The honest answer for funded CPG founders on how much packaging costs, what you get at each price point, and what bad packaging actually costs you.
You’ve got a product that works. You’ve spent real money proving it works. Now you’re getting quotes from designers that range from $800 to $15,000 and you’re wondering what on earth accounts for that gap
Here’s the honest answer.
The price range is real. So is what sits at each end.
$500 to $2,000 gets you a designer who executes your brief. You say what you want, they make it. No strategy, no pushback, no questions about who’s buying it or why. Fine if you’re doing a small test run. Not fine if you’re launching properly, because you’re essentially paying someone to execute an idea that hasn’t been validated yet.
$3,000 to $6,000 is where funded founders most often get burned. It looks professional enough that you don’t immediately know something’s wrong. You might get a talented designer who makes beautiful things but hasn’t thought hard about your specific buyer. Or you go with an agency, have a great call with someone senior, and then get handed to a junior for the actual work. That handoff problem is worth understanding before you sign anything.
$8,000 to $15,000 is where packaging stops being decoration and starts being a sales tool. This is what I do — you can see exactly what’s included in my packaging design services for CPG brands.
What $9,000 actually gets you
At Studio Stoked, one SKU includes: a brand strategy session, a 40-plus page strategy document, two design concepts, two rounds of revisions, print-ready files, brand guidelines, and print management handled personally by me.
Here’s what that means in practice.
Strategy before design. Before anything goes near a design programme, I need to know who is actually buying your product. Not who you hope is buying it. Who is actually going to stop scrolling, read the label, and hand over their money. What stops them. What gets them over the line. What your product solves that they haven’t found the words for yet.
Most founders come in knowing their product cold and their customer loosely. That gap is where money gets lost.
A strategy document you’ll use for years. Forty-plus pages covering your customer psychology, competitor landscape, tone of voice, and visual direction. When you brief a photographer or a copywriter six months from now, they understand your brand without you starting from scratch.
Design for print, not screens. A colour that’s beautiful in Illustrator can look completely different on a kraft pouch or a matte tin. I check this before files go to print, not after 10,000 units arrive.
Print management. I talk to the printer, handle file prep, colour match using Pantone references, and approve physical proofs before anything runs. You pay their invoice. That’s it.
Brand guidelines. So when you add the gummies, the powder, the travel sachet, it all looks like it belongs together.
“We already have a brand deck from our last designer.”
Great. Bring it.
I still run a strategy session, because a brand deck tells me your colours and fonts. It doesn’t tell me why someone buys. Those are different things. What I’m looking for is the emotional gap between what your packaging currently says and what your customer actually needs to hear.
That’s where the work is.
The real cost of getting this wrong
Bad packaging doesn’t fail loudly. It just doesn’t convert. And you won’t always know it’s the packaging, because the product is solid, the reviews are decent, and the ads are running. Something still isn’t clicking.
The real cost isn’t the cheaper designer’s invoice. It’s the print run you can’t reorder without a rebrand. It’s the ad spend driving traffic to a first impression that doesn’t match your price point. It’s the retailer who passed and didn’t tell you why.
One of my clients launched an olive oil. Sold out in three weeks, no ads. The product didn’t change. The packaging finally communicated what the product actually was: something worth paying more for.
Winston & Co went from packaging that was fine to packaging that enabled a significant price increase within months. Not because the treats changed. Because who the packaging spoke to changed entirely. The full story is here.
If you’re in supplements specifically
The trust problem in that category is different to almost everything else. Your customer is health-conscious, sceptical, and reading every word on that label. Packaging that looks generic doesn’t just undersell you — it actively works against you. I’ve written about why supplement packaging fails and how to fix it.
Before you hire anyone, ask these questions
Who actually does the work — not who you’re speaking to in the sales call?
Do you do strategy before design, or do you start with a mood board?
Have you worked in my specific category?
How do you handle print — do you manage it or hand off files?
What the answers should tell you is here.
The bottom line
$500 gets you files. $9,000 gets you a system that sells.
The right investment depends on the gap between what your packaging currently says and what your product deserves to say. If that gap is costing you sales, the math on better design works out quickly.
Book a discovery call. Twenty minutes, no deck, just a conversation to see if we’re a fit.
And if another designer quotes you less and you go with them, I genuinely hope it works out. I just know from 15 years of doing this that it usually costs more in the end.
Studio Stoked is a CPG packaging and brand design studio specialising in health and wellness, food and beverage, and pet brands. Designing globally from Croatia.
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