Close encounters of the Davpack kind
There are no avenues we’re not prepared to explore in our never ending quest to ensure you are all as fully informed as you need to be about the diverse packaging products Davpack has on offer. And given that there are now close to 4000 of them, you can probably imagine that it’s a quest that keeps us occupied on a more than full-time basis.
Pictures talking
We’ve recently produced our first infographic, in an attempt to reach any mail order businesses who may not yet have fully grasped the implications of the Royal Mail’s new pricing structure for parcels. An infographic, by the way, is intended to be a means of representing often complex information in an accessible and easily understandable format.
One would have thought that it was actually the job of those at the Royal Mail to make sure their own information was clear and easily understandable but, as the number of calls to our Customer service team has illustrated, there is a need for some readily digestible facts that can be easily passed around.
The point of our infographic is twofold. Firstly, we wanted to make it clear just how much you could end up spending on your deliveries should you accidentally use a bigger postal box than you really need to. Because we love you all, we’ve done our best to ensure that never happens, by getting a whole new range of postal boxes made, guaranteed to meet the Royal Mail’s size restrictions.
What we can’t do is stop you putting something way too heavy in, so you need to remember that to qualify as a small parcel, the maximum weight should not exceed 2kg. Something to bear in mind for all you gold bullion dealers who I know regularly read this blog.
Incidentally, there are four sizes in our Small Parcel Saver Postal Boxes range, so there should be one suitable for most of you. If, however, you want one made to an exact size, we will, of course, be more than happy to quote you – although we would be looking at a minimum order of 500 boxes. Naturally, if enough of you start asking for a particular size, we’d consider adding it to the standard range, so it can’t hurt to ask the question.
The other thing we wanted to draw your attention to in the infographic is just how many parcels we Brits are actually receiving these days. Last year, it amounted to one billion. That’s just under 16 for every man, woman and child – although I should point out that Ang from our Customer team has probably already used the whole of Swindon’s allocation for the entire year just getting her new shoes delivered.
The point is that in this new world of internet shopping, parcel delivery is very, very big business – and getting bigger every day. Latest estimates reckon that that figure of one billion will more than double by 2017. So, given how much money some people are going to be making in the courier business (and, as it looks increasingly as though the Royal Mail will be privatised sooner rather than later, we’re unlikely to be among those profiting), why would you want to make those numbers even bigger by taking a chance on which boxes you use?
Talking pictures
The other new means of imparting useful information we’ve decided to explore is the production of a series of videos discussing and demonstrating the uses, benefits and finer points of some of our more popular packaging products.
Our Marketing team (that’s me and Web Monkey/Creative Photographer/Digital Marketeer and now Film Director and Editor Olivia, by the way) has therefore spent the last few weeks scripting, filming and editing videos for more than twenty different products, the first of which are now on our website for your viewing pleasure. While none is likely to be submitted for Best Short Film at next year’s Oscar ceremony, we’re quite pleased with the results and hope some amongst you may find them useful, which was, after all, the whole point of the exercise.
The first to premiere deal with Small Parcel and Large Letter Postal Boxes (this is a subject we’re keen to promote, as you may already have divined) and our single wall cardboard boxes. We’ve included the Small Parcel one here to give you an idea of what we’re trying to do.
[youtube id=”Aoc1rKQYnFg” width=”600″ height=”350″]
With quite a number of different postal boxes available, we hope being able to see them being put together will help you decide which will work best for you. So apart from the two already online, we’ll also have ones demonstrating our Econopost and pizza-style boxes uploaded over the next few weeks.
Other highlights coming soon to a small screen near you include one video showing how to put one of our No Nails Plywood Boxes together, a demonstration of just how many groceries you can fit into one of our block bottom paper sacks, possibly the finest pop of some bubble wrap ever committed to film and a nail-biting race to see how much longer it takes me to construct one of our standard cardboard boxes using a tape gun than it does Maxine (as seen in the above video) to build one of our Pop-Up Postal Boxes.
We’ve also encouraged our Sales Director Paul to star in a heat sealer demonstration, but that may take a little longer to see the light of day, because he has turned out to be something of a diva, insisting on countless takes and regular costume changes between shots.
If you have any products you’d particularly like to see given the Hollywood treatment, why not leave your suggestions as a comment below; we’d also love to hear what you think of our efforts so far!
Dave Smith
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