Staples made the box after seeing the order and cut empty shipping air

Staples had a familiar ecommerce problem: small orders were arriving in oversized cartons stuffed with air pillows. The obvious fix was to add more carton sizes, but that only moved complexity into inventory and pack stations.

Starting with a May 2011 Orlando pilot, Staples and Packsize made the box itself a just-in-time output. By October 2013, 24 delivery fulfillment facilities used Packsize On Demand Packaging systems, with national rollout expected in early 2014.

Packsize said Smart-size packaging would save 25,000 metric tons of CO2 yearly. It also reported average corrugated use down more than 15%, air-pillow use down about 60%, and cube down about 20% on less-than-full-case orders.

Make the package after the order, not before

The solution attacked empty volume, not just packaging material.

Making cartons on demand avoided a warehouse full of rarely perfect box sizes.

The same move improved customer experience, truck cube, and sustainability metrics.

When the object being shipped varies wildly, standardizing the process can beat standardizing the container.

Staples and Packsize won the 2013 Supply Chain Innovation Award. The case became a template for right-sized ecommerce packaging: less cardboard, less void fill, denser shipments, and fewer customers wondering why a tiny item arrived in a huge box.