Author: Dane Titsworth

Everyone wants to make a good first impression. If you’re one of the 30+ million small business owners in the U.S., you had to make a good first impression when you met with an investor or secured a loan.

The window to make a lasting first impression is only seven seconds. If you sell a product, that means your brand’s product label has to grab someone’s attention fast.

A lot of entrepreneurs come up with crazy color schemes and wacky fonts. They grab a consumer’s attention, but not always in a positive way. So, how do you create a label that sells your product and elevates your brand?

We’re going to show you how in the step by step guide below.

Figure out Your Target Audience

If your intended customer is GenX female professionals, you need a product label design that targets that demographic. Research marketing strategies to help your product labeling attract the customer you want.

You know why your product is a must have, so express that. Tailor it to the consumer’s problem and explain in a simple, clear, and creative way how your product fills their need.

Keep your brand’s vision and authenticity in your design, but do so in a way that makes the GenX professional reach into their wallet.

Choose the Kind of Product Label

Decide on product label design based on your product and market. If you sell a food or beverage, you’ll need a nutrition/ingredient label. The same goes for the health and beauty industries.

Wraparound labels are ideal for these markets because you need to display a lot of information. Your brand’s logo design goes on the front and your mandatory information like nutrition and your barcode will be on the back.

If you haven’t applied for a GS1 Company Prefix yet, you’re going to need to do that to get a barcode. If you paper goods, you won’t need an ingredient label but you’ll still need a barcode.

Keeping your product packaging in mind, check out some label making software and see which kind of label design fits your package the best.

After you decide on the type of label you want, think about if you’d benefit from enhancements like security labels or tamper-evident tags.

Get Creative But Keep It Simple

64% of consumers say they buy a product for the first time based on its packaging. You already know you have seven seconds to make a good impression but you also need to get your brand’s message out in a clear and simple way.

During your design process, think of a few words that describe your product’s function and what you want customers to know about it. Don’t overdo it, as you don’t have enough space to list all the wonderful qualities your product has.

Use the Right Colors

When you started your company, you designed a logo and company name. Your logo will be on your label design but when you get to that step, you may realize your colors don’t express your brand’s philosophy.

Aside from black and white, blue, and red are popular colors for brand design and product labeling. But there’s “meaning” behind the colors themselves that may conflict with your product.

Did you know 60% of the companies on the Fortune 500 list use blue as the main color on their logo? It’s because blue represents confidence.

Red, represents urgency, warning, and danger. And, yes, passion. But there’s a reason clearance sales and warning signs use the color red.

Green gets used by a variety of different markets because it evokes a lot of different emotions. Financial companies use it to express money and health food companies use it for vitality.

A few other, lesser-used colors to consider are:

• Orange – Youthful, energy, adventure
• Yellow – Happiness, creativity
• Purple – Luxury, femininity, opulence

Again, the point is to stand out but not be too busy. Confusion or clutter won’t attract any new customer.

You also need to consider the color of your package. If it’s white, any color will work but if it’s clear, what color is the product itself? If it’s green, using orange on your label won’t complement it so pick a color that does.

Typographic Pairing Is Important

When you create a label, you’ll find out how little space you actually have to work with. This is where using typographic pairing comes in.

Designers use typographic pairing to get out important info by pairing different fonts. For example, you’ve seen a product in the grocery store that has “Fresh” in a larger bolder font than the product description.

You want to keep this to two, three max, fonts. Using more tends to get confusing for the consumer because it’s visual overload.

Maximize the White Space

A white label will be more cost-effective than a pink one but it serves another purpose. You can use white as emphasis. Like typographic pairing, white separates and distinguishes different information.

It’s a minimalist design strategy, but it works because it’s uncluttered and clean. If your logo design is bright orange, white will tone it down, while still standing out.

Decorate But Don’t Overdo It

If you decide you prefer a white label, consider illustrations that enhance the label design without cluttering it.

In the beauty industry, accents that express feelings of warmth are popular. Organic food companies add fruit or veggie illustrations on their labels.

Consumers don’t need to see an illustration on a product label to know what they’re getting but it does add a nice detail.

Keep in mind you’ll need a QR code/UPC on your label so be careful when you’re thinking about using black accents or elements on the back. Don’t feel pressured into using decorations, decorations, or accents. It’s about your brand’s aesthetic and creating a label you’re proud of!

We’ll Help You Face Common Challenges Head On

As you can see, when it comes to product labels, having a simple design is key. If you design it right, you’ll stand out in a crowded marketplace and still stay true to your brand’s message.

