Packaging a Stole Line for a Museum Shop
A final-year designer in Bhuj is packaging a new stole line for an eight-weaver cooperative. Three pieces go to retail: cotton at ₹1,150, silk-cotton at ₹2,400 and wool at ₹3,200. The museum shop that will stock them has four conditions. Packs must stack flat on a 30 cm deep shelf. They must survive a 48-hour courier run with no more than 2% damage. No single-use plastic is allowed. Packaging cost must stay at or under 6% of that item's retail price. The shop also wants the weave visible without opening the pack.
Three options are on the table. A: a rigid two-piece box with a foil logo and a plastic window, ₹190 per unit. B: a kraft sleeve with a printed band and a hand-numbered card, ₹42 per unit, fully paper, but the wool stole creases badly inside it. C: an unprinted cotton drawstring pouch sewn by the cooperative, ₹95 per unit. The cooperative has asked that any final design be assembled locally so three women each gain about 15 paid hours a week. The courier trial is in nine days.
1. Evaluate A, B and C against every constraint and recommend a solution. Show the cost arithmetic rather than a general opinion.
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Step 1 - convert the 6% cap into rupees per item. 6% of ₹1,150 = ₹69; of ₹2,400 = ₹144; of ₹3,200 = ₹192. The cap is a ratio, so one price cannot be judged for the whole range.
- A (₹190): blows the cap on cotton (190 vs 69) and silk-cotton (190 vs 144); clears only wool (190 vs 192). The plastic window also breaks the no-plastic rule. Reject.
- B (₹42): clears the cap everywhere (3.7%, 1.75%, 1.3%) but fails on the wool crease and shows no weave.
- C (₹95): fails cotton (95 vs 69), passes silk-cotton and wool, but is unprinted and hides the weave entirely.
Step 2 - no single pack survives all four tests, so tier it. Cotton and silk-cotton: option B plus a die-cut oval window (₹6) and a numbered card (₹4) = ₹52, i.e. 4.5% and 2.2% of retail. Wool: option C with a printed header card (₹9) = ₹104, i.e. 3.25%, and the stole is rolled rather than folded to kill the crease.
Step 3 - check the local-work clause. At roughly 0.7 hour per pouch, 200 pouches give 140 hours, about 47 hours each for three women across three weeks. The recommendation is defensible on all four conditions.
2. The museum buyer says: 'Just pick the cheapest one that looks premium.' How do you answer, and what evidence do you bring?
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I would reframe the buyer's own criterion. 'Cheapest' by unit price and cheapest as a share of retail are different numbers: option C at ₹95 looks cheaper than A at ₹190, but C is 8.3% of the cotton stole's price while B's sleeve is 3.7%. The unit price of a pack is meaningless without the item it carries.
On 'looks premium', I would not argue taste - I would argue cost of failure. A returned, creased wool stole costs a courier leg, a replacement and goodwill, and one damaged return at ₹3,200 retail cancels the saving on roughly 70 sleeves. So the evidence set is:
- A two-column table of pack cost against 6% cap for all three items.
- A trial sample: pack the three stoles in the proposed tiers, run a 1.2 m drop plus 48-hour courier simulation with 10 units per type, and record damage percentage against the 2% limit.
- Photographs of the die-cut window showing actual weave, since the shop asked for visibility.
I would also note the local-assembly clause as a commercial asset: the shop can tell a labour story, which is worth more to a museum buyer than foil stamping.
3. Design the nine-day courier trial. State the sample, the pass/fail thresholds and what you would change if wool fails.
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Sample: 10 packs per tier (30 total), each carrying an actual stole, not a dummy, because weight and bulk drive the failure. Include two packs with a deliberately rough fold to test the worst case.
Route: one 48-hour courier leg each way, so a pack is handled four times; add a 1.2 m drop on two faces and one corner for the outer pack.
Measures and thresholds:
- Damage rate ≤2%, i.e. 0 failures in 30 packs. One failure is 3.3%, already over.
- Crease assessment on wool: photograph against a raking light and score on a 3-point scale; any permanent crease counts as failure.
- Window integrity: no tear or delamination of the die-cut edge.
If wool fails: the cause is compression in a flat sleeve, not the material. Options in order of cost: roll the stole around a paper tube inside pouch C (+₹14, taking wool to 3.7% of retail, still under cap), or move wool to a shallow two-piece kraft box at about ₹135 (4.2%). Do not upgrade cotton, which passed - spend only where the data fails.