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With retail chain stores on every high street, there's never been a more important time for independent retailers to find ways to promote their own brand. However, whether you have one store or five hundred stores your brand is central to everything you do to promote your business.

A growing trend among retailers is to offer a gift wrapping service. This is true both in the physical world and also with retailing on the internet. It is possible to buy a huge range of stock gift wrap papers. But, this has its disadvantages. Not only is it almost impossible to match your company's corporate colours, but with changing trends, a paper chosen today could be out of stock tomorrow.

A better solution for gift wrapping is to have your own gift wrap paper custom printed. A simple idea would be to have your logo repeated to make an overall pattern using your corporate colours. This will work well with a particularly good design. A much better idea would be to commission some bespoke illustrations that either reflect your store's product range or possibly a seasonal theme. The company logo can be included, but with more subtlety. This way you can maintain your corporate brand whilst offering the recipient of the gift something much more appealing.

Remember to give some thought to whether you are going to include ribbons and bows when choosing your design theme and colours. Gift wrap ribbons and bows will add the finishing touch to any gift. Do think about how the fully gift wrapped present is to be packaged for posting if you are planning to gift wrap mail order items. You would most likely include the gift wrap materials along with the product for wrapping by the gift giver, unless you are sending the gift directly to the recipient.

Custom Gift Wrap Design and Print

There are printers who specialise in wrapping paper printing. The same is true of designers. Initially you will need to talk to someone who understands the different processes involved and being armed with sufficient information at the beginning will help.

1. Do you require rolls or sheets?
2. What is your preferred paper weight? eg. 60g., 70g., 80g., 90g.
3. Paper quality? Kraft, Varnished, Metallic.
4. Paper size? Length and width of rolls or sheets.
5. Paper finish? Matt or Varnished.
6. Quantity of sheets or rolls?
7. Colours in design? Standard 1-4 colours, Pantones.
8. Type of printing? Flexo, Gravure, Litho.
9. Any special effects? Metal foil, spot varnish.

The quantity and paper finish required will very quickly dictate what is possible and what is not for your budget. The budget will be dependent on the value of the gift, assuming you won't be charging for a branded gift wrap service. There are three types of printing used to print wrapping paper. These are Flexography, Gravure and Litho printing.

Printing wrapping paper rolls using Flexography. For simple designs in 1 or 2 colours the minimum quantity is approximately 6 to 12 rolls per design. Roll widths are typically from 30cm to 100cm and have a roll length of 250m. Rolls can be cut and supplied as gift wrap sheets.

Printing wrapping paper rolls using Gravure printing. Minimum quantities are often referred to by weights from 100kg for a single colour and up to 1000kg minimum for 4 colour printing per design. Roll widths are from 30cm to 100cm and in roll lengths of 250m.

A weight of 100Kg is equivalent to approximately 15 to 25 rolls, depending on the paper weight and roll width. These 250m counter rolls can also be cut and supplied as gift wrap sheets or converted into consumer rolls. Consumer roll lengths are specified by the customer and typically vary from 1m to 5m in length.

Printing wrapping paper using Litho printing. Gift wrapping paper is relatively thin, 60-90g, and not many printers like to put such thin paper through their litho printing presses. Some will print on thicker paper. This isn't normally recommended as it makes wrapping gifts more difficult. A 90g matt white paper provides an ideal base for printing gift wrap designs and is thick enough for litho printing if you can find a supplier that will do it. The most popular sheet size is 500m x 700mm or very close, depending on the printing press and country of supply. Typical minimum quantity is 1000 sheets per design.

There are definite advantages to printing litho. With low print runs possible and high quality multi-colour printing, the starting price for being able to print multiple designs is kept low. With some creativity a wonderful selection of designs is possible while including a central branded look.