EP380: Unveiling B2B Branding: Insights, Challenges, and Success Strategies With Phillip Akhza

Stacy Jones: I’m Stacy Jones and I’m so happy to be here with you all today. And I want to give a very warm welcome to Philip Axar. Phil is the founder and CEO of Arca which helps businesses be able to ship products and branded and unbranded sustainable packaging. With 16 years of experience in packaging and supply chain logistics, Phil and his team have helped over 2000 clients in 950 cities worldwide upgrade their unboxing experiences and wow their customers. With a degree industrial engineering. And as a graduate of both Y Combinator and 500 startups, Phil has brought his core competency in packaging to the biggest companies of businesses just getting their start.

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Stacy Jones: Today, Phil and I are going to be chatting about how B two b organizations can better brand themselves and what the typical challenges to overcome are. We’re going to learn what works from Phil’s perspective, what should be avoided and how some businesses just miss the mark. Phil, welcome. So happy to have you here today.

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Phillip Akhza: Awesome. Thanks for having me Stacey.

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Stacy Jones: Well, what I’d love to do always is start off with how did you get here today? I bet you never thought when you were in college that you were going to be creating box masterpieces for companies around the world.

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Phillip Akhza: Totally true. Very true. Yeah. No, during college and right after college started in the corporate world, worked at Boeing. Packaging was a bit of a bottleneck as an IE at the company but I didn’t think much of it. I just thought, okay, I work at a huge company, everything’s going to move slowly, fast forward. I worked for a smaller y combinator backed startup company called iCracked. They did iOS buyback and repair someone would show up to a Starbucks and fix your iPhone and dealt with packaging there as well and I had no red tape there. Like the founder still isn’t one of my best friends. We went to college together so I could do whatever I wanted to speed things up. But it just so happened that the industry itself is still super old school because our biggest competitor is still this guy.

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Stacy Jones: You lying? That is you line? Yep. As I’m starting to see you pick up and it’s blurring in the background coming in you line is it’s a go to for our agency too. When we’ve looked at things, we’ve looked there until we found you.

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Phillip Akhza: Yep. Awesome. Appreciate that. You know it’s, it’s kind of, it’s just an old school industry, fairly common for folks to just like flip through a catalog, pick up the phone, order more boxes. Whereas with us, we have an online platform where you can just design your package, brand it with a logo and check out fairly simply, you can do as few as like one box. It’s talking to other entrepreneurs. As a part of our job, it’s talking to other entrepreneurs and that’s honestly what makes it fun versus just 70% of the orders that come through our box. So it’s boxes after boxes. And with people’s branding and design, that’s when things get interesting. Talking to the CEO’s founders, marketers, Ops, people, things get even more interesting there because we’re talking to other business owners. Like as a b two b platform, it’s rare.

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Phillip Akhza: Like one in a thousand would be someone buying, let’s say five boxes for like Christmas gifts for their family. It’s mostly people who live Shopify, selling products online, a direct to consumer business, someone moving from retail to omnichannel presence and wanting to do an ecom presence, they come to us and that’s where we can help them out.

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Stacy Jones: And so when people come to you and they say, I need boxes, are they usually, you know, you said five, are they looking for five or are they looking for 50,000?

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Phillip Akhza: Great question. Honestly, our average order value is like someone will come to us and they’ll spend either a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars in packaging when they want to buy the bidder, the bigger volumes, they get the white glove treatment from us. Absolutely. But the fact of the matter is, over 90% of e.com does less than 5 million a year in bookings. 70% of Ecom does less than 1 million a year in bookings. So mostly it’s SMBs, small, medium sized businesses that come to work with us and they’ll be able to just check out through the site. They don’t even need to message us and say, I need boxes, but we sure will guide them through the process. We try to make it as easy as possible so the websites self check out the same way you would buy.

