In Our Basket - Print Shop Business Essentials on Amazon.
Using Amazon is not only an everyday occurrence for the majority of people who shop online but it is also a website that we use to keep our business necessities up to scratch. To begin with, we do try to shop local and small where possible - you can check out our In Our Basket - What Our Small Business Uses from Etsy!
As we have a couple of small shops we use a variety of different products for each one. For example, we do not need the following items for our mug shop as whilst we design them ourselves we do not print them, as we use a professional printer who provides exceptional quality on our behalf.
Official Ink
The cheapest place we can find the ink that is needed for our orders has been Amazon! In fact, we had found places closer to home but they were charging almost three times the price! So, for that reason, Amazon won us over. We use two different cartridges for our Canon Pixma. The prices do vary by £1 or so each time I purchase it, but it's usually around £22 for colour and black inks each.
There are options on Amazon, and places like eBay, that offer copy inks (which are universal inks for various different printers) at a relatively low price however we prefer to use official Canon inks with our products so that we can guarantee that the product will be as advertised. We have used copy ink in the past within our older printers and they do print great for personal stock notes. So for that reason, we do use them in an older printer for our invoices etc and keep the high-quality printer and ink exclusively for our designs.
Card
We're a huge fan of House of Cards at OhLushCreative, we've used them since the very beginning and love the quality of each sheet. We use both A4 & A5 from them. In fact, initially, we would buy the A4 card and when necessary we'd cut them using a card cutter. However, thankfully, we go through too much of either to spend time slicing and dicing - so we now buy A5 directly!
Envelopes
I'd never given much thought to the shocking prices of envelopes until I actually needed them! For £9.99 for 25, it is the best price we found for quality hardback envelopes. They work out at about 40p each. There are many hardback manilla envelopes for sale on Amazon, but we really recommend you always check the reviews! Some products have negative reviews due to being too thin or not having a supportive back, whereas the A4 one's we use here are perfect for what we use them for and have not had any complaints since we began using them. We also regularly use the A5 ones that come in packs of 20 for £6.99 (working out at 35p an envelope).
Suggested Read: Work-From-Home Essentials We LOVE from Etsy
Card Bags
These bags work great at protecting our designs within their hardback envelopes. It also means that if there is any rain between us dropping them at our local post office and them receiving it then the likelihood of any damage to the design itself is unlikely!
Sticky Tape
A new favourite of ours here is the plant-based sellotape with 0% plastic. We've yet to use it on anything that needs super taped together, but it works great on our envelopes and means that our customers recycle without worrying.
- Fully Compostable
- Packaging is Fully Recyclable
- 50% Stickier & 20% Stronger than competitor
- Easy Tear
Edit 19/10/21: Frustratingly we're removing this from our recommended list, as whilst the first two rolls we used were perfect our final, third, roll consistently ripped when peeling - in a way that was not useful in the slightest!
Packaging Stickers
Presentation is the first thing that a buyer sees from you when they receive their product, and that is before they even open the packaging. So, why not make the packaging pretty? You can start by adding these cute 'thank you' stickers to each parcel.
And just like that, that's our round-up of Amazon products we use! Do you use any other products from Amazon that you'd recommend? Let us know in the comments!
Disclaimer
This website may get compensated for the products reviewed and linked to by the companies who produce them. All of the products are personally recommended, for I would not share any items I would not use myself. I am an independent writer and the reviews and recommendations are done based on my own opinions.
