BoldtSmith Packaging Advantage – Expertise
Packaging Design Challenge
BoldtSmith Packaging recently completed a project for a customer in the kitchen appliance world. The project goal was to determine the optimized packaging material designed to ship to big-box retailers such as Home Depot and Lowe’s around the U.S. and Canada.
Requirements
- Optimize appliance packaging for retail shipping
- Reduce freight and material costs
BoldtSmith Actions
- Visit all stopping points in the supply chain and ship the product with a data recording device to create a custom testing protocol that matches the customer’s supply chain
- Create optimized retail packaging design solutions
- Create packaging specifications
- Develop packaging samples in-house
- Create containerization files for optimized packaging solutions
- Test the samples to the custom testing protocol
- Send specifications for pricing
- Complete a financial analysis including packaging, labor and freight costs
- Present the design, pricing and testing results
Cost Savings and Damage Reduction
The financial analysis of the optimized packaging design resulted in:
25% reductionIn freight costs
46% reductionIn packaging material costs
These results were achieved while passing the custom testing protocol.
Packaging Design Development
From our experience, a packaging manufacturer will provide a solution with the material they sell. A corrugated supplier will provide a corrugated solution and a foam supplier will provide a foam solution. This is where the advantage of BoldtSmith Packaging comes in. Since we do not sell, broker or manufacture packaging, our goal is to provide the best possible packaging solution to our customers.
The current packaging as shown in the image consisted of #275 C-Flute corrugated with two EPS end caps. Upon testing the current packaging to the custom testing protocol, it failed in nearly all of the testing hazards (drop, stacked vibration, vertical compression).
The product was manufactured out of the country and dispersed through a series of distribution centers domestically in the United States. For this reason, the optimized packaging solutions were designed around cubing out the trailers the product ships in to reduce costs. The designs were sampled, tested and then sent out for pricing. This information was put into a financial analysis comparing current to optimized
Packaging Testing
Upon kicking off the project we discovered that the current packaging was not passing the customer's testing protocol, which consisted of ten 30” drops. The importance of an accurate test cannot be understated. For this reason, we recommended that our customer allow us to ship the product and packaging with our data recording device. This device records all relative hazards such as drop height, drop orientation, vibration frequency, temperature and humidity.
By visiting all stopping points in the supply chain, from the location of manufacturing, 3PLs, railyards and customer distribution centers, we determined how the product is handled and stored. Merging the data recorder information with our observations in the supply chain, we created a custom testing protocol that matched the hazards the product and packaging should expect to see. This gives us the information to provide data-driven recommendations for optimized packaging designs.
If your company is interested in optimizing your current packaging, reach out to BoldtSmith Packaging to schedule a call.
Industries Served

Military
BoldtSmith packaging engineers design, implement and audit military packaging following stringent testing standards with documented precision.
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MFG Assembly Lines
In a world of high-speed manufacturing and assembly lines, packaging must be designed to match the line's efficiency.
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Food & Beverage
Whether the customer is a brand on the store shelf or private labeling a product at a co-packer, we have experience in executing solutions at all levels within the food & beverage world.
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E-Commerce
Our Amazon A-pass certified consultants utilize modern technology in data recording devices, allowing us to create a testing protocol that is custom to our customers' specific supply chain.
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Industrial
Reducing product damage, freight and material costs are common goals we are tasked with when optimizing industrial packaging projects.
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Furniture
BoldtSmith Packaging works with assembled and knock-down furniture companies creating optimized packaging designs to drive down damage and packaging costs.
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Consumer Packaged Goods
Our CPG experts have experience working both on the retailer side of the business and the product manufacturer side.
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Get started - Optimize your packaging now!
Save on materials, freight, product damage and labor costs while promoting your brand with BoldtSmith package engineering.
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