Tiny organics found their way to Brown & Pratt via our website, and they had a clear vision of what their packaging would look like. It would be a mailer box that has the look and feel of a gift box, and they envisioned extensive brand printing on the box including a half-dozen different colors. They saw this type of box as something families would keep and reuse, thereby extending the branding effect. This kind of box carries substantial tooling costs (thousands of dollars up-front), as well as more expensive printing with so many colors of ink. In addition, this type of box comes with limitations in how much product it can accommodate—they’re designed for smaller quantities.

In some cases, clients don’t really have any vision at all, and it takes time to help them figure out what they want. But in this case, the client had a clear vision, but when the realities of what their vision will cost them come to light—an unpleasant but necessary part of the collaborative relationship—then they have the opportunity to think more deeply about what will meet their needs while also being affordable and acceptable in terms of cost.

In this case, the clients quickly realized they were probably going to be larger quantities, which meant a larger shipping box would be needed. And if they became loyal customers, they would be receiving shipments on a regular basis, which meant customers would probably be looking to recycle the box and not saving it for reuse. Between the expense, the higher quantities, and no need to reuse, they made the decision to go with a more standard corrugated shipping box called an RSC (regular slotted carton) box.

The client soon discovered, however, that the initial single-wall box type was not up to the challenge of shipping, which was a big learning point for them and us. Every package that goes through a shipping process gets handled six or seven different times, and they aren’t always “handled with care.” In other words, shipping is a rough process and packages get tossed around a lot.  

Combined with rough handling were issues created by the presence of dry ice in the box. As dry ice evaporates, some amount of moisture vapors are created in the box that can still get around the foam inserts. The further the distance that box must travel and the more moisture is created, it can get into the corners of the box and weaken their structural integrity. The box gets tossed around by shippers and might arrive at its destination in pretty bad shape. This is problematic when the product is food for babies and toddlers. Parents might be wondering if the food is still safe, which is obviously not going to help with brand loyalty. 

The solution to this dilemma was simply increasing the thickness of the box enough to prevent shipping failure, which also raises the cost of the box, but it had to be done. This raised an additional interesting dilemma. Some shipments that didn’t need to go very far could easily get by with the original single-wall box, so should they have two different box styles depending on how far the order needed to be shipped? This is an approach taken by some. But when we ran the numbers, it became apparent that smaller production runs of two different types of boxes would cost more than bulk-buying larger runs of the thicker box. This helped the client make the decision to use the thicker box across-the-board because they knew it would work for all shipments without fail and was the more cost-effective solution.

Because Tiny Organics is growing rapidly, they need to ship products to consumers from multiple locations and have their packaging materials available at those locations. The way this is handled at many packaging vendors might go something like this: They run a big order of packaging materials, packaged up as one big order, and will send it to the client’s main or central location, this leaves the client to figure out how to divide up the order and get the right quantities out to additional ship-from locations.

At Brown & Pratt we pride ourselves on not being like most packaging vendors. We’re always looking for ways to solve the pain points our clients experience because that’s just the right way to do business and maintain strong partnerships with our clients. 

In this case, although Tiny Organics is ordering their packaging and shipping products in bulk, we don’t treat the order as a single bulk order. We take on the task of dividing the order up into multiple shipments to their various shipping facilities. We make sure each facility gets everything they need—it obviously is no good if they receive boxes without the corrugated separators—and perform this valued-added logistics service at no additional charge. Needless to say, the client is very pleased with the results.