MOQs, lead times, shipping, artwork, payments, reorders. Fifteen years of roaster and maker questions, answered the way we'd answer a friend on WhatsApp. No FAQ-speak.
Most of our competitors start at 10,000 bags. We don't. Because we run three different press technologies under one roof, we can match the right press to the size of your order.
You don't pick the press, we do, based on your quote. At 100 units per SKU we'll route you to digital, you'll pay a bit more per bag, but you'll have real retail-grade packaging in your hands in under two weeks.
Digital press has no setup cost per design, so you can order 100 bags of Ethiopia + 100 of Colombia + 100 of Guatemala in a single run, 300 bags total, three artworks. This is how most of our roasters start.
Flexo and gravure both require physical plates, one set per design. Switching artwork means stopping the press, washing it, mounting new plates. The 5,000-unit minimum applies per SKU on those presses, there's no way around it that still makes the economics work for either of us.
Two kinds of sample:
The prototype is how you get signed off by marketing, legal, or the founder before we print 10,000 of the wrong thing. We strongly recommend it for first-time orders.
We stock about 40 standard bag sizes that cover 90% of what roasters, makers, and pet food brands need. If your product fits a standard, use a standard, cheaper, faster, same quality.
If it doesn't, we cut to spec. You send us: height, width, gusset depth, filling weight, product density. Our packaging engineer signs off on the math so the bag doesn't topple or split at the seams. Tooling adds about a week to first-run lead time. Reorders on a custom size don't have the tooling charge again.
Anchored to four real invoices we billed US clients in 2024. The ★ tiers are exact, locked numbers from real orders — the others are derived mathematically from those anchors (±10–15% variation). Your formal quote in 24h locks the exact number for your specs.
Add zipper: +$0.30/u (real cost from a 3,000u invoice; scales $0.42 at 100u → $0.22 at 10k). ★ = real invoice, locked price. ~ = derived from anchors, ±10–15%.
Pricing includes: artwork setup, one Pantone-matched spot color, bag + valve + zipper, shipping DDP to continental US, customs clearance. No surprise fees after.
No functional ceiling for Bolsso-sized brands. The parent company prints millions of units a year for CPG chains, so a million-unit order is well inside what the Bogotá plant runs on a Tuesday. Once you're at that scale you're talking to our enterprise team, not the Bolsso digital form, and we'll route you to gravure or multi-line flexo.
We hate setup fees. On digital, there's literally no setup, our press prints directly from the PDF, no plates, no dies. On flexo and gravure, we amortize the plate cost into the first-order per-unit price. Reorders of the same artwork skip it entirely.
The clock starts when you approve the final proof, not when you submit the quote. So the earlier you send artwork, the sooner it starts. Most delays we see come from the design round, not the press room.
Rush add-ons available on digital: +30% fee, 3 business days, call us on WhatsApp first so we can actually promise it.
Every file goes through pre-press review before anything prints. If there's a problem, bleed too short, CMYK profile off, fonts not outlined, image below 300dpi, we flag it in writing, show you exactly where, and send back a corrected file for approval. No charge for the first round.
If you can't fix it yourself, our in-house design team does the cleanup for a flat $120 fee. We never just "send it and hope", that's how brands get 10,000 pixelated bags.
The HP-Indigo can start within 24 hours of artwork approval if we bump you up the queue. It adds 30% to the per-unit cost and ships air DHL the same day it's boxed. For a launch-critical pop, it's worth it. For a Tuesday reorder, just plan two weeks ahead.
Every Bolsso account has a dashboard with your past runs. Click "reorder", adjust quantity, confirm spec, pay. We already have your approved file and a print reference swatch on file, so we skip the proof round and plate setup. Most reorders ship 3–5 days faster than first runs.
One thing to confirm on reorder: quantity-triggered press change. If you first ordered 500 on digital and now want 8,000, we bump you to flexo, which changes per-unit cost and adds a one-time plate charge. We'll show you both options on the quote.
Every run gets QC'd at three points:
Before boxing, QC sampling pulls 10 bags per pallet for visual, dimensional, and valve-function check. Pallet leaves with a signed QC dossier taped to the shipping manifest.
Industry acceptable-defect tolerance is around 2%. Ours is 0.5%. If your pallet lands with defects over that threshold, send us photos in WhatsApp within 14 days of delivery, we re-run the missing units on priority and ship air freight. No restocking fee, no return shipping, no "but the contract says". It's why people reorder.
Every Bolsso order ships Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) to a US address of your choice. Continental 48 states included in the quote, no extra charge. Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico are +$45 flat.
