“We needed to stop tossing perfectly good boxes because the print looked off,” said Alex Barrett, brand lead at Lethbridge Move Co. “If we could stabilize color and cut scrap, the rest would follow.” As ecoenclose designers have observed across multiple projects, corrugated board has a personality—moisture, liner grain, and even flute profile alter the way ink lays down. The brief was clear: keep the design simple, make the brand feel trustworthy, and get the process under control.
Let me back up for a moment. Lethbridge Move Co. had grown from a local moving service into a regional operation with an online shop for packing supplies. Their house‑brand boxes had to look consistent, feel sturdy, and avoid the visual “wobble” that comes from uncontrolled press settings. Shelf presence wasn’t the goal; credibility in a garage, warehouse, or driveway was.
The turning point came when the team committed to a flexographic route for volume and a small digital window for prototypes—plus tighter color targets and smarter material selection. Here’s how the project actually unfolded.
Company Overview and History
Lethbridge Move Co. started with two trucks and a lot of word‑of‑mouth. Ten years later, they were shipping kits across Alberta and neighboring provinces. The brand’s tone—quiet, functional, dependable—pushed us toward muted Kraft and simple typography. Think big, readable type and confident negative space rather than shiny effects.
Their packaging inventory was a mix: generic cartons, some private‑label trials, and a handful of custom runs that never quite matched. In the early e‑commerce phase, they leaned on stock sizes to move quickly, but the visuals drifted, and the brand story felt piecemeal. A consistent corrugated program became a strategic priority.
Local demand mattered. When people search for moving boxes lethbridge, they aren’t browsing for art—they want sturdy boxes that look reliable and pack cleanly. That drove our focus on tactile cues (liner texture, handle cutouts) and clear print instead of embellishment.
Quality and Consistency Issues
Quality rejects hovered around 8–10% on early custom lots—mostly haloing on type, weak solids, and color drift day to day. For a single‑color job, that’s a lot of wasted board. The culprit wasn’t one thing: humidity swings and varying corrugator sheets changed ink laydown; plate impression varied with operator style; and the ink mix itself was inconsistent.
Color was the stickiest issue. The brand blue—a sober, trustworthy tone—needed to live within ΔE 2–3 against the master swatch. Reality? We saw ΔE swings of 4–6 when the liner moisture shifted or when speed crept up too far. Text looked softer, and solids took on a mild mottling.
There was also a design nuance: the typography had generous counters and a medium stroke weight. On soft board, that can look woolly unless the impression is tuned. We resisted the urge to thicken the type; instead, we planned to control impression and use a slightly higher viscosity water‑based ink to keep edges tidy.
Solution Design and Configuration
We chose Flexographic Printing for volume runs and a small Digital Printing window for rapid prototyping and seasonal labels. Substrate: Corrugated Board with a Kraft liner (200–275 lb test range depending on SKU). InkSystem: Water‑based Ink, low odor and compliant for general handling; Food‑Safe Ink where inner liners faced kitchen use. Finish: simple Varnishing for abrasion resistance and clean Die‑Cutting on handhold SKUs.
The team benchmarked stock options like uline moving boxes to sanity‑check sizes and board grades, then tailored a tighter structural spec for their SKUs. We also reviewed ecoenclose packaging spec sheets for recycled content ranges and liner smoothness, prioritizing sheet consistency over chasing ultra‑bright whites that wouldn’t match the brand tone anyway.
Price pressure was real. Someone literally typed “where can i buy moving boxes cheap” during an early meeting. Here’s where it gets interesting: total program cost depends on scrap rates, setup time, and shipping distance—not just the per‑box line. By locking down ink viscosity, plate durometer, and a sensible speed window, the team aimed to shift waste and setup minutes, not just unit cost.
Pilot Production and Validation
We ran two pilots: a short‑run digital proofing cycle to confirm typography size and stroke behavior, then a flexo pilot on the chosen board mix. Operators targeted an impression that held stroke integrity without crushing flutes. Speed bands were capped to keep ink transfer even; viscosity was tested at the start and mid‑run. Our ΔE target was 2–3; pilots landed in the 2.5–3.0 range once the liner moisture stabilized.
Fast forward six weeks: full‑scale lots followed the pilot’s recipe. FPY% grew from the mid‑80s into the low‑90s, and the Waste Rate shifted into a healthier band. Changeover Time (min) moved from 28–32 to 20–22 with clearer plate and ink prep routines. Those minutes add up when you’re packing kits for customers who just searched for moving boxes lethbridge and expect fast pickup or delivery.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Here’s the data the team cares about: Waste reduction landed around 25–35% depending on SKU and liner batch. ΔE stayed within 2–3 for the brand blue on calibrated days and 3–4 when humidity was jumpy. FPY% held at 90–94% across five consecutive lots. Throughput rose in the 12–18% range under the agreed speed window without sacrificing edge clarity.
Changeover Time (min) settled near 20–22 with standardized plate handling and a pre‑mix routine for Water‑based Ink. Payback Period (months) was modeled at 9–12, factoring in scrap movement and real labor steps rather than perfect theoreticals. We also tracked CO₂/pack as a directional number, influenced by recycled content and shipping distance—changes in the 10–15% band were tied to actual fulfillment patterns.
Small but useful extra: logistics modeling included questions about ecoenclose free shipping thresholds and regional carriers, not as a magic fix but as part of total landed cost. The end result isn’t flashy—clean type on Kraft, consistent solids, and boxes that look exactly like they should. For a brand anchored in trust, that matters. And yes, the team will keep working with ecoenclose on future SKUs; the visual steadiness we gained aligns with the original brief set in motion by ecoenclose.