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Stacy Jones: Something off Amazon and for all of our listeners. So Phil and I contacted each other, actually a couple of years ago when we first started talking. And I remembered Phil when we had a need for an influencer marketing program where we needed to send out to about 90 different influencers a product from one of our clients. And we could have done it just in a general box. Right. And that’s like the go to, but with influencers when you’re working with them, every moment counts. And if you can actually get something that’s branded and into their hands, it ends up on camera most of the time because it’s part of their unboxing, it’s part of their experience, it’s part of something that is fun. And so our team is able to put together some different graphics.

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Stacy Jones: They worked with Bill’s team, and really, in a remarkably short period of time of less than a week, we actually had those 90 boxes in print and being created and sent out to us. And I will say that our team, before I remembered that, I’d had a conversation with Phil a couple of years ago, our team had done a lot of research and had a lot of conversations. And most of the boxing companies out there seem to outsource. So they’ll actually, and I could be wrong, Phil can correct me, but most of them seem to help you with the design, help you with the purchase, but then someone else actually prints and makes those boxes, and there’s weeks delays that get added on. Is that kind of accurate?

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah, absolutely. And even the funny thing is, due to a lack of technological capability, most suppliers, even if you did go direct, are still going to take weeks, because depending on what you want, and in your case, 90 boxes, good luck. Like, they’re dealing with one lighthouse account per location. For example, we used to send packaging to a supplier partner who had clif bar as a client, and that’s really all they cared about. Like everything else was secondary. So if you said, I need these boxes ASAP, you pay for them. Here’s my drop dead eta that I need these by. They agreed to it. Everything seems fine. But if Clifbar comes in and says, I have an emergency, you are immediately deprioritized. Whereas there’s no real deprioritization or off balance queuing system that we do here. It’s just first come, first served.

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Phillip Akhza: You place your order, it goes into the queue, it gets batched, it gets sent off production, and then you’ll get it. Like you had mentioned with your experience, a week later, depending on when this gets released. I want to emphasize that today is October 17, and we have black Friday, cyber Monday coming up. So even if it seems like it’s going to get turned around in a week, things do get busy. And I just wanted, as a side comment, to say, give yourself more time than you think you need, because you might go back and make changes. We might have too many orders coming through, like, whatever the case might be, just give yourself extra time because busy season tends to slow things down. But if you’re going to direct to a supplier that’s also working busy season, they might turn you away altogether.

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Phillip Akhza: Especially if it’s less than, let’s say 5000 or in some cases 25,000 boxes that you want, they’ll just say no.

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Stacy Jones: Well, let’s talk about boxes as a branding mechanism for brands because obviously there’s a lot of brands besides influencer marketing, which is fantastic and good use cases of why a brand might want to do something fun and customized and super photo friendly, but getting something in the mail, you know, we all get Amazon boxes on a. Some of us go on a daily basis, multiple times a day sometimes. And those brown boxes that come in, they’re playing, you know what they are, but they’re very simple. And on occasion I’ve seen Amazon brand and promote a movie or a partnership and so that there’s some sort of collateral on it. But most of the time you’re looking at those brown boxes and when you’re a company and you’re sending just generic brown boxes, you’re kind of losing moment, aren’t you?

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Phillip Akhza: Totally. I mean, it depends on what you want your outcome to be. If you want someone to buy your product and not to. Not to, I guess, objectify the relationship of what you want with your customer. But not to make it sound too scandalous, but like, if all you’re looking for is a one night stand with your customer, send them a brown box and they’ll take it.

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Stacy Jones: One night stands, brand boxes, that’s great.

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Phillip Akhza: But right, like, that’s it. Like an unbranded box is a one night is the one night stand of marketing to your clients because all it is, well, they bought it. Well, you had the experience with them, but that’s it. It’s over. Whereas if you have something branded, you’re reaching out to your customer, you’re showing the ethos of what your brand is. You’re trying to establish a relationship and you want that to grow because the most important thing about growth is retention, meaning they come back and they work with you again. So consider it a marketing expense. If I could have people listening, walk away with any understanding of what we’re talking about today is you need to consider your packages and marketing spend. It’s your billboard, it’s your in store experience, it’s your everything. It’s all happening in that package. And guess what?

