The Categorization of Packaging Companies
When you are in a Packaging industry you are very likely to encounter many types of packaging. The fact is that this packaging is produced by a number of different types of packaging companies. And, it is interesting to know how these companies work and fit into the wider picture of the product packaging that we buy at market shelves and retail stores.
There are mainly two ways you can categorize the packaging industry.
Packaging Manufacturers: They are the makers and sellers of product packaging.
Packaging Brokers: They only resell packaging or packaging related services.
These two categories of packaging are further sub-divided into more categories mentioned as follows.
Packaging Manufacturers:
The packaging manufacturers are of two types.
- (Pure) Packaging Manufacturers
- Prototype Companies
Packaging Brokers:
Packaging brokers are of four types as mentioned in the following.
- (Pure) Packaging Brokers
- Packaging Distributors
- Packaging Design or Marketing Firm
- Packaging Fulfillment / Co-packer Company
Let’s have a deeper look into the sub-categories of Packaging Manufacturers and Packaging Brokers.
(Pure) Packaging Manufacturers:
This type of packaging manufacturers mainly produces either of these types of packaging, custom boxes (Custom Packaging) upon order from their customers or stock packaging to distributors. It is quite rare that some companies provide both custom packaging and stock packaging simultaneously.
It is worth mentioning here that the packaging manufacturing companies that offer custom packaging use trained sales professionals or sometimes outsource their sales tasks to a third party.
So, if you come in touch with the packaging manufacturer via chat or a call to place an order for packaging you will be greeted by a salesperson from that company. This salesperson can be an in-house employee of the company with salary and commission incentives. These professional salespersons usual are well qualified and well informed about the company’s different types of products and services pertaining to packaging but there are rare occasions when you may not get what you want. It solely depends up the skill and experience of the sales professional you will be dealing with; most of the times the chances are these first lines of contact sales professionals are well competent and well informed.
Prototype Companies
Prototype packaging companies are companies that take the requirements from a customer for the packaging of their product and produce a single or a small number of packaging for a certain product. This package is called a “prototype.” The prototype is only for display or demonstration purposes. Prototypes are usually handmade with some assistance from light machinery to be completed as a realistic looking packaging with custom printing of the packaging.
The prototype companies with creating the structure of your product packaging and will cater to the graphical needs or the packaging. If you are a Package Manufacturing company and are in need of packaging prototype to present to a buyer then packaging prototype companies can prove out to be very useful.
Packaging brokers or Packaging manufactures can themselves come up with prototypes of their own to fulfill the requirements of an order but this requires some commitments on the behalf of the buyer.
Packaging Broker
A packaging broker is a company or an individual that buys custom boxes from manufacturers and resell it to customers. The broker takes an entire headache to handle the inventory, paperwork, accounting, and project management.
A packaging broker is usually well connected and has a keen understanding of the packaging industry. A broker is typically able to sell any type of packaging provided that it has an intact connection with suppliers (packaging manufacturers).
There can be two different extreme scenarios for packaging brokers. One of the scenarios is that there are manufacturers exclusively with brokers and the other cases the packaging manufacturers do not like to work with brokers at all. It completely depends on the business strategies of the packaging manufacturing company.
Packaging Distributors
These types of packaging companies buy and house stock packages in warehouses in bulk quantities and resell them to the customer when the orders are placed. The biggest advantage of package distributors’ offer to businesses is that the packaging is available in a very short-term notice.
Packaging Design Firms (Marketing Firms)
Packaging design firms are firms that offer many services that involve creative work. They are usually reserved by large companies that can spend lavishly on marketing their products.
Packaging design firms provide the structural design of their products and printing that sets a creative and aesthetic part of the product packaging.
Packaging Fulfillment
Once the product and its packaging are ready the next step that arrives is putting the product in the package. This is done specifically by the packaging fulfillment company. Whether it is jars, tubes, boxes or any other types of packaging the packaging fulfillment is the company that does it on behalf of the vendor.
If there is a case the fulfillment company also is making a product for you then it is better known as Co-packers or Contract Packers.
This survey of different companies is made in term of their role in the packaging industry. The reality of the practical ground is that there can be many variations of companies that have acquired more than one role and are basically hybrids.
