The eagerly-awaited shipping box sitting on the kitchen table, stacks of parcels lying in the hallway, shippers’ trolleys loaded with piles of returned products – e-commerce packaging is now an everyday sight. But, if there’s one thing that neither shoppers nor online retailers want to see a lot of, it’s the ‘empty air’ shipped in oversized packaging with excessive padding.

This is where the concept of DualPack, the two-part corrugated board shipping carton developed by the STI Group, comes in. For instance, a customer ordering two pairs of shoes in different sizes for trial can fold the lid of this cleverly designed box down the middle to create a half-sized box to return the unwanted pair.

A survey on e-commerce packaging conducted by the STI Group in February 2016 showed that it’s very important to consumers that the shipping box be tailored to size of its contents and can be re-used for return shipping. Return rates of 50 percent or more are not uncommon for clothes or shoes bought online. Not only does this eat into online retailer profits, it can also dampen shopper spirits. Over half the respondents of the survey wanted to be able to return the unwanted items in an appropriately sized shipping box. The DualPack will give customers more control over right-sizing the return shipment. DualPack, a win-win solution for Online Retailers  

Not just for customers, DualPack is also an attractive option for online retailers. Online retailers can cover several standard sizes with an appropriately sized packaging – the packaging can be reduced to half its size in a few simple steps. This makes it possible to use a single packaging to ship two parcel sizes.  Another plus for retailers is that the DualPack takes up less warehousing space as the top and bottom part of this innovative solution is identical. 

With the DualPack, the STI Group has created an e-commerce packaging that cuts down CO2 emissions during transport. Because of its intelligent design, the packaging size can be reduced by half for return shipping.  This means that more number of shipping boxes can be transported per truckload, greatly reducing the carbon footprint of the shipping and returns process.