Stop Comparing Unit Prices: The Hidden Cost of Packaging, Print, and Payments

First work trip of 2025, and I lost a $9 tube of sunscreen at airport security. Yes, I'm still a little bitter.

I was flying out of SFO with carry-on bags full of product samples, and I had asked myself the question that seems to follow every business traveler now: do liquids still need to be in a clear bag 2025? Short answer: yes. TSA's 3-1-1 rule is still in effect at U.S. airports (tsa.gov), meaning liquids, gels, and aerosols need to be in containers of 3.4 ounces or less, all packed in one quart-size clear zip-top bag per traveler. My sunscreen was 5 ounces, so it ended up in a discard bin. Nine dollars gone because I hadn't checked a rule that was not printed on my boarding pass.

It's a small thing to obsess over. But I'm a procurement manager at a 38-person DTC e-commerce company. I manage a packaging and print budget of about $135,000 a year, I've negotiated with 20+ vendors, and I've tracked every order in a cost system for six years. That sunscreen incident is basically a miniature version of a purchasing problem I see constantly: we compare the number that's easiest to see and ignore the costs hiding in the fine print until it's too late.

A cheap quote isn't a cheap order

Last spring we sent out a print RFQ for 1,000 business cards, 500 letterheads, and 500 envelopes. It was the boring kind of reorder that happens every quarter, which is exactly why we almost messed it up.

Vendor A quoted $360 all-in, with a PDF proof and ground shipping included. Vendor B quoted $220, which looked like the obvious winner. Then the detailed breakdown arrived: $65 in file prep, $80 in freight, and a $30 "proof approval fee" (which, in fairness, Vendor A had quietly folded into their number). Vendor B's real total was $395. Same specs, same quantity, and the "cheaper" quote actually cost 10% more.

This is why I cringe when a colleague sends me a price-per-unit comparison and acts like the decision is made. Unit price is the cost of one item. Total cost is setup, proofs, freight, minimums, payment fees, and the time spent chasing all of it. Most buyers focus on the per-unit number and completely miss everything else.

The deeper reason we compare the wrong number

Stick with the airport example for one more second. The interesting part about the liquid bag question is not whether liquids are allowed. It's that the real answer depends on container size, bag type, and the kind of scanner that airport uses. And rules differ by country. The visible rule—"you can bring liquids"—is not the whole system.

B2B pricing works the same way. Vendors know buyers search by unit price, so landing pages are built around it. You can look up a corrugated box, a foam board, or a custom poster and see one clean price per piece. That's the number comparison shopping rewards.

But nothing in fulfillment is free. Freight lines have to be paid. Prepress is done by a person. Dies are cut. Orders are packed and dropped at a dock. Suppliers have to recover those costs somewhere. When buyers only compare the headline price, we accidentally teach suppliers to put charges in less visible places. Honest suppliers show the full cost up front. The rest wait until the invoice.

Honestly, I don't think most suppliers are trying to trick anyone. I think the industry just quotes items, and the total cost gets assembled after the purchase decision. That's exactly backwards.

The same blind spot applies to how you pay

There's also the payment side, which a lot of us ignore until the bank statement arrives. If you buy from a supplier in another country and pay in their currency with the wrong card, you can lose roughly 1% to 3% to a foreign transaction fee. That fee never appears on the supplier's quote for the product.

That's why so many business owners search for the Wise business card or a no foreign transaction fee business credit card. One thing to know: the Wise business card is a debit card, not a credit card, and it makes sense for us because you can hold funds in several currencies and you see the conversion fee before you pay. A no foreign transaction fee business credit card also gets rid of that surcharge, but if you carry a balance, the interest can erase the gain. Ask the same total-cost question of payment methods as you ask of suppliers.

And yes, the phrase "business card" is funny in our world. I buy printed business cards from the print vendor and I pay for them with a plastic business card. Both can hide costs. One hides setup fees and shipping; the other hides foreign fees and interest.

What hidden costs actually add up to

In Q1 2024, I audited our 2023 packaging and printing invoices. Of 142 purchase orders, 31 included charges that had not appeared in the original quote—freight minimums, handling fees, split-delivery charges, or an extra line item for a proof we were told was free. The total was $8,217. That's about 6% of our annual packaging and print budget, and every dollar of it was committed after the decision had already been made.

Then there are the quality failures. We accepted one vendor's "free setup" offer that cost us $450 more once dies and proof revisions were itemized. Another low-cost foam insert order arrived with the wrong thickness and required a $1,200 rework. Those are the real costs of shopping by unit price, and they never show up in the price comparison table.

I'm not immune to the trap either. With a few hours to decide before the COO needed an answer, I approved a $4,200 packaging order with only one quote in hand. In hindsight, I should have asked for a second quote before promising an answer. We made the call with incomplete information, and surprise—the invoice had a few surprises.

Most of those surprises disappear when you refuse to compare quotes until every vendor is quoting the same scope.

The fix: force the total cost to show up early

Our fix was not complicated, but it changed how we buy. Every vendor now answers the same list before we compare anything:

• Quote the total delivered cost to our loading dock, not the per-unit price.
• List every non-recurring cost: setup, dies, plates, proofs, and samples.
• State the lead time and how it affects our inventory and schedule.
• List accepted payment methods and any fees on those methods, including foreign transaction fees.
• Define what happens if quality fails. Will they reprint or re-cut at their cost, or is that the buyer's risk?

The process alone eliminated most of the surprise charges we had been tolerating. We didn't need heroic negotiations. We just refused to compare incomplete numbers.

Why Fillmore Container Company is on our shortlist

We also reduced the number of suppliers we managed, because the cost of managing a vendor is itself part of the total cost. That's how Fillmore Container ended up in our stack. Fillmore Container Company kept showing up as a one-stop option, so we ran a trial order through the same TCO checklist.

The per-unit pricing was competitive, but what won us over was simpler: the quote was itemized up front, freight included, and the invoice matched the quote. That level of consistency is rare enough that I double-check it every time.

The products offered by Fillmore Container cover a lot of what we used to buy from four or five different places: corrugated shipping boxes, bubble wrap, foam board, custom business cards, letterhead, envelopes, brochures, posters, flyers, garment bags, tote bags, and promo products like water bottles. By the way, a coupon code or discount code is nice when it appears, but it was not the reason we stayed. Fewer orders, fewer invoices, and fewer hidden fees save more money than any single promo code ever did.

The bottom line for 2025

So, back to the airport question: do liquids still need to be in a clear bag 2025? For US flights, yes, under TSA's 3-1-1 rule—unless you are in one of the newer CT scanner lanes and an officer tells you otherwise. But my real answer is the same one I give vendors: don't rely on the short version. Check tsa.gov, and check your quote.

Unit price is convenient. It's just not honest about what an order really costs. The supplier that shows you the total cost before you say yes is the supplier worth keeping.