One of the aspects of running an online store is packing and shipping orders to customers. Now, generally we have to purchase the boxes from a wholesale supplier due to the variety of sizes of orders and games that we get.
However, we do get a ton of boxes and packing materials from our own distributors as well. And its the reuse of those materials that are sometimes of concern.
Packing materials are generally always reused (except the black trash bags that one distributor once used. I'm not sure what that was about). Especially when we get plastic peanuts, I'd hate to throw those away.
It's the cardboard boxes that puzzle me. Sometimes, by the time those boxes reach us, they've been visibly used twice already. The boxes are still in great physical condition (mostly, sometimes they aren't and those we recycle) but they have obviously been through the system a few times.
Now, other than catastrophic shipping failure, these boxes work well. I just wonder what kind of 'image' it gives our customers when we ship used boxes to them.
- That we're too cheap to buy our own boxes?
- That we're doing badly enough that we have to reuse boxes (oh no, they're going out of business!)
- Or that we just want to recycle?
Sometimes, I feel we should just use entirely new boxes, so that we don't give customers the wrong idea. But then I'd be throwing away a lot of perfectly good boxes, and frankly, I'd feel bad doing that.