DDP means we are the importer of record. We pay the duties (which are zero thanks to the US–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement), we handle the customs broker, we deal with FDA notification. Your pallet shows up at your door like a domestic delivery.
Your options:
We ship worldwide. DDP pricing is only set up for US, Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Everywhere else we quote per-order, usually 2–4 business days to add the customs work to the quote.
This is the single biggest reason roasters pick us over Chinese converters. Chinese pallets land DAP (Delivered At Place), meaning the broker bills you separately for duties, port fees, harbor maintenance, merchandise processing. It's usually another 15–22% of the goods value, discovered two weeks after delivery.
Our quote is the total. What you wire is what you pay.
Yes. We regularly deliver to ShipBob, ShipMonk, Flexport, Stord, and Amazon FBA/AWD. Just send us the exact ship-to with contact name, dock hours, and any PO number the 3PL requires, we book the appointment window and confirm proof of delivery back to your dashboard.
For Amazon specifically, our logistics lead has run 200+ FBA inbound shipments. We know their box labeling, pallet stacking, and SPD vs LTL rules so your shipment doesn't get turned away at the dock.
All shipments are insured for full goods value. If a pallet is damaged or lost in transit:
You don't wait for the insurance payout. We replace first, collect later.
We have four staff designers in Bogotá who do nothing but packaging. Not a freelancer marketplace, not AI, not a template generator, actual humans who understand die-lines, bleeds, and how ink actually sits on laminated film.
Fee is flat, not per-hour, and fully credited against your first 1,000-unit order. If you're a coffee roaster, ask about the 10-SKU lineup package, designed specifically for roasters rotating origins.
We send every roaster a die-line template the day we quote, with the bleed, safe-zone, and seal-area pre-marked. Build inside that template and your file will pass pre-press on the first try.
Every run is color-managed to the Fogra / ISO 12647 standard. On digital we simulate Pantones via 7-color inkset (hitting ~90% of the Pantone solid-coated book within ΔE 2). On flexo and gravure, actual spot-color ink mix, ΔE under 1.
The spectrophotometer reads the first printed sheet and compares against your approved swatch. If it's off, we re-calibrate before the run continues. We send you the color-match dossier with your shipment.
Yes, all three, plus soft-touch, emboss, and cold foil.
Finishes are where brands punch above their weight. A $0.08 cold-foil accent on a $1.20 bag moves it out of Amazon-beige territory. We'll send finish swatches in the sample kit.
The HP-Indigo can print a different artwork on every single bag at press speed. Roasters use this for "roasted on" dates, lot traceability, limited-edition serial numbers, or subscriber-box names. Send us a CSV and your base design, we merge.
Not available on flexo or gravure, those are fixed-plate presses.
Two rounds included on every order:
Additional proof rounds are $40 each. Most orders don't need them, our pre-press catches 95% of issues before proof #1.
We do, always, no matter who designs the graphics. Die-lines come from our manufacturing engineer because a 2mm miscalculation on the gusset crease means your bag stands crooked. You get the file, your designer builds inside it, we print.
Custom bag sizes: die-line delivered within 48h of your dimensional spec. Standard sizes: die-line in your inbox same-day.
Five core material families for bags and pouches:
Each has a spec sheet with barrier rates, shelf-life estimates, heat-seal profile, and price index. The material guide PDF below has the whole rundown.
The Bogotá plant holds FDA food-contact compliance, BRC Global Standard for Packaging (AA grade), ISO 9001, and ISO 22000. We run migration analysis on every material family, checking that nothing from the film, ink, or adhesive leaches into the product at temp and humidity.
You can request certifications with your quote. We send them as PDFs with your brand name on the cover letter so you can forward straight to your legal or QA.
Both. Three tiers:
Honest note: "biodegradable" marketing is mostly greenwash. Only "compostable" means anything specific. We'll steer you to what's actually defensible in front of regulators.
Yes. Both standard on coffee bags, no upcharge.
The sample kit has one unprinted bag of every size and material we offer (about 22 bags), plus a finish swatch card (matte, gloss, soft-touch, cold foil) and a printed die-line reference for your designer. Weighs about 1.5lb. Ships USPS priority to a US address.
Request it from the quote form or WhatsApp us. We ship Monday and Thursday.
Standard laminate: 12–18 months on roasted whole bean, from roast date. Kraft laminate: 9–12 months. Compostable: 6–9 months.
These are barrier-tested numbers, not marketing. Actual shelf life depends on roast profile, degassing time, and storage temperature. The spec sheet we include per order has the OTR/WVTR numbers so your QA team can do the math for your specific blend.
