Last week PAC Worldwide had the pleasure of being a sponsor at the Last Mile Fulfillment Asia 2106 show (#LMFASIA) in Singapore.

100 exhibitors, 90 IMG_8798speakers and over 2300 attendants, focused on the “Last Mile” of e-commerce in South East Asia and the theme of “Ecommerce Beyond Borders”.  It was a fascinating, action-packed couple of days that lent itself to a sharing of best practices and learning both e-commerce and courier companies pain points when it comes to the Last Mile.  Pain points discussed were:  payments, cultures, distribution, competition, timely delivery, returns and packaging.  Being a packaging guy, lets focus on packaging.

 

Companies are using a variety of packaging in South East Asia (SEA):

–           Boxes of all sizes and sorts.  Some branded some not

–          Paper and some bubble inside of these boxes for added protection

–          Flat poly mailers, also known as  flyers or pouches

 

 

What these companies were not using nor exposed to much of are bubble mailers.  Known in different parts of the world as padded mailers, Jiffy’s or in PAC Worldwide’s case, Airjackets.  Extolling the virtues of Airjackets to these e-comm companies and courier companies I would like to think was pretty eye opening.  The benefits of using a bubble mailer as opposed to boxes are far and wide:

 

–          Money saving opportunity when looking at material costs

–          Increased fulfillment speeds (less steps involved to fulfill an order when using a bubble mailer versus box with dunnage)

–          Less space used on trucks and planes when shipping

–          Shipping costs:  Most e-commerce companies offer free shipping. If you are able to “right size” a package or make it as small as possible, it will cost you less on outbound and if returned, the inbound shipping

–          Returns:  Returns are a big deal in SEA.  We heard up to 35% return rate.  By utilizing a bubble mailer with a dual peal and seal, it will make it a more pleasant experience for your customer if they do need to return an item

–          Branding:  Bubble mailers are a great, inexpensive way to increase your branding for all to see as the package makes its way through the mail stream

 

So while bubble mailers are very common in the States and Europe, they still have some catching up to do in SEA.  I hope when PAC returns to the LMFA 2017 show that more companies will have adopted bubble mailers and I will not be the only one extolling their virtues

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