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Phillip Akhza: It has a 100% open rate. Not many things that you send to your customer will have that. So consider it as such. Invest in it as such. You’ll see the dividends, you’ll see people actually wanting to share your product and the package that it came with. It’s all part of the same experience. And I know for years now people say unboxing experience. Unboxing experience. Yes, that’s great. But most importantly, what are you saying to your customer and how are you considering this a marketing spend? The same way that you’re doing it with your ads or with any other outreach material. You need to put that same amount of focus, if not more, into the package. Because again, 100% hit rate.

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Stacy Jones: And when we’re talking about branding a box, we’re not just talking about popping your logo on the front. Like the boxes we worked with you on, literally every surface had a color or design from the bottom to the inside. You know, and I’m pretty sure that the people who got those boxes, we did a really killer job in designing them. They were very cute. Those are the types of boxes someone’s going to put in their closet and keep something in because it’s cute and it’s something that’s going to have a longer life versus just getting the box and throwing it out.

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Phillip Akhza: Totally. As you say that, I’m guilty of having a handful of different branded box styles that I was just a big fan of customers making, and we pulled one off the line. Granted, we made it ourselves. Customers who are listening, we don’t pull your boxes that you pay for. We’ll just use the design. And for example, I have my watches and a passport in one. And it’s something that’s like a fun reminder of what businesses that work with us leverage their imagination to make. And if you are unbound by what you can imagine, you’ll make something that you want to keep, just like you said. So that’s awesome, and I’m happy to be a part of that.

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Stacy Jones: What are some of the mistakes people make when they go in to work with you graphically? I’m sure there’s lots of general, okay, the graphics aren’t of a high enough resolution, that type of thing, but what’s the worst kind of screw up?

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah, I’ll be. I’ll be honest. Sometimes people come to us a bit early. They haven’t refined their brand yet, and as a result, they do like a huge run of boxes before, let’s say, ordering a sample. And I think skipping sampling is one of the biggest mistakes we see merchants and brands do. If you’re able to, if you’re able to get a sample in advance of your full run. You’re going to be able to get the package in your hand. You’re going to be able to experience what it’s like having that specific type of branding. You could even test run a shipment, send it to yourself, send it to a friend, see how it turns out. Does it show up with scuff marks? Does it show up with anything faded? Like should we move the design off of the corners and onto the face?

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Phillip Akhza: Because it’s going to get banged around a lot less, like, what’s going on? And guys, it’s $20 to get like a fully branded sample. And we give you a refund when you do the full run. So it’s not like this is me trying to evangelize some sort of like money making component to our business.

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Stacy Jones: You don’t have a scam of $20 to make your $20?

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Phillip Akhza: No, and we don’t make money. We lose money on samples. By the way, even before the refund, even if it was just the sample, we keep the 20. It guys, like operating costs of getting your sample through the door is a lot more than $20. And the only reason why we don’t.

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Stacy Jones: Hours in time.

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Phillip Akhza: Exactly, exactly. Right. Like the overhead is more expensive. But. But we do this as an offering to, for merchants to succeed because if they like not to be cheesy on the. Your successes, our success, but it’s real. Like if you guys are doing well, you’re only going to come back and spend more on boxes. Great. It’s a very similar relationship with that respect. So biggest mistake that you all can avoid. Come in, get a sample. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The whole point is that it’s a draft. Like it’s a rough draft. You don’t to take it back to the industry you all are in. You don’t just write something and throw it up on the screen. It’s a rough draft. There are rewrites.

