“We had to cut waste without losing print quality,” says Anna Ruiz, Operations Director at MoveWell Logistics, the e-commerce brand behind room-by-room moving kits. Their shoppers keep asking practical questions—like “how many moving boxes for 1 bedroom apartment”—and that drives unpredictable order patterns. In other words, the line has to flex between kit sizes without dropping the ball on print or timing.
Our team came in with a commercial lens: lower scrap, tighter color, faster changeovers. Based on insights from ecoenclose projects with sustainability-focused brands, we looked beyond traditional flexographic setups for short runs and seasonal spikes. The brief: keep corrugated print crisp on kraft, enable variable data, and avoid long downtime when jumping between SKUs.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The classic approach—long-run flexo—never aligned with their “kit-of-the-day” demand. Digital Printing with water-based inks on corrugated offered on-demand agility, but only if we could lock color, manage finishing, and keep costs inside their margin targets.
Cost and Efficiency Challenges
MoveWell sells kits from small moving boxes to heavy-duty wardrobe sets. The SKU mix flips daily, and the corrugated run length might be 200 units before switching to the next kit. That volatility came with real costs: scrap hovered around 7–9%, largely due to changeovers and color drift when bouncing between kraft liners and CCNB. Every unsalable box is money gone—and it’s tough to recover when margins are thin.
Color consistency was the sore spot. On kraft, their ΔE tolerance was repeatedly breached, often drifting in the 4–6 range during longer runs. Some of that was substrate variability, some operator fatigue, and some ink-drying constraints. Flexo plates served them well for bulk SKUs, but for short-run kit labels and room-specific prints, plates added setup time and risk of misregistration that bit into First Pass Yield.
Seasonality magnified it. Demand spikes around leases and school calendars meant hourly schedule changes. The production team needed changeovers under 30 minutes, but they were seeing 40–50 minutes on average. With the brand’s e-commerce promise—ship kits fast without compromising the look—those extra minutes stacked up. The case for a different print approach was building itself.
Solution Design and Configuration
We set up Digital Printing with Water-based Ink on Corrugated Board for short-run, on-demand kits. The stack included inline drying, G7-guided color workflows, and tighter calibration to hold ΔE within 2–3 for branded panels. Finishing combined die-cutting and gluing in a compact cell to keep handling low. For sustainability claims, the team sourced FSC-certified liners and verified adhesive specs for bond strength without warping. In parallel, MoveWell piloted ecoenclose packaging for certain inserts and mailers to align their kit story with recycled content.
Variable data became the win. Kit panels carry QR and room labels (ISO/IEC 18004 for QR), changing per order without plate swaps. Marketing slipped in a limited campaign with an ecoenclose coupon code printed as a scannable callout—simple, but it boosted kit trial among new renters. Technically, we capped run speeds to balance drying and coverage; throughput targets were set in a 160–170 boxes/hour envelope for short SKUs, with color checks every 50–75 boxes to catch drifts early.
There was a catch: water-based systems on porous kraft need disciplined moisture control. Early on, we saw minor warp on humid days, so the team adjusted environmental settings and staged pallets to stabilize. We also kept long, evergreen SKUs on flexo to protect unit economics; digital took the short, variable kits. It wasn’t a silver bullet—it was a hybrid model that matched reality.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months. First Pass Yield moved from roughly 82% into the 90–94% band on short-run kit prints. Scrap settled closer to 4–5% on average, and defect rates dropped from 1,200–1,500 ppm into the 600–800 ppm range on color-critical panels. These numbers aren’t static—busy weeks with humid conditions still push the envelope—but the control chart looks steadier.
Operationally, changeover time tracked from 40–50 minutes into the 25–30 minute window, and daily orders shipped edged from ~120–140 to ~160–170 without adding headcount. Energy use told a modest story: kWh/pack trended down by about 5–7%, and estimates show CO₂/pack in the 10–12% lower range thanks to fewer remakes. As kit assortments grew—think varied wardrobe sets alongside cardboard boxes house moving bundles—the ability to print variable labels on demand kept the line moving.
From the sales side, the payback period looks like 14–18 months based on current volume and scrap savings. The team still holds flexo for large, steady SKUs and digital for kit variability—it’s a balanced play. If you’re weighing your options, talk to your substrate and ink partners, run a controlled pilot, and don’t be shy about mixing processes. And if sustainability is part of your brand story, coordinating with a supplier like ecoenclose can help stitch the print plan to the packaging narrative.
