When selling workplace supplies, dealers often focus on what goes into the business, but significant opportunities lie in understanding what goes out of your customer’s business too 

Packaging sits in almost every dealer’s range, but rarely at the centre of strategy. Yet it is often core to a customer’s operational performance. This creates a blind spot in many dealer strategies. While inbound workplace needs are well understood and heavily targeted, outbound operational requirements are frequently treated as secondary or purely transactional purchases. Here’s why packaging shouldn’t be an afterthought for dealers: 

Packaging: Universal Demand 

One of the most overlooked aspects of packaging is just how universal it has become. From healthcare and education to manufacturing, retail, logistics, and even professional services, almost every sector now has some form of outbound goods or materials flow. 

The reluctance of dealers to invest time and resource into developing packaging as a strategic category has often come down to price point and heavy competition from low-cost online sellers. As a result, packaging has become increasingly commoditised. While price and convenience may still win in many cases, more customers are now looking for solutions that act as a direct extension of their fulfilment process. One size no longer fits all. Modern packaging is part of the customer experience; you only have to look at the rise of unboxing culture to see that shift in action. 

From Product Supply to Packaging Thinking 

The solution lies in a shift in mindset from product supply to packaging thinking. Instead of focusing on individual SKUs such as boxes, tape, and void fill, dealers need to view packaging as part of a customer’s wider brand, operational, and fulfilment system. 

That means moving away from simply supplying products and towards building joined-up packaging solutions that support how customers actually pick, pack, and ship goods. In practice, this involves bundling products into fulfilment systems rather than selling them in isolation, and taking a more consultative, efficiency-led approach. 

Within this category sits a far broader range of products than many dealers typically associate with packaging. This includes pallet wrap and stretch film for bulk distribution, void fill systems and paper-based cushioning for damage reduction, and specialist mailing boxes and crash-lock cartons. Increasingly, it also extends into labelling systems, barcode and tracking solutions, and packaging machinery that supports more efficient warehouse operations. Add to this dispensers, sealing equipment and workflow tools, and packaging becomes far more than a collection of consumables, it becomes an operational system in its own right. 

The Potential of Packaging 

The commercial case for repositioning packaging is strong. It offers significant cross-sell potential into closely related categories and remains an underexploited margin opportunity, particularly when products are bundled into solutions or managed as part of a structured supply offering rather than sold as standalone SKUs. Packaging also provides a clear opportunity for differentiation, allowing dealers to move beyond price competition and establish a more value-led, solution-focused position with their customers. 

Packaging might never be one of your core categories, but it deserves to stand as a category in its own right rather than an afterthought. For many dealers, it sits in the background of a much larger product portfolio, but that positioning is precisely what limits its potential. The reality is that packaging already plays a critical role in almost every customer’s business – it just doesn’t always receive the strategic attention that reflects that importance.