, punctual, articulate, and just generally pleasant to be around. If you’re seeing the opposite of that, there’s no reason to give this company your money.
Remember that this company should earn your business. You have no obligation toward them, and you can always go with someone else.