I bought a pair of Teva’s a couple years ago. The box was very sturdy while assembled, and easy to unfold (tabs holding it together) for flat storage until I could recycle it. So nice I emailed them and asked them to thank the packaging engineer who designed it.
And by definition, since it was made from one contiguous piece of cardboard, I could have reassembled it inside out, that’s just topology.
I worked at UPS through college. “Just press down on top”. You mean like, what I’ll be doing to rotate the box when I place it on the belt to send up to sort with the label upright? Or like the other package does that’s on top of it? Or like the belt does when the package rolls side ways and presses into a curve on the conveyor system? Or like the loader is going to do when he picks the package up to place it?
And that’s assuming that everything goes perfectly and your package is treated with love and concern at every sort hub it goes through.
Now, now. It’s their first invention. Give them a break.
What’s the betting that this is the result of an assignment to invent something then make a kickstarter style marketing video? So the point of the snarky comments is to blast someone’s homework assignment. I wish I’d been able to produce college output like this, but that was back in the days of 200Mhz CPUs and video cameras were more expensive than computers. Roll on future.
re: #4 most box packing and folding is done by humans. people are way cheaper than robots. ( unfortunately. )
That material they’re working with is “corrugated fiberboard”. Cardboard is what cereal boxes are made of.
Hi, I am a trained packing monkey for a certain major shipping company. I assist customers who wish to have an item packed in such a way as to ensure the contents arrive unharmed. I will add a couple new points to the discussion. The boxes used are carefully engineered to survive the various conveyor belts and pushing machines used, as well as simply being stacked under various other things. The standard for a ‘Fragile Pack’ is to double box a wine glass with paper cushioning and then throw that box at the ground while standing up on a counter or some such…glass must survive. The tape used on the boxes in an H-Tape format to ensure that the edges do not get caught on other things in the automated sorting process; when customers hand us boxes they put together themselves, we regularly add tape to them for this reason (no extra charge). Also we need to add the shipping labels and such onto the boxes. Rarely are they sticker free after use.
Hater? Have you seen the way UPS/FedEx/USPS handle packages? I’ve gotten things that truly look like someone has played kick ball with them and this design simply wouldn’t stand up to that.
Don’t even get me started on the actual packing side of things. I swear there are people who think because they write “fragile” on a box that it’s going to get some kind of white glove treatment.
Honestly I wouldn’t think that at all. Their system might tell the picker to use box type “A” or something, but outside of that I’m betting it’s all human powered. Remember people are cheap to use.
I agree that human labor is cheaper, but in the case of assembling stuff gathered from around a factory, is it more efficient? I’m speculating that taking the decision making and assembly process out of human hands, that is, having a box chosen and assembled by a machine and meeting it at the gathering point, especially in factories where robots are doing the gathering, may be be cheaper in the long run because a packer can pack more boxes. I wonder if anyone here knows. In addition, do small things come in unnecessarily large boxes because a machine overestimates the size needed or does the packer?
I’m not sure this is generally useful as a shipping box… though it may be adaptable; perhaps the snap-together just speeds up initial packing and it still gets taped for shipping, at the cost of requiring a more complicated pull-tab untaping operation before popping it open…but even as it stands it could be a perfectly reasonable design for some applications.
As version 0.1 of an idea goes, it’s better developed than many. I think it’s got potential for evolving into something commercially interesting. And it’s very good to see people at least trying to think about their idea in terms of a complete system/environment of use rather than just getting the one insight and not taking it any further.
I hope they get some of this feedback – trimmed down to specific facts/concerns – and that they can address some or all of it in the 0.2 version.
I can certainly think of a few. Granted none of them involve shipping through systems like UPS, FedEx, USPS or DHL.
It might prove useful as a pizza box, or an insulative container for other hot food delivery. I really wish PC cases and systems came in this type of packaging. Sometimes they’re shipped in the OEM box which is nestled in a larger box full of packing peanuts. It’s a pain to get the OEM box out without spilling peanuts everywhere, but once that’s done you have the case tightly fit inside it’s OEM box and pulling it out is a struggle against either the vacuum in the space the case is coming from, or the friction between the case and the box itself. And I know I don’t want to take a razor to the OEM box, because I don’t want to risk putting scratches on the brand new case.
I think the self-unfolding box is a great idea for packaging cubicly/rectangular-prism-ly-shaped objects that would normally be a pain getting out of the box without a razor.
This seems oddly familiar…
A critique isn’t (necessarily) hate. I actually think it’s kind of a neat design; having done a bit of cardboard engineering as part of my design work, I appreciate the (almost) glue- and tape-less design.
Just to show I’m not a hater, I’ll offer this: I don’t think the box will pop open under the mere pressure of other boxes stacked on top. The pre-cut tab looks to me like it needs hard pressure on the tab alone to open it. Still a bit precarious — given what we know of shipping and postal services, there’s a non-zero chance that something might get thrown on top in such a way that the tab is pressed hard — but not as fragile as others have speculated.
Or, a handler could inadvertently poke a finger into the hole on top and have product all over the place. Convenient and trouble free opening is not a feature without serious drawbacks.
If they did not hear these arguments in critiques it may have been an esteem building exercise that was never meant to be seen out side of class.
This design needs to be tested extensively with and by cats first. Then we’ll talk.
That sound you hear is the gears of the all-powerful shipping tape lobby machine, coming to crush these kids.
Aargh. Mark, you’re usually the best with adding an external video link. I hate having to enable every little piece of script from every website in order to just see an embedded video.
Amazon just snapped up the rights to it. They’re going to use it as part of their Frustration Free Drone Delivery system.
Yeah,I think that figuring out what this design IS good for is a better and more interesting exercise than pointing out it’s problems. I’m thinking of storage (rather than shipping) of fragile items. It would allow you to view the item from all sides without lifting it out of the box. It also might be useful for internal parts boxes…you know the box of bits and parts that often comes with a larger item. If the packaging is designed well, this could be wedged in the container in such a way that there is no real chance that the center will be pressed inadvertently.