Standard terms on every Bolsso order:
Payment methods: US bank ACH, USD wire, Visa/Mastercard (3% surcharge over $5k), Stripe link. No crypto yet.
Not on first orders. After three completed runs with clean payment history, we extend net-30 terms on up to $25k outstanding. For larger lines or public-company clients, we run a formal credit application, approved in ~5 business days.
We've never had a fight over this. When it happens, it's usually the customer's legal team changing the brand name mid-project, and we work it out by printing the new name on the already-laminated film. Every situation is human-sized.
Yes. Up to 4 domestic US ship-tos per order, no extra cost. More than that, we bill a flat $35 per additional stop for palletizing and routing. We do it all the time for roasters with multiple cafés or founders using multiple 3PLs.
Every completed order becomes a template in your dashboard. Reorder keeps the exact same spec (bag, material, finish, artwork, valve, zipper, ship-to). You just pick quantity and confirm.
If anything changed, new artwork, different quantity band, new ship-to, we'll flag it and quote a fresh line. No surprise changes in the background.
Yes. Tell us your monthly or quarterly target volume and we schedule the production line on your dates, so your pallet lands the week you need it, without you remembering to reorder. Locked-in pricing for 12 months on subscription orders.
About 40% of Bolsso customers are on some form of scheduled reorder by month six.
WhatsApp us. Genuinely. We answer in under two hours most days, evenings and weekends included. Or drop a message through the quote form with "just a question" in the project field, Daysi reads all of them.
If you've got five minutes, book a call. We love talking shop.
These are the guides our team actually sends to prospects over WhatsApp. Roast-level detail on the six questions you should ask before placing a packaging order.
Digital, flexo, and gravure each make a different MOQ math. Understanding which press is running your order is the single biggest lever on your per-unit cost.
Read guide →Kraft vs laminate vs rice paper. Degassing valves, zippers, oxygen barrier. What you give up when you go "natural look" and how to win it back.
Read guide →Label size × roll diameter × gap = your actual per-roll count. The math that stops you ordering 3× what you need.
Read guide →Bleed, safe zone, color profile, font outlining, image DPI, overprint settings. A pre-press checklist from our actual pre-press operator.
Read guide →Stand-up pouch vs flat-bottom vs quad-seal vs side-gusset. A decision tree with shelf presence, cost, and fill-speed tradeoffs.
Read guide →When to place your reorder so stock never goes to zero. Buffer math for seasonal roasters and Amazon sellers.
Read guide →Send these to your designer before they start. Everyone's life gets better.
12 common bag sizes with pre-marked bleed, safe zone, and seal area. Build your artwork inside and pre-press approves first try.
Every material we stock, with barrier rates (OTR/WVTR), seal profile, shelf-life estimate, and price index. Printable, passable-to-QA.
The 14 fields we need to quote you accurately in under 24h. Fill it out, drop it in the form, skip three rounds of email.
Our measured ΔE performance across the Pantone solid-coated book, per press. Share with your brand manager.
FDA, BRC AA, ISO 9001, ISO 22000, food-contact compliance. Forward straight to your QA or legal team.
Size chart, valve options, shelf-life calculator, example artwork grid. Built from 200+ roaster orders.
Twelve terms the industry throws around. Here's what they actually mean for your order.
The smallest number of units a press can economically run. Ours starts at 100 on digital.
We pay duties, customs, and freight. The quote is the total. Nothing bills you later.
Flexographic printing. Plate-based, mid-volume (5k+ MOQ), sharpest on solids and simple graphics.
Rotogravure. Cylinder-engraved, high-volume (25k+ MOQ), photographic-grade quality.
Liquid-ink digital press. No plates, low MOQ (100), color-matches Pantones via 7-ink mix.
Oxygen and water-vapor transmission rates. Lower numbers = longer shelf life.
Measured color distance from target. Under 2 is commercially acceptable; we hit under 1 on flexo.
The European color-management standard. Our plant is certified. It's why export jobs look right.
Extra 3mm of artwork past the trim line, so you don't get white edges when the bag is cut.
Multi-layer film (e.g., PET + MetPET + PE) bonded together. Higher barrier than single-layer.
One-way plastic valve that lets CO2 escape from freshly-roasted beans without letting oxygen in.
Global packaging food-safety audit, "AA" is the highest grade. We hold this on the Bogotá plant.
WhatsApp if you're thinking out loud. Quote form if you have specs. A 15-min call if you want to hear a human voice confirm the crazy thing you're about to order is in fact possible.