If you’d like to learn about other business challenges like inventory control visit our blog that details mistakes you need to avoid. Contact us for information on our services or if you have any questions.

It is a proven fact: businesses who track their IT assets realize up to a 30% reduction in the amount spent on those assets during the first year of use. And that is IT assets, alone.

If you can save so much money by keeping an asset inventory, why doesn’t everyone do it? It could be as simple as not understanding what an asset is and why they are so important to track.

For perfect clarity on the subject, you must first understand what they are not: Assets are not the same thing as inventory. Still, people often confuse the two.

Everyone knows you should track your inventory. In fact, only 8% of companies who have inventory don’t track it. Read on to learn more about assets and why it is as important to watch your assets as it is to track your inventory.

What is Inventory and Inventory Management?

Inventory is the items you sell or the items used to build what you sell. Inventory management is the use of a standardized method to track the movement of parts and products through a company.

Examples of information to track when evaluating Inventory Include:

• The vendor from whom you purchased the inventory item
• The amount spent to buy the item
• The amount for which the item sells
• The physical location of the item while it waits to sell
• Quantity on Hand
• Reorder Point

What are Assets and Asset Inventory?

Assets are the infrastructure of your company. They are the machines that build your inventory items, the buildings that house those machines and even the employees who run them.

If inventory is what you sell, then assets are the items you own. That makes the asset inventory a literal inventory of all your assets.

Examples of information to track when evaluating assets Include:

• The vendor from whom you purchased the asset
• When you purchased the asset
• How much the asset cost
• Depreciation of the asset
• Where the asset is located and/or who currently has it
• When preventative maintenance was last conducted and when it is next due.
• Contract and warranty details
• Who has been trained to use the asset

It is also important to note that assets are not consumables. An item must be of value to be an asset. Consumables are generally items of little value used up in the process of day to day operations.

Consumables are shipping labels and the oil used to grease production machines. Track these items like you would inventory and assets to save money.

Is Inventory an Asset?

While not all assets are inventory, all inventory items are assets.

Inventory items in your possession are assets; something of value you own. Once sold, the cost of the item becomes an expense and the sale amount becomes income.

Non-inventory assets will never generate income. For this reason, it is important to separate inventory and asset inventory when tracking them.

Inventory vs. Inventory Asset

There are many similarities between assessing standard inventory and asset inventory. The difference comes into play when you consider which part of your business it effects.

Managing inventory improves profit margins while monitoring asset inventory improves your company as a whole. But how they do this?

That is the real question.

Effective use of Resources

Whether you track your inventory or your assets, you will learn to use your resources more effectively.

With regard to inventory, you will receive insights into which items you use most frequently in product development. You can also observe trends. Perhaps you use more widgets than gadgets most of the time, but around Christmas, you need more gadgets.

Assessing the effective use of assets is as productive. How much do you actually use that printer? Do you need another? Would it be better to rent another printer at certain times of the year?

All these questions and so many more can be answered by a detailed inventory of your assets.

Optimization

It is pretty obvious that inventory tracking will optimize inventory usage. But which parts of the business does asset inventory optimize?

The answer: everything else.

Earlier, we called assets the infrastructure of a business. It is time now to revisit that statement.

An infrastructure is the physical components that make up an entity. If you are able to catalog your infrastructure, then you will be able to tell where all your company’s moving parts currently are.

You will make more efficient moves, create more accurate forecasts and minimize damages.

Why Track Asset Inventory?

Tracking inventory assets allows you to budget for the day to day expenses of running a business. It also gives you an accurate picture of what your business is worth, which always makes for happy investors.

Understanding the value of your assets gives a clearer picture of how much money you spent to earn profits for any given time frame. This knowledge gives you the power to see money saving, or money depleting, trends.

Additionally, you will know where all your asset items are within your company. When you need something, you can retrieve it thereby increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Where do I start?

The execution of a new process is always the hardest part. There is so much setup, but once done, everything gets so much easier. That is how it will be when you first start using an asset inventory.

Labels and a scanning system will go a long way to automating both your regular inventory and your asset inventory tracking. The barcodes will hold most of the information for you, so you can reduce manual entry and curb errors.

If you would like a consultation to discuss which labels and scanners would work best for your company, please do not hesitate to reach out!

When they first came out, many people were baffled about the cryptic symbols on their items and produce. “A QR code?” they asked. “What’s that?”

Today, those strange squares have come to be almost commonplace. While their use in Japan and China has been widely established, North America continues to rely heavily on regular barcodes for merchandising needs and customer use.

What’s the difference between the two?

