First off, get the shipping label right!

The shipping label needs to clearly identify who the recipient is, there address and whether they have to sign for the package on delivery.  It should also contain precise and simple instructions on what to do in the event the recipient is not available to collect the package or it cannot be delivered – your return address and telephone contact number are the bare minimums required here.

It is not unusual for shipping labels to utilize barcode technology to enable efficient tracking of the package using an online tracking system which you may give your customer access to so they can see for themselves where the package delivery is within the schedule.

Secondly, packing materials are frequently second-rate or the packing method used is not effective.  Make sure you use appropriate packing materials for the contents of the package – it is pointless shipping a fragile object wrapped in newspaper and then left to rattle around a box which is too large for the item it contains.  Making sure you use good quality packing materials is essential not only for the protection of the item, but also for your reputation as a seller with your customers.

Another important point to remember is that if you ever have a need to claim on insurance for any loss or damage caused in transit, the insurance company will probably want to see that you used a properly addressed shipping label with good packaging.  Insurance is not there to cover improperly addressed and packaged goods but to compensate when they are damaged in transit – you as the insured must take all reasonable steps to ensure loss does not occur.

Another hint is to make sure that if you are sending fragile or delicate items, you must make sure this is clearly visible on the packaging.  Combining a brightly colored warning sign with your shipping label is a good way of making sure you have all the materials in one place that you need to address and warn the handlers and recipients of what is contained.

By far the most effective method for making sure your package gets from A to B is to concentrate on the shipping label.  The mail service can work wonders with minimal information, but you can ensure a faster delivery time if the information they need is available to them clearly and easily; it goes without saying that if the recipient information is not clear or is lost, the package not likely to be delivered in the first instance!  When you are sourcing shipping labels and packaging materials, consult with your print partner for the best method to achieve the results you are looking for and especially if you are shipping delicate or non-standard items.

Shipping labels and mailing labels come in all shapes and sizes and many are not made from what you may at first sight believe! It is not only how some of them are made that may give you pause for thought but sometimes, a shipping label originating from one part of the globe can give a wry smile when it ultimately arrives at its final destination.

Vintners for example have been working on numerous ways to accentuate the look and feel of their wines and packaging, notably concentrating on the bottle and labeling which has itself become big business within the industry. California is typical of the developments in marketing wine by concentrating on the packaging even when they have an already excellent wine inside. A good example is the 2006 Retour Willamette Valley Pinot Noir with a bottle that weighs in at 2 pounds 5 ounces and that’s empty! The weight is in large part due to the metal label applied to the bottle which simply adds a significant amount of weight (almost a pound) which may be great if you are into that sort of thing but buy a case of the stuff and you are quite literally shipping 12 pounds of shipping label!

In a case of cultural differences playing their part, an Australian firm manufactured the country’s leading brand of sticky tape under the brand name “Durex”. In an export drive, millions of rolls of the stuff were shipped overseas but a degree of consternation occurred when the initial shipments arrived in the UK – perplexed customs officers were confronted by shipping labels and manifests declaring the goods to be “Rolls of Durex” – in the UK, Durex is the leading brand of prophylactic!

A near marketing disaster was created when Johnson & Johnson chose a cutesy little baby as the poster child for a baby food they were selling into certain African countries. Unfortunately, in Africa many of the people are illiterate and in any event there are so many languages and dialects spoken that labeling a food package is almost irrelevant. Instead, what you see on the tin is what you expect to find when you open the container and while here at home, the Johnson baby may be as cute as button, in Nigeria consumers were put off the product because they thought they were actually buying cutesy white babies ready for the pot!

When it comes to language and translation, shipping labels are a wealth of funny stories and incidents. Customs inspectors in New Jersey were confronted with a shipment imported from India which the shipping labels declared to be full of “Burned Cow” and they certainly had an aroma of bad BBQ emanating from it too. A team from the Center for Disease Control arrived and after establishing a quarantine and mobile laboratory to conduct tests and deal with the contents they proceeded to treat the packages with rubber gloves. Opening the packages revealed nothing more innocuous than hand carved wooden sculptures of cows in various poses (the cow being the most sacred animal for many Indians) and which had been charred as part of their finishing.

Shipping labels may be the source of fun and controversy for some but they are in fact simple to produce and source as well as performing a valuable function. You can design your own shipping labels easily in a custom format to suit your needs or simply source pre-designed ones for a special message such as “Fragile” – cheap and fast, it’s your choice but try to avoid the funny mishaps too!

My wife for a start, plus my mother-in-law and plus my mother so you can guess I am not going to be arguing with any of them!

Label makers are one of those hang overs from the 1970′s and 1980′s that have never faded away unlike the mullet hairstyle and Duran Duran but today there are a whole new crop of users and with the advent of digital printing, CD and DVD burning the label maker industry has been experiencing a renaissance in the last 5 years.

Digital printing has brought a range of benefits into the home and office; my kids are regularly burning CD’s to share with friends and family while my darling wife has scanned our entire photograph collection and organized it onto a range of disks for viewing on the TV and distribution – I’m not so sure I like the idea of all my high school photographs and obligatory bare butt baby pics being preserved for humanity to drool over in the years to come but I prefer a quiet life now thank you.

Label makers have evolved from the simple Dymo label makers that used a simple piece of adhesive plastic with a clunky letter stamping mechanism which produced labels to mark the cornflakes packet “CORNFLAKES” – we all knew what was in the Tupperware box because it was transparent!

