So you’ve got your product and are about to the order the packaging supplies, but are you really sure that its the right product packaging? Knowing about packaging supplies is the key.

There are a number of packaging mistakes made by big companies which has cost them dearly in shipping, recalls and getting new packaging supplies. When it comes down to it, there are really only two things you have to be very careful with:

Translation Problem

Wow, your product sure does look great written in Spanish, but you don’t speak spanish… do you really know what its really saying to native Spanish speakers?

This was the same trap that the Gerber Baby Food Company fell into. When the company launched their line of baby food in French supermarkets, they initially recorded dismal sales. After some closer matrket research, it was pointed out that the word ‘Gerber’ translated into ‘vomiting’ in French.

They replaced all the labels with French translations from their packaging suppliers, shipped and stocked them in supermarkets and then the day it all went on sale…

A quick check into the native language would have pointed this out to the company – saving them millions in packagaing supplies and logistics.

Alternative Name Meanings

The brother to the translation problems category, this is an unfortunate situation that can potentially affect any packaging supplier or people ordering packaging. This the scenario where your product or packaging becomes an household name for all the wrong reasons.

For a perfect example of this, we should cast our minds back to 1960. In this era there was a diet pill that came out, the packaging claimed that it was an appetite supressant. It came in a number of flavours and could help you lose weight quickly.

Unfortunatey this product had the packaging brandname ‘AYDS’ and as anyone who was around in the 80′s and onwards knows about the terminal disease with the same name that became well known amongst the western world.

The worst part about this is that if this happens to your product, its probably not your fault and to compound this, there’s not really much you can do to stop people using the particualr terminology.  Your best bet here is to cut your losses, change your product name and order new packaging supplies.

Idealy to avoid situations like this, you will want to take a good long hard look at your packaging suppies and make sure that your product still says what its meant to say in the country you’re about to send it to!

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