Episode #41 - Jason Wong

#15MinuteFounder

Jason Wong is the founder of Packing Duck, a vertically integrated packaging company that owns its own factories and works directly with e-commerce brands to cut out the middleman markup.

He started his first business at 16 and has launched roughly seven companies since. Packing Duck is where it landed. He runs a three-pronged business: a manufacturing operation, a media company, and, still in progress, a technology layer that he’s building to optimize the first two.

His average customer lifetime value runs six to seven figures, which means he sends personalized gifts to prospects before they ever say yes, flies to client offices to look at samples in person, and still texts customers when he sees something cool in the wild.

In this episode, Jason breaks down how great packaging actually works, why so many e-commerce founders are quietly losing money without knowing it, and how he closes seven-figure clients by sliding into the DMs of designers instead of CEOs. He covers cash flow basics, what it really takes to be a founder, and why his 90-day rule has saved him years of wasted effort.

Jason has watched too many e-commerce founders hit month 12 and realize they’ve been losing money the whole time. doola Bookkeeping closes your books every month so you always know your real margins before the surprises hit.

Highlights From the Chat

Q: How does Packing Duck save brands 10 to 30% on packaging?

Most people in e-commerce get their packaging from whoever’s making their product.

So, if you’re selling a shampoo, you’re so focused on the formulation that you just tell the manufacturer to handle the bottle. That manufacturer goes and finds packaging and marks it up on top of what they paid. By working directly with us, you cut out that middleman markup right off the bat.

We’re vertically integrated and own our own factories, so beyond the price savings, we also help customers optimize their design, cut out anything that’s adding cost without adding value, and find ways to reduce transportation costs while keeping the packaging’s integrity intact.

Q: What actually makes great packaging?

The most important thing is the first impression when someone touches it. That sets the bar for your product. If you put an iPhone in a crappy box, you’re already behind before they even open it.

Number one is design. Does it clearly communicate what’s inside? A lot of people over-design their packaging trying to do something different; they crowd it, they make it hard to read, they make it hard to open. But the person touching it needs to understand what’s inside and be able to access it easily.

Number two is materials. Picking the right paper, the right thickness, even the glossiness; all of that affects how color reads.

The difference between packaging that looks dull and packaging where every single color pops? That comes down to the printing method and the paper quality you select. It’s like cooking. There are many ways to do it, and each choice produces a different result.

Q: What’s the biggest low-hanging fruit for an e-commerce brand right now?

Number one: mine your reviews. Export all your reviews across your products. If you’re brand new and have no reviews yet, find your top five competitors and pull theirs. Get AI to scrape and compile them.

I love Claude personally, and ask what are the five things people love about these products, and the five things people hate.

What people love becomes your marketing copy, because those are things you can actually deliver. What people hate are pain points you can solve. If you’re selling leggings and people are saying they’re itchy, they shrink, they fade; those are things you fix, and now your product is substantially differentiated.

People are literally telling you what they want. There’s so much gold in reviews, and most founders just aren’t doing it.

Number two: look at your finances. Most founders do not love doing this, and it shows. They’re not setting up their sales tax correctly, not watching their contribution margins, not tracking the expenses that are slowly bleeding them out. Then 12 months in, when they finally look at their P&L, they realize they’ve been losing money the whole time.

I’ve seen that time and time again. It’s all within your power. You can close your books every single month. You could be tracking every dollar in and out. Most people just aren’t willing to do it.

Q: How do you actually improve cash flow without raising money?

Look at your accounts receivable, money you’re expected to receive, and your accounts payable, what you’re expected to pay out. For e-commerce, that timing matters a lot. You sell today, you might get the funds tomorrow, and you don’t get paid over the weekend.

On the payables side, negotiate terms with your suppliers. Produce today, pay them 30 or 60 days later. If you’re a trustworthy client who orders consistently, suppliers will work with you.

What we look for as a manufacturer is consistency. We don’t want someone who places one order today and disappears for nine months. Show us you’ll come back, and we’ll extend better terms.

For software, just email them and ask. If they’re billing you monthly, ask for a quarterly contract. Ask what they can do if you refer ten friends. Everything is negotiable. You just have to look for the opportunity.

Q: How do you acquire clients without running ads?

We use AI to build our target list, but the key is who we’re targeting. We don’t go after CEOs. We go after designers and operations people.

If I’m in packaging, I don’t need to talk to your CEO right now. I need to talk to the designer who’s working on packaging. They can recommend us to their CEO to sign off. And designers are not getting pitched all day the way CEOs are.

Once we find those people through LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram; our outreach is very simple: “Love your brand. We do packaging and we’d love to make something for you. Where can we ship you a sample?”

No one ever says no to a free sample. And we’re confident enough in our product that if we send it, they’ll like it. We’ve never had a miss.

Q: What keeps clients once you have them?

People don’t really like to change their packaging supplier because it disrupts their supply chain. Once we get our foot in the door, they stay. We have virtually no churn.

But we know we can’t just sit on that. I’m still in the weeds in the group chats with clients every day on design. I’ve flown to clients’ offices to look at samples in person.

I text customers when I see something cool: “Hey, have you thought about doing it this way?” I’m so confident that no one else in our industry is going above and beyond like that, there’s really no reason for them to leave.

Q: How do you prioritize when you’re building multiple things at once?

Very early on, I knew our company needed to be three things: a manufacturing operation, a media company, and a technology company. I built the operations first, then the media arm. Now I’m building the tech layer that optimizes both.

The technology had to come after we perfected the first two, because technology is supposed to optimize those functions, not replace them. You need that foresight as a CEO. What is step one, step two, step three, and how do you work toward that?

And then think about where you want to be in five years, and segment what modular pieces you need to get there. For us, if we want to hit $100 million in valuation, manufacturing alone won’t get there. Manufacturing plus media powers the demand. But to hit a tech-level valuation, not just a manufacturing valuation, we needed the third piece.

That’s what we’re building now: our own AI tools for design, project management, and client expansion.

Q: When do you know it’s time to quit an idea versus persist?

I give myself 90 days. If something doesn’t work in three months, I cut it. What I mean by that is if I see no real interest in the product, if people are getting it and there’s nothing else I can expand on. It’s a one-trick pony, I cut it.

Early in my e-commerce journey, I was launching products just to see what would stick, without thinking about whether I could build a whole category around them. You need to think long term: if I launch this, what are the five things I can complement it with?

For Elon Musk, the rocket is obviously a very long-term investment. But if you’re launching something in dropshipping and it’s clearly only got a 3- to 4-month life cycle, and it’s not working after that window, cut it.

Q: If you had a billboard in Times Square, what would it say?

Keep going.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Saving 10 to 30% on Packaging

01:38 – What Great Packaging Looks Like

04:31 – Upgrading a Simple Postcard

06:18 – Advice for His 16-Year-Old Self

07:34 – Doing Things That Don’t Scale

10:13 – Quick Wins: Mine Your Reviews

12:03 – Know Your Numbers

13:02 – Fixing Cash Flow

16:10 – His Software and AI Stack

20:39 – Landing Big Clients With Free Samples

22:09 – Keeping Clients for the Long Run

27:11 – Bootstrap or Fundraise

32:37 – Is Everyone Cut Out to Be an Entrepreneur

35:05 – The Biggest Lie E-Commerce Gurus Sell

36:37 – When to Pivot or Quit