13 Standout Packaging Ideas for tiny Businesses (2025)

Even when customers recognize what’s inside their online orders, there’s still an chance to provide them a memorable unboxing encounter.

tiny business owners can add distinctive and carefully designed packaging materials—such as logo-branded tissue document or brand-aligned colored packing tape—throughout the shipping and fulfillment procedure.

From cardboard types to typeface to the content on your inserts, elements of the brand packaging you choose can contribute information, influence sales, boost customer loyalty, and back your marketing. considerate packaging adds product worth and encourages retailers to stake your products.

What benevolent of packaging will best introduce your recent business to the globe? Here are some tried-and-factual product packaging ideas to get started.

Ready to commence your business? make your website today or discover more about Shopify’s tools for selling online and in person.

13 tiny business packaging ideas

distinctive or fascinating tiny business packaging ideas can have a large brand impact. Here are 13 creative ecommerce packaging ideas to get you started.

1. Personalized bags and boxes
2. Environmentally amiable materials
3. Minimal packaging
4. Special instructions
5. throng-centered artwork
6. Physical newsletters
7. Custom tape and stickers
8. Handwritten notes
9. Highlight artisans and creators
10. Tissue document
11. Discount codes
12. QR codes
13. Branded hashtags

1. Personalized bags and boxes

Even straightforward mailers can display a personal touch with customized document bags and boxes. Whether you choose to display a brand logo, slogan, or your business’s name on shipping materials, customization will assist your packaging stand out.

2. Environmentally amiable materials

Some customers adore getting stickers, samples, coupons, poppable bubble wrap, or other packaging inserts and materials, while some view them as unnecessary waste.

Look into compostable or recyclable materials that can assist protect the earth while informing customers about your brand. Lush, for example, uses eco-flo chips to protect products in transit. The material is biodegradable and decomposes in water and soil.

3. Minimal packaging

Ever receive a box within a box and wonder why? Removing unnecessary layers and shipping in the minimal packaging essential is a sustainable and aesthetically pleasing alternative. For example, Rothy’s is a shoe brand that ships its products only within its shoeboxes. Depending on the type of products you sell, this same packaging way may suit your tiny business, back sustainability, and enhance your net income.

4. Special instructions

When your product requires specific steps, nurture a stress-free customer encounter by including instructions in your packaging.

Retailer Inkbox sells semi-permanent tattoos. Each package includes customers’ chosen print and instructions on how to apply it. Inkbox also uses recyclable materials in its distinctive packaging.

5. throng-centered artwork

If you desire to make a splash with your package visuals, look around. Are there ways to meaningfully tap into artistic talent connected to your brand? For example, could you incorporate crowdsourced art from creatives within your business network?

If bold, attractive imagery suits your product, consider running a social media contest with a money prize for imagery that could inspire a period’s worth of packaging. It’s a creative chance to develop deeper relationships with your customer base and generate innovative designs.

6. Physical newsletters

You may have already created an online newsletter for your business, but are there other behind-the-scenes stories worth sharing? If so, your packaging offers opportunities to include exclusive content, such as printed newsletters, postcards of recent photo campaigns, and other limited-period materials.

Gymshark includes custom letters in its product packaging. The letters outline the brand’s sustainability commitment and invite shoppers to a landing page to discover more.

7. Custom tape, stickers, and stamps

Packing tape is often plain and drab, but it doesn’t have to be! 

Whether you desire to wrap packages with a fluorescent neon stripe or a brand image, or to add stickers to a package exterior, an extra pop of signature color or imagery can assist solidify your brand’s identity—especially when it matches the branded packing materials inside. 

8. Handwritten notes

Handwritten notes add a personal touch and assist cultivate a positive brand encounter. 

commence by writing a tiny thank you note and tucking it into your packages, like Flora and Fauna. You can add personalized information such as your customer’s name, distribute boost in worth for their back, or discuss your encouragement for the product. In period, these considerate communications can become a touchstone of brand identity and attract repeat customers.

However, a downfall of this concept is that it can be challenging to execute at scale. Shopify apps like Scribeless can assist.