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Phillip Akhza: How huge of a mistake would it be if you lived in an industry where first write gets on the screen? Well, I’m in an industry where first brand gets shipped out the door and it’s sometimes insane what customers do. Get it out there. Make, make sure that you have some sort of testing or even if the testing is just yourself, you just have it in your hands and you’re like, okay, I need to make some quick minor tweaks. Great. Like just do that. So consider it a free sample, if anything, because you get your money back. So come try our free samples. That’s my announcement on that. It’s for your own good.

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Stacy Jones: Is there any approach, as I mentioned before, we did every single side of that box. Right? It was blue, it had logos, it had designs, it had poppy colors, some were solid colors. It wasn’t too over the top. But is there best practices for what you should be doing? Like, is at the minimum, should you just have a logo on the outside in one place?

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah. So depending on what your product is and depending on the discretion that you want to have on the product or you’re afraid. Oh, I don’t do like, we, sometimes folks come to us and they say, I don’t do branded packaging for my product because, you know, it gets stolen off people’s porches or whatever, porch pirates, as they call it. You can just do inside branding. It’s still. It’s still going to be the. It’s still going to give the same feeling when someone comes home or opens their door and sees that package is outside. It’s not a mystery to them. Unless they’re like me and they order 50 things off Amazon, they don’t even know what arrives. And it’s like Christmas every time they open boxes. I tend to be guilty of that.

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Phillip Akhza: But they know what the product is and from there they open it. And that journey begins because they’ll see the branding on the inside. So that’s one, two, there’s very common best practices of, first and foremost, of course, you should have your logo. If you can have your brand colors on there. Absolutely. If you can have a tie back to your social media, even better. And one of my favorites, the thing that refuses to die, the QR code. The QR code is a great idea, too, because you can have that link to a YouTube video that sends like a welcome message. It could link to reposting a tweet that gets you some sort of discount as a customer, that the merchant, you. The merchant creates in that. In that referral code, in that referral code that happens through the QR.

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Phillip Akhza: So whatever you want to do. I mean, that part, the possibilities are pretty much endless. And it’s not going to be more expensive to print a QR code as it would be your logo. So why not. Why not take the extra step? That’s a fairly low lift. That could make a huge difference.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, QR codes are really interesting. They came in with a big bang and everyone’s like, what are QR codes? And then, of course, we had the QR code that floated across the screen on the Super bowl and just blew up that whole world in a big way. But they’re kind of nifty and neat where you can do so much and you can also rechange. They are. So if someone have too many boxes with one QR code, they can, on the back end, still change it. You don’t have to worry about changing your packaging or your call to action or anything along those lines.

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then COVID, of course, everyone had it on the menu. It was a QR code. But, yeah, we just ask you to experiment. It goes back to the get a sample experiment, see what your users say, talk to them, and then make changes accordingly.

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Stacy Jones: And so is there anything that, you know, when it comes down to sizes of boxes or does it matter? Like, does it matter if it’s a little tiny box going through the mail or a large box, or if you design a cute box, do you need to actually put that box inside another box? Talk about not sustainable anymore.

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah, no, we did a. So we did a certification with Amazon that had three fun acronyms, PFP, FFP, and SIOC. And that’s frustration free packaging. Prep free packaging and ships in its own container. SIOC. So prep free, meaning, let’s say you ship glass mugs through Amazon. They’re gonna have to prep that product and put it in some sort of bubble wrap before they can send it out the door. They’re not just gonna send your mugs. So that’s not prep free. Whereas with us, if you had a cardboard tray that had a cavity that fit your product, that’s prep free packaging. Frustration free packaging. The next one, that’s essentially any of those hang tag plastic products that you see at the store that you take off of the hooks on the wall.

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Phillip Akhza: You need, like, a scissor, you need a pair of scissors, at least, if not a buzz saw, to open that. That’s not a frustration free package. Whereas a box that’s simple to open, that we provide, this is easy. And then lastly, to your point, ships in its own container. Avoid having the box inside of the box. Going back to that prep free, having a tray that holds the product, let that be the substitute for the box that would go inside of a box. Have it be a tray inside of a box. Instead, it ships your product safely. You can even brand those trays, by the way, like, you could lift up the mug and underneath, the message can say, can’t wait to see you tomorrow morning. Because it’s. Because it’s like, for a cup of coffee, for example.

