“We needed to lift throughput without hiring a second shift,” said Mara Liu, Operations Director at NorthPeak Living. “And we couldn’t afford a spike in packaging cost. That was the mandate.”
As the team unpacked SKU-by-SKU realities—seasonal demand, awkward product dimensions, and strict brand guidelines—the packaging question became a production question. Early in discovery, we tested recycled kraft and short-run Digital Printing to trim changeovers and reduce overstock. The inflection point came when we piloted recycled corrugated and mailers specified with ecoenclose.
I was the production lead on the project. My measure of success was simple: fewer rejects, shorter changeovers, steady unit cost, and a calmer floor on Mondays.
Company Overview and History
NorthPeak Living is a mid-sized DTC home goods brand shipping décor and small furniture to eight countries. The portfolio runs ~1,200 active SKUs, with weekly mix swings that would rattle any planner. Before this project, they used a fixed box set and generic mailers on C-flute Corrugated Board, Flexographic Printing for long runs, and pre-printed labels for micro-SKUs. Branding held up, but inventory did not: slow movers left them with aisles of obsolete packaging, and we were nursing a Waste Rate hovering near 7–9% on corrugate.
We profiled the order mix and found ugly tails—small lots, irregular dimensions, and sporadic spikes. That pattern is tailor-made for On-Demand and Short-Run packaging. We decided to explore recycled Kraft Paper corrugate for shipper boxes, with Digital Printing for variable data and seasonal art, and Water‑based Ink to keep emissions and odor down in the pack-out zone. For smaller soft goods and refills, the team also trialed paper mailers and ecoenclose bags where flex and puncture requirements were modest.
Brand and compliance boxes were non-negotiable. We set FSC on corrugate supply, G7 targets for ΔE within 3–5 for brand tones, and kept ISO/IEC 18004 (QR) on cartons for returns and tracking. Nothing exotic—just standards that let operations breathe.
Cost and Efficiency Challenges
Here’s where it gets interesting. The packaging budget looked stable on paper, but our Changeover Time (min) told another story. With five common shipper sizes and frequent art swaps, we were losing 18–24 minutes per change on average runs, and First Pass Yield sat around 82–85%. The team was also under pressure to add two specialty sizes for lamps and drapery—the dreaded tall moving boxes—which would add SKUs and tie up capital. Procurement kept asking the classic question—“where is the cheapest place to buy moving boxes?” I pushed back: the cheapest box isn’t always the lowest cost per delivered order.
On the customer side, support tickets showed people literally searching our help center for phrases like where to find moving boxes when moving house with our furniture. That told marketing and ops the same thing—packaging was part of the customer journey, not a commodity. We needed better size coverage without ballooning inventory, and faster art turns for seasonal drops.
Solution Design and Configuration
We ran a two-track setup. For Long-Run and High-Volume SKUs, we kept Flexographic Printing on recycled Corrugated Board with Water-based Ink. For Short-Run and Seasonal, we moved to Digital Printing on 100% recycled kraft liners. That hybrid held quality where it mattered and cut risk where SKU volatility hurt most. We also consolidated the box range from nine to six footprints with smarter inserts, and did a dedicated size for the lamp line to avoid oversized void fill. Die‑Cutting patterns were tweaked to improve compression strength despite lighter board.
The switch brought a few bumps. Early digital pilots showed ink laydown issues on rougher kraft—ΔE drifted outside 5 on deep greens. We fixed it with a different primer and a slower transport speed, nudging kWh/pack up by 6–9% in that cell, but bringing FPY back on target. On mailers, the team implemented ecoenclose bags (recycled poly and paper options) for soft goods under 1.5 kg. For returns, we printed a QR plus a small callout that offered an ecoenclose coupon code for reusing or returning packaging—simple, measurable, and aligned with the sustainability team’s goals.
To keep color and registration consistent across technologies, we tightened the workflow: calibrated profiles weekly, set a G7 gray balance routine, and put SPC on critical checkpoints—registration, crush test, and tape adhesion. Food contact wasn’t in scope here, but we still spec’d Low‑Migration Ink for a gift-basket line that touches edibles. Nothing fancy; just disciplined process control and a clear playbook for when to choose Digital vs Flexo.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months. Corrugated Waste Rate landed in the 5–7% band, a 22–28% cut versus baseline. FPY rose into the 90–93% range on the digital cell, and defect ppm moved from roughly 2,200–2,600 down to 900–1,200 on mixed-week runs. Throughput on mixed art weeks climbed by 12–16% due to fewer art-driven stops and a smaller box set. Changeover Time dropped by 8–12 minutes on the most common size. We also tracked CO₂/pack and saw a 10–14% decline linked to lighter spec and fewer obsolete cartons.
Cost-wise, the unit picture held steady: packaging cost per order stayed within ±2% of baseline once we amortized die changes and the digital primer shift. Payback Period modeled at 9–12 months depending on seasonal volume. The only real trade-off was that digital primer and slower transport added a small energy bump in one cell, which we offset by consolidating SKUs and right-sizing the lamp shipper. Could this approach work for every brand? No. If your runs are uniformly Long-Run and art-stable, pure Flexographic Printing may still win. But for NorthPeak’s volatility and global mix, the hybrid, recycled-kraft path—piloted with support from ecoenclose—has proven durable and predictable on the floor.
