How to Sell Custom Packaging and Labels? A Practical Business Guide

Do you know how packaging labels can become a growth factor for your business? Labels not only make your brand visible, but also create an attraction or curiosity that builds excitement in buyers when they unbox a product. You might have seen unboxing videos, brands make their packaging more memorable, turning it into a unique experience beyond the product itself. Good product packaging and labels enhance your brand’s unboxing impact, and this is made possible through custom-printed labels and packaging.

So, if you are a print shop selling printed labels and packaging, consider adding custom printing services that allow your customers to personalize everything as per their choice. And the best part it becomes easy for you. You don’t need to design it for them. They design, and you print.

For product decoration businesses, adding custom printed labels and packaging to your web-to-print store not only expands your offering but also becomes a strategic move that leverages your existing capabilities for new revenue streams and business growth.

Let us explore how you can become smarter by adding custom printed label and packaging services into your business operations.

How Are Custom Packaging And Label Business Profitable?

According to a survey, the global market of custom packaging is projected to grow, from USD 45.92 billion in 2024 to USD 71.10 billion by 2032.

Adding custom packaging and labels to your business is more than offering another service. That makes even simple products by reinforcing brand identity at every stage. In fact, it improves your customer buying  journey

Businesses today want every detail to speak their brand language. That is why it includes the packaging their customers unbox. Custom labels and packaging bring that personality forward.

Custom packaging and labels have quickly become one of the easiest and most impactful ways for businesses to stand out. They’re affordable, flexible, and effective in making a brand memorable.

Why Custom Packaging and Labels Have Become Relevant?

Custom packaging and labels isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s how brands communicate with customers.

Brand visibility is important in the entire customer journey. From product shelves to unboxing moments, custom packaging and labels ensure the brand remains clear, consistent.

We have seen that small and mid-scale businesses scale with personalized packaging services. Companies that couldn’t invest in fully custom boxes earlier can now rely on custom labels and packaging elements to deliver the same premium, branded experience at a fraction of the cost.

Cost-effective customization compared to full packaging redesign makes them a practical choice. Without rebuilding their packaging, businesses can use custom labels and packaging add-ons to instantly elevate customer perception and brand value.

Growing adoption across industries has normalized their importance. eCommerce sellers, D2C brands, FMCG companies, boutique retailers, and manufacturers now see custom packaging and labels not as a luxury, but as a practical branding tool that delivers measurable impact.

Why Print Industries Still Hesitate to Custom Packaging and Labels?

Some print industries hesitate because they are adding a new product line, it is not simple. No matter what kind of printing or packing you run. And custom packaging and labels are no exception.

But here’s what separates successful packaging and label operations from those that struggle to manage demand and deliver consistently.

Most web-to-print businesses focus heavily on printers, materials, and finishing equipment. That matters, of course, but it’s only half of the equation.

The real challenges show up in order management, proofing cycles, customer communication, and workflow coordination. This is where efficiency is won or lost. 

1. Order Management:

Every custom packaging or label order comes with its own specifications of dimensions, materials, finishes, adhesive types, etc.

So businesses try handling all of that through scattered spreadsheets, endless email threads, or back-and-forth phone calls. And suddenly each order drains 30–60 minutes of admin time. As details get manually copied from one place to another, mistakes become almost unavoidable.

Your sales team slowly shifts from selling to simply chasing details, and growth becomes painful 

Thus, ImprintNext changes that completely. With its online customization and automation tools, customers can build their own packaging or label orders right on your website. They choose specs, materials, quantities, and artwork with zero hand-holding. The system validates options, generates accurate job specs, and pushes orders straight into your production workflow without manual intervention.

You end up slashing order handling time by up to 75%, removing costly specification errors, and giving your team room to do what truly drives revenue.

2. Design Approval Bottlenecks

Everyone in the custom packaging and labeling business has felt this difficulty: approval cycles that drag on for days because artwork files are endlessly exchanged over email. Designers prepare mockups, send PDFs, wait for comments, revise, resend and the loop repeats.

What should take hours often stretches into 3–7 days, and important files vanish inside long, cluttered email conversations.

ImprintNext eliminates this slow, outdated process. With real-time 3D visualization, customers can see their packaging boxes, pouches, or labels come to life as they customize—complete with accurate material textures, dielines, finishes, and how artwork aligns on edges, folds, and surfaces.

This level of visual accuracy clears up doubts before they turn into problems.

Built-in automated checks flag issues like low-resolution images, alignment errors, and bleed problems instantly. 

3. Complexity in Packaging:

Custom packaging and labeling come with a pricing structure that changes constantly. Box styles, label materials, adhesive types, varnishes, lamination options, color processes, size variations, and order quantities all of these shift costs up or down. Add fluctuating raw material prices and shipping dimensions, and suddenly every quote becomes a mini calculation puzzle.

When your sales team relies on manual pricing charts or outdated spreadsheets, each quote can take 15–30 minutes to prepare. The outcome? Inconsistent pricing that either reduces profit margins or pushes customers away. 

Moreover, promotions, seasonal pricing, or experimenting with new rate structures also become a headache because they require updating multiple documents across the organization.

ImprintNext solves this with a powerful dynamic pricing engine. It calculates accurate, real-time quotes based on the rules you set, material cost, production method, print area, quantity breaks, finishes, and more. Customers see the final price instantly as they configure their packaging or labels, turning interest into purchase decisions on the spot.

4. Production Workflow Chaos

Custom packaging and label production move through several tightly linked stages: artwork prep, plate or digital setup, printing, cutting or finishing, application testing, packing, and final quality checks.

Managing these steps becomes overwhelming when every order has different specs, turnaround expectations, and material requirements. Without a coordinated system, priorities clash, machines sit idle, and teams rely on constant back-and-forth communication just to stay aligned.

Old-school job cards get shuffled from one station to another, and production meetings become the only way to decide what gets done first. With manual tracking, jobs can go missing in the workflow, and no one truly knows the real-time status of any order.

Customer service has no quick answer to “Is my order ready?” unless they physically check the shop floor. And planning equipment usage feels like guesswork instead of strategic scheduling.

ImprintNext’s workflow automation turns this confusion into a clean, predictable operation. Orders automatically route into the right queues based on urgency, material type, and machine availability. No manual sorting required.

Live production tracking gives everyone instant visibility into each job’s exact stage, from pre-press to dispatch. Automated customer updates at every milestone drastically reduce follow-up calls and emails.

Detailed production analytics highlight bottlenecks, capacity gaps, and efficiency trends, guiding smarter decisions on staffing and equipment. The net result is a smoother, faster production cycle—often boosting overall efficiency by 30% while eliminating misplaced or stalled jobs.

How ImprintNext Can Help Your Business?

Now that we’ve broken down the common workflow challenges printers face with custom packaging and labels, it’s clear that simply adding new machines or expanding the team isn’t enough to fix the underlying issues.

What these businesses truly need is a unified system that delivers precision, automates repetitive tasks, empowers customers to self-manage their orders, and keeps production teams synchronized while allowing sales teams to focus on scaling—not firefighting.

This is exactly where the ImprintNext web-to-print ecosystem steps in as a powerful, transformative solution.