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Phillip Akhza: And following those guidelines and making sure that there’s as little air as possible being shipped is something that we’re huge advocates of. As a matter of fact, we have a. I know today we’re talking more on, like, the arca.com comma, get your packaging online. But we actually have an enterprise solution that we haven’t talked about yet, Stacy, that’s more targeted towards, like, the supply chain logistics world. We sell our software into warehouses to help them ship less air. And essentially, all we do is take the size of their SKU, or product and benchmark that against the size package that they should ship it in and make a recommendation of packaging assortments for that warehouse to carry so that when they’re fulfilling, meaning picking, packing, shipping merchant products out the door, it’s in a package that makes sense. So I think I’m going to get.

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Phillip Akhza: A lot of listeners raised their hand when I say, how many of you have received a product in the mail that was in a package that’s too big? Like myself included? Right.

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Stacy Jones: Like giant size sometimes, like, literally like a three and a half foot box that has a tiny little thing in it, which is just insanity.

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Phillip Akhza: Totally. There’s two reasons for that. One, for example, this product, whatever this was supposed to go in, they might have just run out of that package and they didn’t get more in time. So this is going to have to go in whatever they can get their hands onto the warehouse. It’s going to go in something bigger, though, obviously, because you can always put in something bigger. You can’t put in something smaller. And as a result, shipping more air. The other reason is they’re not looking at their assortment. They’re not auditing it on a frequent basis, meaning how warehouses work is they’ll have set sizes of boxes in stock that they just reorder and reorder and reorder. They don’t really think about it. They don’t think, well, what are we actually shipping? They just know these are the boxes we usually buy.

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Phillip Akhza: Let’s get some more. Whereas our software is connecting to that warehouse and constantly cycling through the Skus or products that warehouse is shipping on behalf of merchants. And as a result, we tweak that. We adjust that assortment. We say, well, you know, you’ve lost Herman Miller as a customer. Herman Miller, for those of you that makes furniture and chairs, big chairs, stop ordering those boxes. No need to ship a backpack in a huge box anymore. And if anything, that’s a good example. Sometimes you might get a water bottle in a box that could have fit a chair. I mean, it’s really just a matter of keeping good hygiene with respect to your supply chain, and that’s our job.

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Phillip Akhza: So we go from the merchants, the folks who want to send products to influencers all the way up to the warehouses themselves that ship on behalf of those influencers, on behalf of those merchants, and making sure that they ship less air is all in the name of sustainability. At the end of the day, and just as importantly, if not more, because you can’t run a business if you don’t make money, just as importantly, if not more, you’re going to spend less money on shipping because shipping a bigger box is way more expensive than a smaller one. That box is also going to be more expensive. You’re going to have less room on the back of the pallet that sends all those boxes out, which means less room on the back of the truck.

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Phillip Akhza: So your carbon footprint as a warehouse and as a merchant goes up and your customer experience will go down if you don’t take heed and caution the dreaded extra air shipping practices that a lot of warehouses and merchants can avoid if they had potentially talked to us, or just do your own research. If you don’t want to have another service or tech provider like us, make sure you have best practice. But not a lot of people do, so that’s where we can help.

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Stacy Jones: Well, I think, you know, you have your Gen alpha, your Gen Z, your millennials who really do care about this. And so for your, as far as your customer experience, having someone who is abhorring the fact that you have a lack of sustainability, the carbon footprint, all of those keywords that actually people are spending a lot of money trying to figure out how to align. It’s very simple. If you just change your box size.

