Client's budgeting and requirements

Steph sent us requirements for Mr Foureyes cases and give us an idea on their budget


Apologies for not getting back to you sooner, I have been sick for the past couple of weeks and still not quite at full brain faculties I would have to say. Hopefully what I have jotted down below still makes some sense - I just wanted to give you a few more details on practical and design considerations that would be important to us for the glasses cases and packaging.
Need to think about the way the glasses case is used i.e. often carried around in someone's bag or handbag, and depending on how they use their glasses, may be opened and shut multiple times per day. To me this leads to preferring something smaller and more streamlined. The alternative approach such as the Proof eyewear wooden case is a statement piece but in reality I personally would transfer the glasses from that into a more practical case for day to day use. In addition, the clasp or whatever holds the case shut (depending on the design) should hold up over time i.e. should continue to be secure after much use.
The size would need to comfortably fit any of the frames in our range (dimensions of the frames can be seen on the website but would need to experiment a bit with maximum height when glasses are folded up - as a glasses wearer, I know the frustration of glasses that have to be folded just right to fit in their case!)
We really liked the idea of having a specific case for the kids glasses. Additional considerations there would be sturdiness, appropriateness across a reasonably wide age range (i.e. primary and secondary kids), and not too heavy for transporting between school and home etc.
Cost: for comparison, fairly basic/generic glasses cases can be picked up locally for between $4 and $8 (unit prices somewhere like Ali express can be as low as a couple of dollars US, but shipping can be expensive, although there are suppliers who do free shipping).
Design considerations: we like the idea of making the case a point of difference/feature rather than just a generic component of the purchase. Therefore playing with different materials (e.g. wood as we discussed) is appealing, as is the concept of being NZ-made (although given the frames are not NZ-made we probably would not be able to overly emphasise this aspect without sounding a bit hypocritical!). We also like the concept of incorporating sustainable/renewable materials. 
Packaging: we also discussed the packaging for frames being sent out for home try-on. How this would work is that the customer would select some frames (4-5) on our site for home try-on, and we would send them out with blank lenses in for them to try on. They would have a set time to look at them (1-2 weeks) and would then need to return them to us. The frames would need to be securely packaged, but hopefully without excessive packaging or waste. Something that could be used to return them to us as well would make sense, so the customer could be confident the frames would also be safely returned. It would be nice to play on the element on excitement in unwrapping a parcel i.e. to make it an exciting/pleasurable part of the experience. Externally, the frames would either be packaged in a regular courier bag, or you could try and design something that would replace the need for the courier bag itself (I have not looked into the requirements from our courier company for this aspect). Since sending frames out and back is already relatively expensive (involving courier charges in both directions plus requiring higher stocking rates), I think we would want to keep the budget for packaging fairly low here.