Discuss the various finishing services that can help showcase your brand. Topics include custom neck tag labels, hang tags, garment washes, folding, bagging and even shipment/packaging options.
I was wondering what other UK based people use to send their t-shirts out to customers? I sell mine online (mainly ebay) and I charge £1.75 for P&P and I'm not looking to make any profit out of it - I make a decent enough mark-up from my tees at the moment and the lower I can get the p&p costs, the less I can charge.
However, at the moment, I keep losing money on it, mainly through the postage. This is because since the Royal Mail introduced 'Pricing in Proportion', there's a 25mm thickness limit on the 'large-letter' size items and mine just keep ending up at about 27mm. I've managed to get a couple of them in as large-letters and they come to about 90p. But when they go over into the 'packet' item price, the postage doubles, leaving me out of pocket, particularly as I'm spending in the region of 50-60p for the envelope, plus the cost of the polybag, tag, etc.
Here's what I've tried so far...
'jiffy' bags - too thick once the t-shirt's inside and the padding only adds to the thickness,
'flexoform' (or 'flexacare' or something like that) all-card envelopes - I admit, I got the wrong size with these... I wanted C4 size and got the smaller ones by mistake, and this meant I had to fold the t-shirts again to get them into the envelope, increasing the thickness and in some cases, causing the gussetting to fail.
I was thinking of trying th C4 all-card envelopes as the t-shirts should fit without the extra fold and that'll ease the strain on the gussetting, but I thought I'd seek advice from anyone else who's been through this to see if there's a better option.
Polybags - manufacturers of polythene bags and plastic bags have some good products. Many of them lightweight. Service is good there too, you can get them next day if you need them.. They'll also send you out some samples so you can try before you buy..
I've had a look and I reckon the 'Mailtuff' A4/C4 envelopes might do the job. Which ones do you use and do you get the postage into the 'large letter' spec with these?
I use the shiny silver ones that are just shorter than the A4/C4 ones. I have used the A4/C4 ones in these too and they fit into the 'large letter' catgory. They're also really light.. With t-shirts, I think the A4 ones would be good as you wouldn't have to fold them too much and therefore they won't get too think.
I have also used the extra strong ones in the past and found them to be good, but too heavy. So the mailtuff ones might be a good compromise. Definitely don't get any bigger than A4 though..
My advice would be to give them a call and request samples of what ever you're interested in. The usually send them out that day..
I'm happy with them. But I'm not sending t-shirts.. I agree, the images could be clearer, but as I said, they're more than happy to send you samples to help you decide, so it won't cost you anything. (I'm not on commission, honest).
This is a discussion about Best packaging solution for UK RM 1st class that was posted in the T-Shirt Tag Relabeling and Finishing section of the forums.
Best packaging solution for UK RM 1st class 
Re: Best packaging solution for UK RM 1st class 
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