Are you a small business owner who specializes in producing a product that you plan to sell in bottles? If so, you’re going to need to search for a bottling company that can help you out.
At first, you might be able to keep up with the demand for your product and bottle things yourself without the assistance of a bottling service. But as time goes on, it’s going to be very important for you to have a bottling company in your corner.
You shouldn’t put all your trust into the first bottling company you can find, though. That will prove to be one of the biggest mistakes that you can make in business ownership.
Instead, you’ll need to look high and low for a company that can bottle your product without you having to worry about a thing. Here’s a guide on how to choose a bottling company that you’ll be able to trust at all times.
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Make a List of as Many Bottling Companies as You Can Find
If you’re a small business owner who has relied on bottling companies in the past, you might already know who the major players are. But if you haven’t ever worked with a bottling company before, you might not have the slightest clue as to which options you have.
With this in mind, you’ll want to kick things off by Googling something like “best bottling companies near me.” From there, you’ll want to work on putting together a list of all the options that are available to you.
Your goal should be to create a healthy list of bottling companies that you can then narrow down and choose from. You’ll be so much better off doing this versus simply selecting the first bottling company that you land on.
Do Your Homework on Each of the Bottling Companies on Your List
After you’ve generated your list of local bottling companies, the next step you’ll want to take will be to research each of them. It should be easy enough to do this by visiting the websites of different bottling companies to see what they’re all about.
While you’re on a bottling company’s website, you’ll be able to find out:
- How long they’ve been involved in the bottling industry
- Which types of bottles they use
- The companies they’ve done bottling for in the past
Your goal should be to learn everything that you possibly can about the various bottling companies that exist. It’ll put you in a position to start narrowing down your original list based on what you’re able to find out about companies.
Learn About Which Types of Bottles Companies Can Provide
There are some bottling companies that deal with bottling beverages in beverage containers. There are others that deal with bottling supplements, like MK 677 in smaller plastic containers.
You should try to get some sense of which types of bottles different bottling companies typically work with. It’s going to show you what they’re capable of, but maybe more importantly, it’s also going to show you what kinds of bottling they’ve done in the past.
The last thing you want to do is work with a bottling company that doesn’t have any ideas as to how they would go about bottling your company’s products. You’ll put yourself in a better spot by finding a bottling service that’s experienced in your specific lane.
Research the Reputations of Bottling Companies
At some point, when you’re making a push to get to know the bottling companies in your area, you should try to see what each of their reputations is like. You should be able to do this by reading through the online reviews that their past clients have left for them.
This might end up being the best way to track down trustworthy bottling companies. A bottling company that you’re going to be able to trust will have reviews from clients who had nothing but nice things to say about them.
If you find that a bottling company has a whole lot of negative reviews from clients they’ve worked with over time, that will be a bad sign. You aren’t going to have much confidence in a company that has a poor reputation among its former clients.
Consider Where Bottling Companies Are Located
You don’t necessarily have to work with a bottling company that is located right in the same city or town as your small business. You’ll limit yourself if you take this approach to locating a bottling company.
But at the same time, you might not want to agree to work with a bottling company on the other side of the country. This could complicate things when it comes to obtaining your orders from them and troubleshooting any problems that you might encounter.
In a perfect world, you should try to find a bottling company that is within driving distance of your small business headquarters. Even if you have to spend a few hours driving to get to it, it’ll be better to do this versus having to hop on a plane to visit a bottling service that’s thousands of miles away.
Arrange to Take Tours of Bottling Companies’ Facilities
Another reason why you should try to choose a bottling company that’s in the general vicinity of your small business headquarters is so that you can take a tour of their facility. By doing this, you can see what approach a service takes to bottling its clients’ products.
You aren’t going to be able to sit and watch a bottling company produce every single bottle that they’ll be manufacturing for you. You need to be able to trust their operation to do right by you.
You’ll feel good about a bottling company’s operation after visiting their facility and seeing how they do business. You won’t feel like you have to breathe down their neck to get them to produce high-quality products for you when you’ve already seen how they handle orders in their facility.
Calculate How Much It’ll Cost to Work With Bottling Companies
Most bottling companies are going to extend prices to you that will be at least slightly different from one facility to the next. It’s why you should try to gauge what it’s going to cost you to work with different bottling companies.
You might want to go as far as to reach out to half a dozen bottling companies or so to secure quotes from them for their bottling services. These quotes can help you calculate what you’re going to have to pay to work with each company on your list.
You probably won’t want to just select the cheapest bottling company you can find and roll with them. They may not do the best job possible for you.
But at the same time, you also don’t want to get stuck working with a bottling company that will be well outside your price range. Your best bet is going to be to find a company that lands somewhere in the middle. You want them to be able to bottle your products for a price that you can afford.
Determine Which Bottling Companies Provide the Best Customer Service
You’re going to spend your fair share of time communicating with a bottling company about your small business’ needs when it comes to bottling products. You might find that you’ll be on the phone with someone from a bottling service every few days to go over your orders.
Because of this, you should choose a bottling company that makes customer service a top priority. They should always be available to take your phone calls and/or emails and to put your mind at ease when you’re worried about an order.
If you sense that a company isn’t going to put its best foot forward as far as customer service is concerned while working with you, you should cross them right off your list. There will be other companies that will be more than happy to help you in any way that they can every time you touch base with them and ask for help.
Weigh All Your Options When It Comes to Bottling Companies
Choosing the right bottling company is going to be a very big decision. It isn’t a decision that you’ll want to take lightly at any time.
Once you feel like you’ve done the necessary research on bottling companies, you should sit down and go over your original list of names. You should knock off any names that don’t seem like good options and highlight those that feel like they might be a fantastic fit.
At that point, you’ll want to go back through the bottling companies that you liked and compare each and every one of them. While doing this, you should keep all the factors that we’ve discussed here in mind, like the type of bottles they use, their locations, and, of course, the costs associated with them.
As long as you’ve put in the right amount of work, you should be able to narrow your list down even further and focus solely on the final few names on your list that look like attractive options. You might want to speak with them one more time before you pick the one that you think would be the most trustworthy option available to you.
Select the Bottling Company You Like Best of the Bunch
After everything else is all said and done, you can select the bottling company that you like the best and let them know that you would like to proceed. You should also start laying out the orders that you’ll need this company to fulfill for you.
Get a good feel for how this bottling company operates and see what it is that they’ll need from you to start fulfilling your orders. They will likely need to get their hands on everything from the recipes for whatever you’ll be bottling to the designs for the labels that you’ll put on the bottles when they’re filled.
It’s important for your small business and your preferred bottling company to get on the same page from the start. It’ll get your working relationship off on the right foot and ensure that there isn’t any confusion when it comes to what you want from a company.
You should also inquire as to when you’ll be required to pay a bottling company and how you can go about paying them. You likely won’t have to worry about ponying up any cash right away. But you don’t want to drag your feet when it’s time to pay them and get hit with extra fees because of it.
The bottling company that you choose could make or break your small business in many ways. So you should try not to skip any of the important steps listed here as you search for one.
Start Searching for the Best Bottling Company You Can Find
Does your company need a white bottling company to help you put your products into different types of bottles? Use our helpful guide to get to the bottom of which bottling company you should choose.
By spending enough time searching for a bottling company, you can rest assured knowing you have the right service on your side. You’ll know that your products will be in excellent hands when you’ve done your homework on your options and chosen the best one.
Look for more small business tips and tricks in the other articles posted on our blog.
