Mailer Boxes for London Ecommerce and Subscription Brands

Half Price Packaging is based in Uxbridge, west London, and makes custom mailer boxes to order for brands despatching direct to the customer. A mailer has two jobs at once: get through a courier network intact, and open well enough to be worth filming. Both start with the size. Mailers are cut to your own internal dimensions and artwork rather than chosen from a stock chart, in kraft, cardboard, die cut, box wrap and subscription formats, printed in full colour inside and out. Free design support covers the dieline if you do not have one, a digital proof is approved before production starts, and delivery into your London postcode is confirmed on your quote.

Courier cost starts with the box, not the parcel

Couriers generally charge on the greater of actual weight and volumetric weight, so a half empty mailer is billed as though it were full. That is the main reason London ecommerce brands move off stock sizes. Measure the product as it will actually travel, folded or boxed, add the void fill you genuinely need and no more, then have the mailer cut to that. Depth is usually what tips a parcel from one carrier band into the next, and a shallow mailer is also the only one with a chance of clearing a letterbox instead of triggering a redelivery.

Where London's direct to consumer brands actually sit

The cluster is real and it is spread out. Founder run brands work from Shoreditch and Hackney Wick studios and pack the first few hundred orders by hand. Once volume arrives, fulfilment tends to move to a third party warehouse, either along the A40 and Park Royal on the west side or out past the North Circular. Subscription brands add a monthly spike, where one artwork ships in a single wave while next month's box is already being proofed. Those two setups want different runs and different deliveries.

Designing a mailer that opens well on camera

An unboxing clip is a two second window. Print on the inside face of the lid is the cheapest way to use it, and a die cut shape or a printed sleeve does more for that moment than a bigger logo outside. Subscription boxes can carry a different inner print each cycle while the outer stays constant. Kraft reads as unbleached and plain, cardboard takes heavier ink coverage, and box wrap turns a plain base into a printed one. Lamination, foiling and embossing are quoted per job.

Getting flat blanks into a London goods-in

Mailers travel flat and are folded at the point of packing, so the delivery is bulkier than the finished orders suggest. A third party warehouse will normally want a booking reference before a pallet arrives on site. A studio above a shop wants something a driver can carry up a staircase. Tell us which of the two you are, give the postcode, and say whether anyone is there in working hours.

What to send with your enquiry

• Product size: length, width and depth of what goes inside, in millimetres, packed as it will travel.
• Format: plain mailer, die cut shape, subscription box or box wrap.
• Print: outside only or inside as well, plus any lamination, foiling or embossing.
• Run and destination: the quantity you are planning and the London postcode it ships to.