Our new packaging arrived, but it's not what we thought it'd be...

Our new Vite Noodles packaging looked great... at least, on the screen. But now that we're holding it...

It's wrong. We gotta fix it.

If you look at the digital renderings we have, it looks great. And even when we did tests, it didn't seem like it would be a problem-- we printed out some stickers and stuck them on to existing packaging, tada. Looks good.

But ultimately, what comes from our packaging suppliers and what we print out is going to be different in a lot of ways that are hard to predict.

See, for anyone who's had to do printing, you might already know what your screen displays and what your printer actually produces aren't quite the same. That gap can get worse at the scales we work with as well.

Little changes like what kind of inks they're using, the sRGB to CMYK conversions, even how that color data is converted... but those tend to be littler things. In our packaging right now, for instance, some of the colors aren't quite as bright and vivid as we'd like, but that's a minor thing for the next run.

If it were just that, then it'd be simple. But what we need to change on the packaging can't be fixed through just colors alone.

What gets problematic, however, is that it can get really, really expensive to make any changes if you're printing packaging with plates.

Each plate is a custom made die which basically stamps on the design (okay this is a pretty simplified version for speed's sake), and they can get expensive. It gets even worse because the MOQ, or minimum order quantity of a single run with these custom made plates is 20,000 bags.

Color's not such a big deal, since they can modify the color, and it'll simply be the color mixes that'll be different with the plates. But when there's actual design changes due to the issues I'll talk about next...

Then you're looking at a completely new plate that needs to be manufactured to the tune of many thousands of dollars. Ouch.

Luckily we didn't have to get a completely new plate!

...Because we never got one in the first place!

Because we know that it's hard to get everything exactly perfect the first time, and we've been burned by this before. One of the first versions of Vite Ramen that we had released ended up needing two new plate changes, which immediately not only dragged the time on significantly but ended up making the packaging extraordinarily expensive per unit when you factor in the cost of the plates.

But the nice thing about the plates is that even though the upfront cost (generally known as the fixed cost) is really expensive, every individual packaging is anywhere from 10x to 15x cheaper than the method that we're currently using...

Which is known as digital printing, something you're probably familiar with if you've ever had to print anything out (but I know is increasingly rare so maybe some of you haven't).

You can think of it like basically printing with a regular printer. It's slower and more expensive, you know, 10 to 15 times more expensive like I said. The nice thing is you don't have a 20,000 minimum order and you don't need a plate printed out...

Which means when you order a batch of stuff and there is a mistake, like what we have on this packet, then your next run can immediately be fixed without those extremely high plate manufacturing times and high minimum order quantities.

So every time we do a first print of anything, we use this method so that in case there are any mistakes that we'll need to fix later, we can fix it with a higher upfront cost on the packaging but a lower total cost in case of mistakes. When we're confident we switch to the plate and go for larger quantities.

But what is that mistake that we have on this packet that needs fixing?

Well, do you see the size of the noodle on the bag?

Sometimes the noodle can be too big and that can cause a problem. In this case the actual real noodles inside push up against the graphic and while that will happen one way or the other, the size of this noodle has somehow become so large that the print quality has degraded.

Similarly I'm sure that you can see that the Vite Noodles name itself isn't super visible because the entire design is kinda zoomed in. We think that's because some of the safety margin information that we're preserving in the margin wasn't translated correctly, going from the design file and packaging specs to the final print.

Are these huge issues? I mean no, not really... but these are issues that are going to bother me regardless if they don't get fixed, so we're going back to fix it and do another print run, and hope this one comes out right.

Meanwhile for your order and Vite Noodle orders in general, that means a couple things are happening.

First, we still DO have our old branding and packaging. We don't want to waste and throw those out, so orders will contain a 50/50 mix of the old branding and new one until we're through! Everything inside is the same, just the updated packaging and branding is changed.

Next, once the newer design is out as well, we'll have those put into rotation. Eventually, you'll probably get to see this first print run and the second print run side by side, and get to see the differences that we've made. And then even after that, hopefully, we'll move on to the plate run, and you might see the slight differences THERE in how THOSE colors render and how that packaging will change as well!

Remember to be kind, and savor life's little victories.

-Tim, Founder Vite