Retail Pickup Packaging

[big_teee]

Unfortunately, Flash Does Sell!
T

[kayakerca]

Being one very small time hobbyist type winder, I went for what I could find for packaging. I put my Strat and Tele pickups in 5" X 5" plastic snap lid sandwich type boxes from the "Dollarama". They cost $0.42 each. I purchase custom slot cut foam packaging from Mojo made to fit the boxes (which is not so cheap). Humbuckers go in similar but smaller plastic boxes from the same place for a little less $$$. Print my own black & white labels on a label printer, put the wiring diagram and parts on top of the pickups between the foam layers and a business card on top. I know the sandwich boxes are a silly looking, but every time I drop by one of my luthier/guitar tech customers, I see them sitting on the bench full of parts from whatever guitar is being worked on at the time. So I figured, hey, my packaging is being re-purposed.

[David King]

I sell my pickups wrapped in 100% biodegradable banana leaves with bamboo stickers to hold everything together. That's why you can only find my pickups in the refrigerated section at you local music store. Right where they belong next to the baked pot comestibles. Trust me it's a very popular part of the store's display area. I've been pulling the banana leaves out of a dumpster behind the Vietnamese restaurant. They only mildly smell of fish sauce.

[big_teee]

Wow!
Good Answer David!

[ken]

Unfortunately, Flash Does Sell!

Sound sells more... and my pickups are their own best salesmen. I sell more pickups to people who say they heard them played at a show somewhere than advertising anywhere else.

I sell my pickups wrapped in 100% biodegradable banana leaves with bamboo stickers to hold everything together. That's why you can only find my pickups in the refrigerated section at you local music store. Right where they belong next to the baked pot comestibles. Trust me it's a very popular part of the store's display area. I've been pulling the banana leaves out of a dumpster behind the Vietnamese restaurant. They only mildly smell of fish sauce.

Burp... I had Thai at lunch - does that count?

I am reminded of the Korean effects pedals review I read about this summer that had boxes shaped like an interstellar alien´s head, or a demon´s head. The magazine was so knocked out by the cool packaging that the pedal´s actual sound was mentioned in the mag only as an afterthought.

ken

[ken]

The cool thing about my box style is if I want to change the art, I can just go on and do it. I wanted multicolor artwork, but when I got the pricing for fullcolor preprinted boxes I thought I was going to die.

This is a photo of my pickup box´s front artwork as of right now. It´s an interim label, because I want to generate a full color label over the holidays.
However, I can´t decide for the life of me if I want to use immediate postwar (late 1940´s) style artwork or go full Googie.

Each major model of pickup has its own photo label. The pickup photo in the middle of the label is faded out on purpose, so I can write over it if I want to without having my writing disappear. There is also another label for the back of the box, and box seals for both ends too.

Talk is cheap... I showed you mine now show me yours.

ken

[DialtonePickups]

We're right in the middle of figuring out packaging as well. We decided to go with something suitable for both shipping and on the shelf. I'm really into scrapbooking, sewing, etc. - anything crafty - so I wanted to incorporate that into our product as well. We went with a bigger box than needed, but it'll work really well for shipping in both the USPS and FedEx flat rate boxes, and if we want to throw a hat or some other promotional item in with the box, we have space. We're finding that music stores will only display a box or two, so putting emphasis on retail needs vs. what looks good and is otherwise more convenient didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense - at least not while we're small. Anyway, here's what we're doing:



Box: 7x7 paper mache - $1 each, the box is really nice/sturdy and we're hoping people will reuse it
Bottom piece, to mount pickups to: book board - about 20 cents apiece
Fabric over the bottom piece: plain old sale fabric from Joanne's, about 10 cents apiece (we ended up going with a red material, different than what you see in this picture)
Hemp string, to hold the pieces to the bottom piece: A big roll was under $10
Muslin bags, to hold hardware + wiring kits: Around 20 cents apiece

I print the stickers and iron-on transfers (for the muslin bags) using my Cricut cutter ($200) and home printer. Seems to work just fine, and with the big rolls of Vinyl I buy at a discount online, the material itself if pretty inexpensive.

Each package ends up costing us between $2 and $3. The packaging look pretty good, and unique, but putting them together is very time consuming. We figure this will just hold us over until we need something more scalable. I actually love working on it, but at large quantities I'd be spending all of my time making packaging instead of pickups.

[ken]

I like your artwork myself, it looks nice and shows you put a lot of effort and thought into it. It´s very hard to come up with a packaging design that is both artistically attractive and still affordable too, especially when you get into multiple pickup models.

We are a ´family affair´ here at Angeltone too, as my wife is learning how to wind and assemble pickups as well as help me make guitars too.

ken

[David King]

I'm totally digging the CNC aluminum work. Overall it looks like a very unique and time consuming thing to produce. I'm in the same boat where I spend 2-3 hours a day doing office work and end up in the shop going till 11 every night just to get through the day without a backlog. The packaging is evolving over time but so far it has been minimalist and totally utilitarian.

[DialtonePickups]

I like your artwork myself, it looks nice and shows you put a lot of effort and thought into it. It´s very hard to come up with a packaging design that is both artistically attractive and still affordable too, especially when you get into multiple pickup models.

We are a ´family affair´ here at Angeltone too, as my wife is learning how to wind and assemble pickups as well as help me make guitars too.

ken

It's pretty cool to hear that there are other couples who team up as pickup makers! Before starting our business, I didn't know anything about pickups, or even guitars for that matter. This was all my husband's idea. He works full-time so it just made sense for me to do some of the more time-consuming work. But, surprisingly, building pickups is right up my alley in terms of the skills I use. Soldering tiny capacitors & resistors is like the glittery crafts I do with my three-year-old; winding coils with wire you can barely see is similar to embroidery or crocheting; and making packaging is just like scrapbooking.

One of these days, the girls should all connect and start a little network of pickup builders!

[David King]

Interesting you should say that as it's quite possible that most of the worlds pickups were and are in fact wound by women.
Adrian Chandler wound most if not all of the Chandler pickups from what I've been told.

[DialtonePickups]

Interesting you should say that as it's quite possible that most of the worlds pickups were and are in fact wound by women.
Adrian Chandler wound most if not all of the Chandler pickups from what I've been told.

From a practical standpoint, it might make sense. While building pickups, I oftentimes have trouble gripping or maneuvering something very small, and I have pretty small hands. I'm always wondering how people with bigger/rougher hands are able to do it, especially when it comes to working with that magnet wire!!

We met another couple-maker at summer NAMM. Benson Custom Pickups out of New York. They have the same sort of arrangement. It was pretty nice to talk to other folks who were dealing with the same things, whether it was physically building pickups or managing a business in the pickup industry or finding a good work/personal life balance given the nature of the company. When I tell my non-guitar-world friends that I was up until 2am winding high output bobbins - and ugh, they take forever because they're 7k turns apiece and our winder's traverse feature doesn't work so I'm guiding magnet wire by hand but it's ok because players prefer scatter-wound anyway (even though it's less efficient and doesn't really matter with an active pickup) - they just stare back.

[ken]

The first couple of years, my wife wasn´t really interested in my pickups. She started to get interested when I asked her to help me make parts, and then she started reading some of the emails I got from customers.

Now she helps me wind, we make parts together, and she has her own Epi Les Paul with a set of our humbuckers inside that we made together. Now if I could just get her to take some lessons...

ken