Six years ago, when I took over purchasing for a 140-person consumer goods company, I thought custom packaging worked like this: you call a printer, choose a box, and add your logo. Then I started managing our $80,000 annual packaging budget, negotiated with more than 40 vendors, and learned that the real questions are less about logos and more about cost, specifications, and timing.
This is the FAQ I wish I could have handed myself back then. If you’re evaluating Gorilla custom packaging for your business, these are the questions I’d ask—and the answers that usually don’t show up on a quote.
1. What does “Gorilla custom” cover, exactly?
It covers two different things, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re ordering. The first is printed customization on a standard product—your logo on a stock-size box, label, sticker, poster, flyer, or business card. The second is fully custom packaging: custom dimensions, die-cut shapes, inserts, printed tape, and even the adhesives used inside the pack.
What I mean is that “custom” isn’t one service tier at Gorilla; it’s a range from low-cost print-only jobs to structural design. That range matters because it lets you consolidate vendors. Instead of ordering labels from one supplier, mailers from another, and tape from a third, you can put all of it on one purchase order. Consolidation saved us roughly $1,800 per order cycle—mostly freight and admin time—when we moved our retail packaging to Gorilla custom.
2. Why is the lowest unit price often the most expensive?
Usually, it’s not the price per unit that hurts you—it’s what was left out of the quote.
Last spring, we asked for pricing on 5,000 custom mailers. Vendor B quoted $0.46 per unit; Vendor A quoted $0.55. On line item alone, B won by $450. But B’s quotation did not include the $420 plate fee, and freight added $260 at our dock. B’s effective total was about $3,010, while A’s $2,750 price included everything. I almost went with B until I calculated the total cost of ownership.
Why does that happen? Because low base prices often work as a hook, and the real margin shows up in setup fees, die charges, proof revisions, and “estimated” freight that lands higher than the estimate. What I tell our team: compare the all-in delivered quote, not the per-unit number.
3. Can I test Gorilla custom without ordering 10,000 units?
Yes. For standard printed products—business cards, flyers, labels, stock-size boxes—minimums often start around 25 to 50 units. For packaging, I use a different rule: order the smallest quantity that actually tests the production line, not the smallest quantity that prints cheaply.
A pilot run of 250 custom mailers will reveal things a digital proof can’t: how the box survives transit, whether the insert fits, how colors look on the real substrate. If you order only 25, you’re buying a proof, not a lesson.
Keep pilot mailers within USPS standard dimensions if you plan to mail them. As of January 2025, USPS pricing lists First-Class Mail letters (1 oz) at $0.73 and large envelopes, or flats, at $1.50 (source: usps.com). A letter must stay under 6.125 by 11.5 inches and 0.25 inch thick. Stay inside those specs and your postage stays predictable. Exceed them, and you move into parcel pricing, which can affect your cost math more than the box price does.
4. Is Gorilla glue mounting tape the same as packaging tape?
No—and confusing the two created a messy afternoon during our Q4 2024 rollout.
If you’ve searched for “Gorilla glue mounting tape,” you were probably looking at the double-sided tape product line. That’s a high-strength adhesive product, not a carton-sealing tape. We use it to mount product samples to the inside of rigid box lids, attach displays to retail fixtures, and keep printed inserts from sliding around in transit. It does those jobs well.
But it isn’t the right tool for sealing shipping cartons. For that, use a tape designed for corrugated surfaces—pressure-sensitive or water-activated, depending on your packing volume. The Gorilla tape range covers both options, but they solve different problems.
There’s something satisfying about finding the right adhesive after ordering the wrong one. If I remember correctly, our first trial of a heavy-duty mounting tape on thin polybag film ended with the film tearing on every third bag. To be fair, the tape held—it held so well that it ripped the bag open. Lesson: check the substrate before assuming stronger means better.
5. Why do custom packaging orders go wrong when both sides “communicated clearly”?
Because clear communication still relies on words, and words leave room for assumptions.
I once said “standard size” to a vendor. They heard “our standard size”—a 10 by 8 inch mailer. My team’s standard was 12 by 9 inches, the size that fit our product. We found the mismatch when the first sample arrived and the insert didn’t fit by nearly two inches. Neither side was being careless; both sides believed the order was correct.
Since then, I’ve made two rules. First, no production order gets approved without a printable die-line template showing the cut and fold lines, not just a glossy mockup. Second, the supplier confirms every dimension in writing, including tolerances. Most of the expensive rework I’ve seen over the past six years happened because one abbreviation or assumption meant two different things.
6. Can we say “recyclable” on our custom packaging?
Only if you can substantiate it, and this is becoming a bigger issue as retail buyers audit green claims.
Per FTC advertising guidelines—the Green Guides at ftc.gov—an unqualified claim like “recyclable” has to be accurate for the product as actually sold. In practice, that means recycling access must exist for a substantial majority of your customers (the FTC guidance points to around 60%), and each component has to be accepted by those programs. A paper box with a plastic window, a label that doesn’t separate in the recycling stream, or a tape that contaminates fiber can all break the claim.
We made this exact mistake on a promotional mailer in 2023. The outer mailer itself was recyclable, but the clear label stuck on every unit wasn’t accepted in most curbside programs. The statement wasn’t technically false about the mailer, but it was misleading about the finished item.
Ask what happens to each component after its useful life. If your Gorilla custom rep can’t tell you which parts are recyclable and which aren’t, either qualify the claim or leave it off.
7. What tips the decision when two quotes are close?
Turnaround certainty, proof process, and how the supplier handles exceptions.
When I compared our Q1 and Q2 orders side by side—same product, two different vendors—the unit prices were nearly identical. What changed was the number of emails needed to get a corrected proof, and whether the vendor shipped on the promised date. That used to feel like a soft factor. Now I know it’s a cost factor: every proof round delays the sale, and every “should be there by Friday” consumes an hour of my team’s time.
Our procurement policy now requires three quotes for orders above $5,000 because comparing vendors usually surfaces these differences before we commit. To be fair, a fully automated ordering portal isn’t everything. For complex custom work, I still want a human to review the file before it goes to press. Gorilla custom gives us both: automated ordering where it saves time and a real preflight check where a missed 2-millimeter bleed would otherwise mean a reprint. That combination—fewer handoffs, but not zero—is what makes a supplier efficient in ways that show up on the bottom line.
And there’s something satisfying about getting a purchasing process to that point. After years of 11 p.m. worries about whether packaging would arrive on time, the best part is no longer needing to worry at all.