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Phillip Akhza: Obviously, totally very simple. And just FYI, this is something that’s only, at least from a cost perspective. It’s called dimensionalizing a product. So dimensionalizing a box is what the shipping carriers only started charging through the roof for. Whereas previously it was weight in the last, like five to ten years. But now size, even if it’s light as a feather, but it takes up a lot of space. You know, the world’s not getting any smaller or any bigger. Rather, it is getting smaller. We, we’re going to get, we’re going to get charged for it. So now more than ever, is it important to ship less air? Not just from the sustainability standpoint you’re going to get charged. Don’t do it. So it’s one of the few great times that sustainability and capitalism are actually driving towards the same goal. And this is one of them.

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Phillip Akhza: So hand in hand, we can kick ass in this department. It’s kind of nice for consumers who.

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Stacy Jones: Have a lot of boxes. What can they do with them? What is the solution? If you’re someone like me who has a little bit of an Amazon fanaticness to themselves, how do you deal with all of those boxes? Or versus just what we do is bringing them to our office and then use them for a second life.

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Phillip Akhza: First of all, that’s great. Giving them another. Giving them another use. Repurposing. What is it? I feel like I shouldn’t know this, as an advocate of sustainability. Recycle, reuse. And there’s like a third r. I actually don’t remember. But reuse is repurpose, which is kind of like reuse, but maybe not. I was going to say repurpose, but they sound so similar. But repurposing first and foremost. Do that. Definitely do that. Because then it’s not the end of the life cycle. From there, just make sure you recycle. So avoid, when branding your boxes, try not to use any sort of varnish or polymer gloss. Use aqueous coating, which is a water based gloss. We’re getting technical now, but essentially just making sure that it can get recycled afterwards is super important. Avoiding using non recyclable materials is super important.

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Phillip Akhza: I know that compostable and other keywords in that arena have become very popular right now. My favorite, to be honest, is actually PCR material. Post consumer recycled content. Something that’s 100% recycled, meaning that it is destined to go to the landfill, unfortunately, because everything eventually does. But the good thing about PCR is that your customers can throw it away and it’s not a mistake. Whereas if they used something compostable and they threw that away, that is more detrimental than them having used something that was 100% PCR and ready to go to landfill. Because the carbon footprint of creating something that’s post consumer recycled is significantly lower than a fresh compostable product that doesn’t get responsibly composted. Right. So with boxes, just make sure that it can end up getting recycled with bags. I would highly recommend using PCR products.

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Phillip Akhza: And that way you’re just thinking about what does somebody do when they’re done with the product? And that’s hopefully it gets recycled or hopefully it’s a fully recycled product that ends up in landfill. And you don’t have to worry about instructing your customers what to do exactly. But if you do want to instruct your customers what to do, going back to the QR code, have it printed on your compostable material packaging that says, here’s what you do with me. Your instructions on how to dispose of me, that’s great, too, but that requires an extra step. And if you’re like most consumers, they’re going to take their product and they’re going to throw it away.

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Phillip Akhza: So if you can at least make sure that it’s a material that’s meant to be thrown away, like PCR, then you’re doing the world and the environment a part of the. You’re a part of the greater good, for sure. And I’m a big believer in that.

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Stacy Jones: Well, for all of our listeners, if anyone out there is a gardener, I came up with something that when we moved into our house, we had the realtor had put in grass, so it looked like we had this fantastic front yard. And within two weeks of moving in, that front yard was dead. Because it was just frustrating, you know, turf laid down. There was really no strong watering system or anything else in place. And so I looked into and found this something called lasagna gardening. And I don’t know, Phil, you’ve ever heard of lasagna Garden?

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Phillip Akhza: No, but it’s something.

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Stacy Jones: Yes.

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah.

