Blazing Tales: Flower Packaging Comes Into Bloom

The Problem

Imagine this situation: Your mom’s birthday is next week, so you decide to have some really nice flowers sent to her. You order them online, and your mom gets a box in the mail a few days later. She opens it up to find some very lovely flowers … that have been crushed and sitting in a broken vase that has spilt dirt everywhere.

An amazing gift has been derailed by bad packaging.

This was the situation that customers of an online flower retailer found themselves in. The retailer’s packaging resulted in too much breakage, returned orders and unhappy customers.

The company spent months working through a different supplier and got nowhere. They turned to Ernest to come to the rescue.

“The level of fragility is unbelievable,” said Brian Theodore, general manager of Ernest Packaging Solutions San Diego. “They were struggling to get products to their customers without products breaking or migrating.”

The closest solutions that they found were too expensive to mass produce and were visually unappealing for customers.

Ernest’s Solution

Enter Dr. Gary Chao: Ernest’s corrugated marketing manager, star of our Ernest Edge video and the biggest corrugated fan you’re likely to ever meet.

“Regardless of what the project is, I want to find out what’s causing the breakage,” he said of the project.

One problem that he found was that there were too many components in each package. “We need to simplify things for our customers,” he said. “That doesn’t mean taking things away. It still needs to be extremely well protected.”

By eliminating several components and rethinking the design, Dr. Chao and his team created a new less expensive package that results in less breakage and returns. “You don’t want to overbuild a box,” he said. “You just want sufficient enough strength.”

The box looks better as well. “We look at things holistically,” said Brian. “We don’t look at packaging as a box. We look at it as a customer experience.”

Dr. Chao is just happy that his customer is happy. “They love the simplicity, strength and reduction of cost,” said Dr. Chao. “They’ve already ordered another version.”

How can we help your packaging bloom? Contact us today about the packaging challenges that you’re facing.