Here, we’ll explain in simple details the answer to the question everybody has wondered about: QR codes vs barcodes. Which is which?

Current Types

Contrary to popular belief, there are several different types of barcodes.

UPC codes (named EAN codes internationally) are the “old school” ones we all recognize when we go to the score. They’re made up of a bunch of black lines and numbers underneath.

There are also PDF 417s, which are found on drivers’ licenses, and the GS1 Databar. The latter is on prescriptions and other important documents.

And, finally, there are QR codes, which are actually a type of barcode themselves. (Does this bring to mind that adage we learned in math class, that a square is a rhombus, but a rhombus is not a square? It’s very similar.)

However, when we refer to “barcodes” in this article, we’ll be discussing 1-D codes.

More on that later.

QR Codes vs Barcodes

Sure they look different, but what are the functionalities of QR codes and regular barcodes? Does anyone really know?

From their history to how they work, we’ll cover the distinctions of both.

Quick-Response Codes

Quick-response codes, called QR codes for short, are one of the newest ways to store information on products. Like barcodes, they are in basically every store across the US and Europe.

History

The first QR code was created in the 1990s by Denso Wave, Inc., a company that provides solutions for automation and robotics. It was used to track vehicles. Although the company has received much attention for the creation, it remains a non-licensed product.

How They Work

QR codes work through algorithms, specifically the Reed-Solomon error-correcting algorithm. All the small boxes that make up the code have specific uses. They include several basic parts:

• The finder pattern helps scanners detect the barcode’s position.
• The alignment pattern takes distortion factors into condition to better “understand” data.
• The timing pattern reads the symbols and provides information about module coordinates.
• The quiet zone helps in easier symbol detection.
• The encoding region is where all the magic happens. Here, it stores and relays data through binary values and rules: the algorithm.

As you can tell, more is stored on these small squares than meets the eye. When these are scanned, the data triggers an event to occur. That’s why if you scan one on your smartphone, it might bring you to a website.

Advantages

QR codes offer several advantages. They are smaller for starts, meaning businesses can lend more of a product’s outside to marketing and branding. They are also easier to access, as they are read horizontally or vertically. As a result, they are sometimes called 2-D codes.

And you don’t need a scanner to read them. Anyone can download a free app to their smartphone and scan these types of codes.

QR codes also contain hundreds of times the information regular barcodes do. A commonly-used QR code can encode approximately 4,296 characters of information. The “old school” ones can store as little as 20 characters.

Finally, 2-D codes contain an error margin. This margin gives companies greater flexibility with the code itself. For example, logos or other pictures can be included directly in the code.

That error margin also means that more detailed information is provided about the product itself, including its condition, manufacturer’s information, location, etc. And even if the code’s covered, it can be decoded.

Considerations

QR codes are extremely popular in Japan in China; some estimates suggest they resulted in as much as $1.65 trillion of mobile payments in 2016. However, these codes are having trouble in America, where many people don’t have the app to read them or simply don’t find them worth their time.

However, usage is on the rise, especially following Apple’s active QR reader, which the company integrated into their camera app.

Barcodes

The typical barcodes you see at the store also contain information, although not as much as QR codes. Still, they are able to relay all the relevant data needed to process and keep track of goods.

History

The first barcode was scanned in 1974 on a pack of Wrigley’s gum. The inventor, Joe Woodland, first imagined the technology that would one day be incorporated into practically every sector of America as he sat at an Ohio beach. He traced it into the sand as he thought about Morse Code.

How They Work

The “zebra stripes” on barcodes actually have a significant role in the storing of data. In the usual EAN system, 13-digit numbers store information. Bars represent each number and are a specific length and width. Computers read this information.

Advantages

The 1-D barcodes many are familiar with are advantageous in their own right. They are simpler and less expensive, and yet businesses can still enjoy reduced labor and speedier monitoring or checkouts.

Considerations

In today’s phone-centric world, many businesses may be losing out on marketing ventures with barcodes. Then again, only about 34% of US smartphone owners have scanned a QR code, so this may be an indication that marketing efforts are best saved for elsewhere.

Additionally, scanners must read them (not a cell or scanner) only horizontally.

Although 1-D barcodes are “old,” they are just as useful as QR codes in creating an efficient workplace and tracking items.

Scan Your Future

Next time someone asks you the difference, you can concisely explain QR codes vs barcodes. We’re sure you’ll look like a regular brainiac.

If you own a business and haven’t invested in barcodes, contact us today. They are a fantastic way to market, reduce labor costs and increase efficiency. Make your company better, and scan your way into the future.