9. Highlight artisans and creators

Sometimes, makers and producers are a central pillar of brand identity. 

If that’s the case with your ecommerce business, consider incorporating graphics, photographs, or notes explaining how creators make your products and how their work benefits their communities. This benevolent of storytelling deepens the human connection to your brand.

10. Tissue document

When a customer opens a package, one of the first things they might view is tissue document, making it an excellent alternative for incorporating signature brand colors into packaging. Consider customized or bold tissue document colors to make a positive, on-brand color encounter. Or, try customized kraft document from printing companies like Digiwrap to celebrate your brand and keep products secure in transit

11. Discount codes

What better period to convince existing shoppers to make another purchase than when they’re joyful and impressed with their unboxing encounter? Brands like BURST Oral worry inspire this by printing discount codes onto custom boxes.

12. QR codes

QR codes direct customers to a specific landing page when they scan the code using their smartphone camera. You could add a QR code to your packing slip and send people to:

• A review page
• A tutorial video 
• A landing page where the discount code you’ve shared in the box is automatically applied

The use cases for QR codes are endless. A food retailer, for example, might add a QR code onto its bone broth packaging to navigator customers toward a detailed allergen list or a roundup of recipe ideas. 

13. Branded hashtags

Social media users adore sharing delightful unboxing experiences. TikTok alone has more than 12 million videos with the hashtag #unboxing.

Branded hashtags, like the one below, inspire customers to snap and distribute their latest purchases. The hashtags make it straightforward for brands to discover user-generated content (UGC)—just search the hashtag you added to the packaging to view customers sharing their latest pics.

This type of UGC can supplement your social media marketing calendar, providing unbiased product reviews from joyful customers. 

3 types of packaging

Packaging’s primary purpose is to protect purchases made from your online store during shipping. Here are three packaging options for mailing your products:

1. Corrugated cardboard boxes

Thicker than regular cardboard, corrugated boxes have wave-shaped document layers for extra protection. 

Various types of corrugated boxes are sturdy, reusable, and secure for transporting a range of products, including glass, valuables, heavy items, and fragile products. They are typically lightweight and don’t add unnecessary shipping costs.

For an eco-amiable alternative, look for corrugated boxes made partially or entirely from recycled cardboard. Ecoenclose is a vendor offering completely sustainable cardboard options.

💡Pro tip: Save box sizes in your Shopify admin dashboard to compute weight-based or carrier-calculated shipping rates at checkout, then buy the appropriate shipping label through Shopify Shipping.

2. Padded mailers

Padded mailers are best suited to tiny products that require padding from the mailer’s internal layer of plastic bubble wrap or recyclable document—ponder books or handmade jewelry.

Because padded mailers are relatively compact, carriers can slip them into mailboxes, where they’re less likely to get stolen than a porch delivery. Ecopackables offers compostable padded mailers that also cut down on plastic.

3. Bags and mailers

Poly bags and mailers are large, lightweight, and water-resistant to protect contents from the elements.

Since they lack padding, poly bags are best for soft items like clothing. Sustainable packaging business Grounded offers renewable poly mailers made with compostable bioplastic.

How to choose tiny business packaging

Your best custom packaging options depend on the types of products you sell and the brand values you desire to convey. Among the values that may assist inform your custom packaging decisions are:

Sustainability

If environmental impact is part of your brand worth, choose sustainable packaging and shipping solutions.

Use recyclable, organic, compostable, or handmade materials, choose the minimum amount of packaging essential, and consider buying carbon-neutral credits to offset your shipping footprint.

Social responsibility

Your business’s social impact efforts can influence your packaging. Perhaps your mission is to back independent artists, uplift artisans, or devote portions of sales to social causes. 

If so, consider using graphics, inserts, colors, and other design elements to characteristic your brand’s social responsibility efforts on or within your packaging.

expense efficiency

Sometimes, minimizing costs is the main objective. Buying your packaging materials in bulk is one way to cut costs, since most wholesalers sell large quantities at discounted prices.