Small business packaging setup for 100 orders a week

A thermal label printer is the first thing to buy at this volume. It needs no ink or cutting and prints a batch of fifteen labels in under a minute. A sturdier printer is typically £55–85 and lasts for years.

Use fanfold 100 x 150 mm labels rather than rolls. A 500 stack is typically £12–18 and sits behind the printer without a holder. Labels are the exception to the two-week rule: at 100 orders a week, the stack lasts about five weeks.

Pull every order into Royal Mail Click & Drop or your platform’s own label tool and print the lot at once. Labelling parcel by parcel means opening the tool 100 times a week.

You can cover nearly every order with three formats: a padded envelope for flat and small items, a small single-wall box for anything that can crush, and one larger box for the odd bulky sale. Three sizes take less shelf space and make choosing a box quicker.

Look back at your last 100 orders and sort them into those three. If one size takes more than half, buy it in the biggest pack you can store. A 100 pack of padded envelopes is typically £14–22; 25 small boxes are typically £8–14.

If you run out of mailers mid-batch, packing stops until the next delivery. Keep roughly two weeks of each consumable and reorder when you open the last week’s worth. Put a marker line on the shelf so you can see the trigger without counting.

Order tape with the mailers. A six-roll pack of brown tape is typically £5–9, and a tape gun at £8–14 makes each box a single pull instead of a fiddle with the end.

If you guess the weight, you can underpay and face a surcharge, or overpay and lose margin. Check Royal Mail's current weight bands and prices. A parcel scale, typically £15–25, sits flat on the table, so you can weigh each parcel as you seal it. A 40 kg model has a wider platform for boxes; a 30 kg one is enough if your parcels are light. Check the reading against the service you bought before printing.

Keep a printed list of your usual items and their packed weights taped to the wall. After a fortnight you will know most of the weights without checking the list.

Work in this order: pick, pack, weigh, label, stack. Do each step for the whole batch before moving to the next. Picking all fourteen orders first, then packing all fourteen, is faster than finishing each order start to end.

Stack finished parcels by the door and clear the table at the end of each session, so the next batch starts on an empty surface.

If the printer jams on long runs, look at an industrial label printer, typically £200–260. If bubble wrap is slowing you down, honeycomb paper wrap on a dispenser roll, typically £18–28, is quicker to tear and looks tidier.

If you queue at the post office every day, ask Royal Mail about collection options for your volume rather than adding trips.