why air filled pillows (cushion) & bubble paks are not as effective as you think

There are many challenges facing an exporter when shipping their goods overseas and damage prevention is definitely one of them. ‌

‌In order to make sure that the products reach their end client at the other part of the world in the same condition when it was packed, many precautions have been put into place and air pillows or bubble pack is one of them.

Traditionally to fill voids in the box to prevent the product from shifting around in the box during transition, packers have evolved from using materials like used newspaper & crushed corrugated materials to the current air pillow you see in almost every Amazon package you receive at your doorstep.

They may be good enough for small hardy products like toys, books, etc. but for sensitive items like wafer, PCB boards & computer chips, they merely act as the last form of defense with much more needed to be done on the exterior of the boxes they are packed in.

With the emergence & gaining popularity of digital transformation of retail companies & e-commerce big boys with the likes of Amazon & Taobao, logistic handlers are facing much higher workload than ever before and speed is something valued in this era of instant noodles.

In order to perform their work in the fastest way possible, handlers are definitely not treating every parcel or pallet like their life depended on it. Throwing, hard knocks, pallet dropping over, etc. are almost a common sight everywhere, esp in northern Asia when the population, and amount of goods flow, far exceeded what the existing manpower can handle.

Therefore, as much as you can have the best packaging solutions designed by top packaging engineers for your products, all it takes is one sleepy staff from any part of the logistics chain to drop your pallet from a rack for your products to suffer irreversible damages.

Now picture this scene, a shipment that looks so well protected with all exterior looking great. But when the products are being used, all are not working. Who will the client blame, shipping process or bad quality of product?

The company will suffer a big branding nightmare when 8 out of 10 products received are faulty.

Worst case scenario, the client may just decides to switch supplier for good. So the question is, what else can a company do to mitigate this risk?

So how can you make your client know that when the product they received is faulty is because of logistic mishandling and not bad quality checks on your side?

Include a shock monitoring label on every shipment that you ship out.

These inexpensive labels will should an irreversible change on the screen when mishandling has occurred and has proven to make logistics handler be more careful with the particular shipment.

Get the ones that come with a unique serial number so tampering is almost made impossible for any handlers along the logistic chain.

If you often ship big quantity of products to a particular client, it also help them in checking the goods when they received it since the receiving guys will most probably just pick and check those pallets whose monitoring labels have been activated.