Custom poly & bubble mailers.

The numbers.

Mailer formats.

Poly for soft goods that cannot be crushed. Bubble or kraft-padded when there is something inside that can. Expandable when the depth varies between orders and you do not want three SKUs of mailer to cover one product line.

Recycled content and the honest trade-off.

Poly mailers carry PCR recycled content and weigh a fraction of a box, which cuts freight emissions outright. What they are not is kerbside-recyclable in most of the country. A kraft paper padded mailer is the recyclable option and costs more — that is the real trade, and we would rather state it than let a spec sheet imply otherwise.

How to spec a mailer.

Size a mailer from the packed product's diagonal, not its flat footprint. A mailer cut to the exact flat dimensions of a folded garment will not close once the garment has any loft at all. Add allowance for thickness and for the seal flap.

Film thickness is the second decision. Lighter films cost less and tear more; the right film depends on what is inside, how many handoffs the parcel takes and whether anything inside has a corner. For apparel, our standard film is usually enough. For anything with an edge, step up or move to a padded format.

Opacity matters more than brands expect. A thin poly mailer can show the product through the film, which is a privacy problem for some categories and a theft problem for others. Specify opaque unless there is a reason not to.

If you want a returns experience, specify a double adhesive strip at the time of quote. Retrofitting one later means a new tooling setup.

What goes wrong.

Sustainability claims that do not survive checking. “Recyclable” on a poly mailer usually means store drop-off, not kerbside, and the two are not interchangeable in a consumer's mind or in a regulator's. State the actual route or say nothing.

Print that scuffs off in transit. Poly mailers rub against each other in sortation. Heavy ink coverage without the right surface treatment will scuff. Large solid areas in a dark colour are where this shows first.

Choosing bubble when padding is not the problem. Bubble protects against impact, not against crushing. A stack of parcels on a pallet will crush a bubble mailer as readily as a poly one. If crush is the risk, the answer is a box.

One mailer size for a whole catalogue. Oversized mailers cost more in film and more in dimensional weight, on every single order. Two or three sizes almost always pays for itself.

What moves the price.

Film thickness and mailer dimensions set the base price, and both are worth being precise about. An oversized mailer costs more in film on every unit and more in dimensional weight on every shipment — that second cost recurs forever and usually dwarfs the first.

Padding is a step change, not an increment. Bubble and kraft-padded formats cost meaningfully more than plain poly, so the question is whether the contents genuinely need impact protection or whether they just need to be contained.

Print coverage is the third driver. A one-colour logo on a plain mailer is close to the price of an unprinted one. Edge-to-edge coverage in a dark colour costs more, needs more surface treatment to resist scuffing, and shows every mark the sortation network puts on it.

Volume moves all of it. The jump from 1,000 to 5,000 units is the single largest percentage drop you will see, because the fixed setup is spread across five times the run. Prices here are all-in — tooling, printing, finishing, packing and delivery in one number — and reorders carry no setup fee, so the second run of the same artwork is always cheaper than the first.

Every printing & finish option.

Every decoration below runs on printed mailers and the inserts that go in them. Pantone spot matching is standard, not an upcharge tier, and artwork files stay on record for 24 months so a reorder is a single email.

From sample to shelf.

Send the product's packed dimensions and its weight. Mailer sizing is driven by the diagonal, not the flat footprint — a mailer cut to the flat size will not close.

More from TWO.