
Back in the nineties there was a series of books "Don't sweat the small stuff" you remember the psychological self help type. In your personal life this is likely a good mantra to follow.Â
Move to a business scenario then it is an entirely different story although many owners and management seem to take the mantra as their business model. "We only concern ourselves with the design and test aspects leave the rest to someone else" is a common business philosophy that I encounter in my consults. This is all fine if you are designing to order and delivering and installing on-site for the customer. The customer does not see the finer details in this case and only gets to see the working product at the end.
Most of us do not operate within this sheltered scenario. We sell products to our customers and the customer EXPECTS to receive it in a predictable and consistent manner from order to order, batch to batch. When we do not deliver consistency to our customers then the customer gets the inevitable impression that our business is in chaos and so the product is by default unreliable.Â
Little things like getting the boxes of consistent size and material, labels in a repeatable format, inclusions placed in EXACTLY the same configuration within the box start to present themselves as major concerns to a customer that has decided that they have a reason to be concerned about your product.Â
I had a client moving to final production recently. They were surprised at the end when everything was running smoothly how much effort and time needed to be devoted purely to packaging and logistics labeling. Take this part of your product seriously, it is the FIRST thing your customers will see when they receive your shipment or buy your product and sometimes it will dictate the decision to buy or not to buy. Remember often the customer cannot see what is inside and they are judging primarily by what they can see in front of their eyes. If the box is poorly assembled and labels are not aligned and consistent, it reflects poorly on your entire product and may prompt your customers to think about the next product on the shelf
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