Case study: a festive hamper business with crinkle paper

A hamper business does not have a steady month. It has a quiet spring, a busy Rakhi, a crazy October, a corporate rush before New Year and weddings scattered in between. The crinkle paper that sits untouched in March is gone in four days in late October, usually in the one colour every client wanted.

This is a worked example. The business is illustrative, put together from situations small sellers commonly face. The product details and the maths are real.

Here is the short answer. Nobody can tell you how many grams of crinkle paper your hamper takes, because it depends on your box, your products and your hand. So weigh it. Build three hampers on a kitchen scale, take the average, and turn that one number into a season order by colour. If I were running this business, I would also pre-weigh the crinkle for every corporate order, so hamper number 50 looks exactly like hamper number 1.

The business and its year

Our example is a gifting business in Lucknow, run by two partners, with two extra helpers hired every October. They sell dry fruit and mithai hampers, diya and candle sets, and cookie boxes. Corporate clients order in bulk for Diwali and New Year. Retail orders come through Instagram and WhatsApp, delivered by hand in Lucknow and by courier to other cities.

This is the year I have assumed for the example.

Season	Months	Hampers (assumed)	What clients want
Quiet months	Jan to Jul, except weddings	about 40 a month	Birthday and thank-you hampers
Rakhi	August	about 150	Bright, mixed colours
Diwali	October to early November	about 800, of which 500 corporate	Red and yellow, or the client's brand colour
New Year corporate	December	about 200	Plain, calm colours: white, black, brown
Weddings	November to February	about 100 a month	Red, yellow and white

Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday, 8 November, with Dhanteras on 6 November, as per the Drik Panchang Diwali calendar (New Delhi, 2026). Corporate hampers are usually handed out before that week, so the real packing peak for this business sits in the second half of October.

What is going wrong today?

Every October, the same three things happen.

Crinkle paper is bought in a panic from the local market, in whatever colours are left.
Red runs out first, around the last week of October, when it is hardest to restock.
Two helpers fill hampers by eye. One heaps it, one is stingy, and a corporate client opens 50 boxes that do not match.

And nobody knows what the filler costs per hamper, because nobody knows how much goes in.

Why crinkle paper, and what else could do the job?

Crinkle paper is shredded paper cut in a zig-zag, so it springs up instead of lying flat. In a hamper it does two jobs. It makes a bed that holds the products in place in the tray, and it carries the colour of the occasion.

Close-up of blue crinkle paper, one of the colours in the PackSmith range

We list crinkle paper in blue, green, yellow, red, white, black, brown and mixed colours, in 500 g and 1 kg packs. That range covers every row of the season table above.

These are the honest alternatives.

Shredded office paper is free. It is also flat and white, and it looks like what it is.
Tissue paper suits a hamper of clothes or a chikan kurta set better than crinkle. It folds around fabric and does not leave strands in the folds.
A premium corporate box with a fitted insert, i.e. a cavity cut for each product, needs no loose filler at all. We do not sell those, but for a top-end corporate hamper they may be the right choice.
For glass jars and diyas, crinkle is never enough on its own. Wrap each one first in honeycomb paper sheets or kraft bubble sheets, the way our mug seller case wraps ceramics. I have written the full build, including the double-box method for courier hampers, in our Diwali gift hamper packing guide. I will not repeat it here.

How do you weigh one hamper's fill?

This takes about 15 minutes and a kitchen scale. Do it in September, not in October.

Put a large bowl on the scale and press tare, so it reads zero.
Fill the bowl with crinkle paper and note the reading. Call it A.
Build one complete hamper, taking crinkle only from that bowl: the bed, the gaps and the top layer. Fill it the way you want every hamper to look.
Put the bowl back on the scale and note the new reading, B.
The hamper used A minus B grams.
Build two more of the same size and take the average of the three. That average is your number. Call it F.
Repeat for each hamper size you sell. A small box and a large tray will give very different numbers.

Write F on the wall above the packing table, one number per hamper size.

