The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2010–2012
Puma replaced the shoebox with a bag that IS the box
Puma's Clever Little Bag swapped a rigid shoebox for a folded paperboard tray in a reusable bag, cutting cardboard 65% and shipping weight.
Puma
the move
A shoebox holds a pair of shoes and a lot of empty space, and it is typically thrown away after one trip. Puma's own box was already efficient, but fuseproject's Yves Béhar looked at the whole system and asked why a rigid box was needed for a pair of flexible, non-square shoes.
The Clever Little Bag, launched in 2010, is a bag-and-box hybrid: a die-cut sheet of thin paperboard folds into a four-walled tray that fits inside a reusable fabric bag. It protects the shoes from the factory, through distribution and the store, and then becomes a bag the customer keeps.
The switch cut cardboard use by 65% and water, energy and diesel in manufacturing by more than 60% a year, with the same protective job done using a material that ships flat. Puma extended the logic to garment bags and biodegradable plastic for the rest of the line.
why it works
- The bag is the box, so the box no longer has to be rigid.
- A flat, folded tray ships compact and uses far less material.
- The customer keeps a reusable item instead of discarding a box.
- Matching shape to product removes wasted air in transit.
what transfers
Ask what the packaging is for rather than how to improve it; if the real job is protect-and-ship, the cheapest structure is the one that matches the shape of what it carries.
what came after
Puma rolled the Clever Little Bag out from select products in 2010 to the full production line by 2012, and it won a Core77 Design Award for packaging. The redesign became a reference point for 'packaging is logistics' thinking, but the costlier bags meant it was not adopted industry-wide.
references
- Core77 Design Award 2011: PUMA Clever Little Bag, Winner for Packaging
- Puma Clever Little Bag — Fuseproject
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