How EcoJoe™ was Born — Part II, How P became the Struggle of B.
(photo courtesy of hojusaram)
In every entrepreneur’s life, the evil B word — Budget, comes into play constantly. Budget definitely limits the scope of the project and your freedom to take on risks. For me, during the production planning really was about walking the tightrope made up by the fine line between budget and design impacts.
The packaging design process was a very difficult battle. I feel like I was running a marathon that I was not trained for, and the moment before I started running, I just scarfed down a giant box of cupcakes. There were times after conference calls I just wanted to collapse and hide under my desk, or throw things at the wall just to let the steam out. I felt like I was grasping for air constantly. The search for the perfect materials was also excruciating. Pulped paper was the first choice because the texture of it and the quality can really heighten the feel of the product, but the limited budget simply would not allow it. To use the paper pulp for packaging, we will have to spend at least $10,000 in producing the mold, in additions to place initial opening order of 250,000 units. And that’s just the packaging, that doesn’t even include actual production costs of statues!
Photo by Leo ReynoldsAfter wasting 1.5 months on paper pulp, we settled on the recycled kraft paper. After the material is chosen, the box style was quickly settled on match box. Now, the graphics.
Graphics were not easy either. To make sure your product sells, you really need to have a nice packaging that sell your product for you. Something like color schemes or the styling can easily sway consumers one way or another. Well, luckily I was not overtly fussy about it (or I will drive everyone crazy crazier). One thing was certain, I want to make a product that I will be 1000% behind it. I simply cannot sell something that I don’t love myself. Lots of emails were shooting back and forth. We went through drafts and drafts and actually changed illustrator to make sure the vision was going to happen.
And graphics were just the easy part (yeah only took us like 4 months to do). The real struggle was making sure everything is as green as possible while being cash strapped.
(for the struggles to go Green, read Part III)
You can also find part i here
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