We sell crinkle paper by weight, so this one number is the whole plan. We would rather you order 40 kg that you use than 80 kg that sits in a corner till next Diwali.

How many hampers does one pack fill?

This table is only the division done for you. These are not our estimates of what a hamper takes. Find your reading in the left column.

Your average reading (F)	Hampers per 500 g pack	Hampers per 1 kg pack
30 g	about 16	about 33
50 g	10	20
75 g	about 6	about 13
100 g	5	10
150 g	about 3	about 6

Add about 10% for spills, strands stuck to hands and the bottom of the pack, which is always messy.

What does the season order look like?

Here is the maths that turns F into an order, with no guessing on my side.

For one season, the crinkle needed in kg = hampers x F x 1.1 ÷ 1,000.

For the Diwali row, that is 800 x F x 1.1 ÷ 1,000 = 0.88 x F. In plain words, for every 10 g your hamper takes, Diwali needs about 8.8 kg of crinkle paper. So if your scale says 70 g, that is 7 x 8.8 = about 62 kg, or 62 packs of 1 kg.

Season	Hampers	Crinkle per 10 g of F	Order in
Rakhi	150	about 1.7 kg	1 kg packs, mixed colours
Diwali	800	about 8.8 kg	1 kg packs, split by colour
New Year corporate	200	about 2.2 kg	1 kg packs, white, black or brown
Weddings	100 a month	about 1.1 kg a month	1 kg for the main colour, 500 g for the rest
Quiet months	40 a month	about 0.45 kg a month	500 g packs

Now split the Diwali number by colour. Count last year's orders by colour if you have them. If not, ask your corporate clients for their colour when they confirm the order, because one client of 200 hampers in blue changes the whole plan.

On timing, I would order two-thirds of the Diwali quantity in early October, once the corporate orders are confirmed, and the last third when the first lot is half used. We dispatch in 1 to 2 working days, but courier lanes get slow in festival weeks, so I would not count on a reorder after about 25 October.

How do you keep 50 corporate hampers looking the same?

This is the setup I would use for a corporate order. The trick is to weigh the crinkle once, in advance, instead of 50 times by eye.

The evening before, weigh F grams of crinkle into 50 paper bags or bowls, one per hamper. Use a different bag for the top layer if you want it in a second colour.
Set up the table as a line: trays, then crinkle bed, then wrapped products, then gap fill, then card and lid.
Wrap every glass jar and diya before it reaches the line, so the person placing products never stops to wrap.
One helper lays the bed from the bag, about two-thirds of it. The next one places the products, heaviest in the centre.
The last third of the bag goes into the gaps and over the top, to just below the top of the jars.
The card goes on top in its own envelope, then the lid.
Check one hamper in ten against the first one. If the top looks thin, the products were placed too high, not the crinkle too little.

A hand placing a small gift into a box filled with brown crinkle paper — Photo: https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels

What should this business watch?

Crinkle settles. A hamper that looks full on the table looks lower after a day in a courier carton. Fill a little above where you want it to end up.
Damp is the enemy. Lucknow's monsoon months are humid, so store the packs sealed, off the floor, in the driest room you have.
Dark colours next to white products or light fabric need a test. Put a damp white cloth on black or red crinkle overnight and look at it in the morning. If any colour has moved, keep that colour away from fabric gifts.
Food goes in its own sealed pack, always. Our listing does not claim the crinkle is food grade, so loose mithai never touches it.
Measure the result. After Diwali, divide the kg you actually used by the hampers you shipped. If it is well above F, the waste is on the table, not in the hampers.

Questions hamper sellers ask

Should I buy 500 g or 1 kg packs? For your main colour in a busy season, 1 kg. For a colour you use only for one client or one occasion, 500 g, so you are not left with a kilo of green in December.

Can I test the colour and feel first? Yes. Our free packaging sample includes crinkle paper. Order it now, build one hamper with it, and weigh it while you are at it.

Weigh three hampers this week. That one number will save you a panic trip to the market in the last week of October, I am sure of it.