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Stacy Jones: So I went and I found every last box I could. And what lasagna gardening is you open up all the boxes and you cover all of your grass with cardboard. And then you go and you get mulch and you put mulch on top of your cardboard. I will tell you, it gets so it kills off all the grass so it doesn’t come back up. So you don’t have to worry about grass forever. We rewild did our front yard, and this is a decade ago, actually, about nine years ago, and it became so healthy and could grow anything. Like, we started growing pumpkins and had a pumpkin patch in our front yard. We have all this passion fruit in our front yard. And it’s a really vibrant garden, and it’s all because of cardboard. And I’m convinced of it.

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Phillip Akhza: Wait, that’s amazing. I feel like, well, we’re brainstorming during the show right now, but I would be super interested to do a blog post with you guys. Like, if we could get one of our blog writers to interview you on this, if you’re not too bashful to have a couple of happy to do photos of it. And, you know, we can talk about what. Yeah, we can say, what do you like? The title could literally just be along lines of, like, what to do with your boxes, not what parentheses, not what you expect, because I would not. I would not expect to do that. And then we can talk about lasagna gardening. Can we please? I’m serious. Like, I’m actually.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. But I think it’s important for, you know, listeners to know, like, Phil just went over all these things that you don’t want to have that are contaminants. Right. And that was something I was concerned about, not that I was planning on actually eating what were putting into the earth. Turns out we did with pumpkins and the like. But, you know, I didn’t want to put chemicals back into the earth, and I was cognizant at the time. And, you know, I happen to have done a lot of Amazon shopping, so I had some very plain brown boxes that I was working with at the moment, but it really was cool. And it is. I’m sure there’s other things out there that you can do also that are going to be, you know, supportive of sustainability.

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Phillip Akhza: I love that. Like, I think that’s. I think that’s so great. Wow. We could. Sorry. Now my head just keeps going. Like, there could be a picture, picture of a pumpkin, and there’s, like, a word bubble coming out of it saying, like, I. Like, I grew out of boxes. I grew out of your boxes that you threw away. Like, that’s so cool. I really like that.

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Stacy Jones: Phil, is you need to embed seeds into your boxes, and then you can have the whole garden blooming.

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Phillip Akhza: Amazing. I would. I would actually love to do that. We’ve been asked about that previously. You know, the only. Do you know the only problem with that is if there’s any. If there’s any rain, because the type.

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Stacy Jones: Start sprouting your boxes, it could sprout.

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Phillip Akhza: It’ll. It’ll essentially turn into mo. That’s the only bad part. It needs to be, like, dry, arid. Maybe like, within Arizona, we would only create those boxes and have them ship within, desert, arid climates. Whereas humidity. I live in Austin, Texas. It’ll. It’ll. The box will be ruined. You’ll. You’ll have, like, a pot.

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Stacy Jones: If you put it, you deliver the box, it would sit outside. In a moment, it would start melting. The sun would come out, it would start baking again, get hard again. Moisture would come in. Yes, I could see that.

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah. That’s the only problem. Otherwise, that’s a great idea. That’s awesome.

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Stacy Jones: So how can our listeners find you? Where do they need to go?

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah, very easy. We have a four letter domain. Very proud ark a.com so arca.com dot and for any questions we have a chat function. But it would be great to message [email protected] dot or check out our Instagram arca packaging. Same same tag on TikTok. But arca.com the best way to find us. Send us a message. Would love to help out.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Phil, thank you so much. Are you any last parting words of advice about customizing boxes?

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Phillip Akhza: Get a sample. Just get a sample. See how it fixes, see how it feels, and then do your big run. Just sample first. Everyone needs a rough draft before the final show.

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Stacy Jones: And don’t use pixelated graphics.

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Phillip Akhza: Yeah. Do not. Please, please have vector art. Vector art is what we need. Your designers, if it’s not your designers will know exactly what we’re talking about. Please submit vector art. Your boxes will be way more beautiful if you do. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. That’s true.

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Stacy Jones: Well, to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I look forward to chatting with you this next week. And until then, if you have any questions about influencer marketing, product placement, celebrity partnerships, please reach out. I’m happy to connect and have a larger conversation. Have a great one.