The Epson Diet
July 16th, 2007
I’ve been using an Epson 2200 printer for quite a number of years now (it’s more than 5 years old! That’s almost unheard of now in the world of ultra-cheap printers). It’s a great 6 color printer, but with that many colors comes a whole lot of cartridges to keep handy. I hate running out of ink, so every now and again, when I’m checking out online or at the store, I’ve been known to grab an extra box of ink or two, just in case.
I’ve always thought that ink cartridge packaging was excessive. Well, just recently I looked in the closet to discover that over the years, the Epson 2200 cartridge packing has gone on a diet!
The packaging began at whopping 77g, (11cm x 15cm x 3.5cm), and as a consumer, it was painfully apparent that this box was much larger than the cartridge itself. About two years ago, Epson slimmed down this packaging by eliminating corrugated cardboard filler and shrink wrap inside the box and narrowed the width to 2cm to drop the packaging to 63g.
The cartridge itself is only about 7cm tall, so a third generation of packaging shrank the box down another 3.5cm to 57g. Interestingly, an empty cartridge weighs approx 29g, so $10.99 buys you about 28g of ink. (That’s the equivalent of buying ink at a rate of $178/lb! )
There’s no doubt in my mind that by shrinking the packaging, Epson has not only helped the environment, but made a lot more money in the process. Given how light the product is, it’s no where near maxing out the capacity of the boxes and shipping containers. So, by being smaller and lighter, Epson is able to pack more cartridges onto a pallet, maximizing shipping efficiency and making an easy buck.
This only goes to show that the world is full of opportunities to clean up our act and pick some low hanging fruit!
(ps. you’ll notice that the graphic design changed on the packaging… more on that later!)
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July 16th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
The Epson Diet…
Vestal Design takes a look at how Epson ink packaging has gone on a diet over the past few years, getting smaller and lighter, saving paper, energy and CO2! A world of opportunity and low hanging fruit still awaits!...
July 16th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Hmm, I wonder if they originally had larger packaging to make the consumer think they were buying more ink. I wonder if that’s affected their sales, or whether having more on the shelf improved their supply chain enough to counteract that? I wonder what other factors are related to packaging size from a marketing perspective.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
It’s amusing because the outrageous price of ink seems to surprise people when you put it in terms of $/gal (which suddenly becomes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more reasonable than the increasing price of gasoline!)
Funny thing is many, many liquids are still far more expensive than gas (fun study of the price of 47 liquids: http://www.cockeyed.com/science/gallon/liquid.html ) Just be glad your car doesn’t run on scorpion venom, which rings in at the tidy sum of $38,858,507.46 / gal.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Jeff, you have a great point. Product packaging definitely drives consumer perception. Personally, I’m a terrible judge of volume (I always try to take home more groceries than I can carry) and frequently find myself amazed that bottles of identical volume, but different aspect ratios, can have such a significant impact on my perception.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Jessica’s right, it’s pretty amazing how cheap gasoline is, considering everything that goes into oil exploration, extraction, refinement, transportation and infrastructure.