Today, label makers are electronic and link up with powerful image design software to create very individualistic labels for any purpose including full poster sized labels when you want to sell your home before foreclosure or auction off the kids due to earache or open wallet surgery.  Label makers and the labels themselves have adapted to a multitude of uses and designs so you can waterproof label sports and swimming kit, mark up your tools, nuts and bolts to the satisfaction of the most anally retentive and ensure every aspect of your family and working life is marked up to the satisfaction of she (or he) who must be obeyed.

Monarch Price Guns provided by Maverick Labels

Inkjet printers squirt small, high pressure jets of ink onto the paper when printing (hence the name “inkjet”) and this must then be allowed to dry – when you print a heavy ink piece off, particularly a photo or other image, you will feel the paper is heavy and wet and the image printed will smudge easily if you don’t handle it properly.

A laser printer uses a laser which creates an electrically charged image on a rotating drum and which is then used with the toner to create an image or text on the paper using heat to melt or fuse the ink with it.

There are pro’s and con’s to using both types of printer but here is a brief summary:

Inkjet Pro’s and Con’s

The advantages for using an ink jet printer for your custom ink jet labels are:

• Vivid colors are created with inkjets
• Most inkjet printers are easily within everyone’s budget and they are very affordable
• Very suitable for occasional use at home or in the business
• Can create photo quality images

But here are the downsides:

• Frequent ink cartridge replacement will drive up the regular operating cost
• High maintenance costs relative to laser printers
• Print slowly compared to a laser

In the other corner we have the laser printer labels and the advantages here are:

• Lower operating costs
• Toner cartridges have a longer life than inkjet cartridges
• Sharp text quality
• Fast printing speeds

But the downsides are:

• Usually much more expensive to buy upfront
• Occasionally, images and photographs are not so clearly printed
• Toner cartridges can be much more expensive than inkjet cartridges

Occasional home or business use favors using an inkjet printer and especially if you are printing images and photo reproduction whereas if you are looking for a regular use, high volume capability then you are better off investing in the laser printer.

A kid’s crayon is so colorful and always gets attention. When you address a package with one of your kid’s crayons, that is sure to be the package that everyone opens first. Nothing says a first class presentation like a Periwinkle crayon!

Sometimes a surprise is fun. Leave the “To” information out and leave them guessing. See just how long it takes for them to figure out the package was from you. If they really care about you – they’ll know for sure the package was yours. Really, you are doing yourself a favor with this one.

Children need to practice their handwriting. Why not let them practice addressing your packages? If the handwriting is poor – there might be some slight problem with mailing the package – but that’s just a chance we all take these days. This is the ideal time to let Junior practice their “ABCs.”

Always address packages when you have missed a night’s sleep. When you’ve been up all night with a colicky baby or working on a presentation, this is the ideal time to address your package. They say the senses are heightened when you have a lack of sleep – then again there is the lack of motor skills that some complain about. But we’re sure your package will arrive eventually.

Close your eyes and open to a page in your address book and point your finger. The name your finger points to is the person this package is really meant for. You see, had you used a shipping label you would have gotten in the way of this package’s true karma. Thank heavens for the Universe and Divine Intervention!

If you would like to actually get a package to its destination, please consider buying your mailing labels from MaverickLabels.com, a custom label printing company.

Cheap labels now allow you to organize everything from your garage and tool shed, through to your home possessions for security purposes as well as the more traditional uses such as marking school books and sports kit so the kids do not permanently lose stuff when they forget it.

Across the board, every type of label has fallen dramatically in price.

Heavy duty all-weather Nalgene laminated tags now cost as little as their indoor equivalents used to mark items in your kitchen; marking up personal possessions with a permanent adhesive tag is one of the best ways of ensuring you get your possessions returned if they are stolen and this will cost a few dollars at most to do; marking your belongings no matter what or where they are is a mark of your ownership and possession so things do not get permanently mislaid and the only real investment you have to make is a little time to get the job of labeling done; in dollar terms it is a few bucks and no more.

You can find cheap label suppliers across the internet but with low cost you must be careful of the quality you are receiving.  Many low cost labels are produced in the Far East and particularly China, where highly toxic inks and manufacturing processes destroy the environment while the quality of the label material itself may leave a lot to be desired.  This said, there is no shortage of homegrown label producers right here in the US where standards are higher and despite producing cheap products you can easily afford, buying US labels keeps US jobs right here at home.

If you are a student you may be carry so many things with you everyday from class to class. There is always a possibility that you are going to leave something behind. By having some ID or address labels custom made you can assure that people will know the items are yours. They will know where to contact you and this will ensure a quick return. You can have them plain or have a design on them. You can choose a color you like the best.

If you run an office, you can create labels with the name of your business on them. This will ensure that items stay where they belong. You can also have a barcode placed on your stickers. This will assist in the yearly equipment check, the process will go much quicker and not to mention much smoother. If an item is missing you can easily tell what it is by the missing barcode number.

Even if you are an athlete you can use these labels for your sports bag and equipment. With all the games or tournaments you will be attending, it is a good idea to leave your items marked. Especially since, as you already know, your bags get thrown in the locker room and then are left there during the game. Then you call come back and everything gets thrown out of the way in celebration of your big win. These tags will help determine your team shirt from your team mate’s.

Everyone needs to send out mail at some point, and you are no exception. A great time saver that everyone should enjoy is custom made address labels. You can have just about anything on them with today’s technology. Your favorite cartoon character, the initial of your last name or a nice design: you name it and it is yours. They can be clear, so there appears to be no background or you can have them made in a color of your choice. If you are using address labels for your business you want them to look professional. You can consider placing your company logo on the address label.

Whatever the purpose of the label, you should use them. Your personal items will be marked with your contact information if they are ever misplaced. Your office equipment will remain where it is supposed to, and will be ease to locate if not. Then, lastly, your mailing will take you a fraction of the time it took before with the use of mailing labels.