Buying gift bags in bulk for a small business

A market stall, a small shop, an online seller who packs orders by hand — all of them face the same first question, which is how many bag sizes to carry. The answer is fewer than you think.

Two sizes, occasionally three

Most small retailers can serve almost every transaction with two sizes: a medium around 8 × 4 × 10, and a large around 10 × 5 × 13.

The medium handles the overwhelming majority of single-item sales. The large handles multiple items and anything boxed. A small size is worth adding only if you genuinely sell a lot of small things — jewelry, cosmetics, cards — where a medium bag makes a small purchase look lost.

Every additional size costs shelf space at the counter, storage in the back, and a decision at the point of sale. Two sizes is a system; five is a cupboard.

Standardise on colour before you standardise on anything else

One colour across all sizes is what makes a hand-packed order look intentional. Kraft brown and plain white both work with anything, both photograph well, and neither dates.

If you want branding, a stamp or a sticker on a plain bag is far cheaper and more flexible than printed bags, and it lets you buy the plain bag in bulk at the plain-bag price.

Reinforced handles are not optional

For retail use this is the specification that matters most. A handle that pulls out on the way to a car is remembered; a bag that works is not noticed at all.

Look for a reinforced top edge — a cardboard strip bonded inside the rim — and handles knotted or bonded through it. Where a manufacturer states a weight limit, use it; where none is stated, assume a few pounds.

Paper weight matters here too. Around 110 gsm holds its shape when a bag is only half full, which is how most bags leave a counter.

Storage: what a hundred-pack actually is

A hundred medium kraft bags, flat, is roughly a bundle four to six inches thick. Three sizes at a hundred each fit on one shelf comfortably. This is worth knowing before ordering, because the usual mistake is not ordering too many but having nowhere flat and dry to put them.

Store flat, never folded across the face, and off the floor. Damp paper loses its stiffness and never recovers it — a bundle stored in a damp back room becomes soft bags that will not stand up.

How many to order

Work out roughly how many transactions a week take a bag, multiply by the weeks you want to cover, and add a margin. For most small operations one hundred of the main size is between a month and a season.

Buying for a whole year in one order gets the best unit price and ties up money and space. Buying every fortnight costs more per bag and more in delivery. A quarter is usually the balance.

The mistakes that show up on the second order

• Buying on the face measurement alone. The gusset is what decides whether a boxed item fits. Two bags with the same face can have very different capacity.
• Buying a seasonal colour in bulk. A hundred bags in a holiday colour is eleven months of dead stock.
• Not testing one pack first. Order a small quantity, pack your actual products in it, and only then order the hundred.
• Forgetting tissue. If bags are part of how an order presents, tissue is part of the cost. Work it out per order at the start.

Weight, and what paper will not do

Paper bags do not carry liquids, do not survive rain, and do not tolerate a sharp corner pressing into a face. For anything heavy, boxed or wet, a bag is the wrong container and no amount of reinforcement changes that.

Where a customer is walking to a car in bad weather, offering a bag is a courtesy that has to be matched by realism about what it will do.

Small quantities have a place

Not everything justifies a hundred. Market stalls that trade a few times a year, a pop-up, a single event — small assorted packs cover those without leaving stock behind, and they are the right way to trial a size or a colour before committing.

Where to order

The hundred-packs and larger bundles are on the bulk kraft bags page, with pack count and all three dimensions in each title. Smaller quantities for trialling a size are on the small gift bags page, sets with tissue are under gift bags with tissue paper, and seasonal and metallic finishes are under coloured and iridescent bags.

The counter on Avenue A is open until nine on weekdays if you want to handle a bag before ordering a hundred of them.