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By Lauren Folkes | MiBiz
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WEST MICHIGAN — Office furniture companies never paid much attention to packaging until consumers started to demand less of it.

Until very recently, packaging was simply an afterthought for most contract furniture manufacturers, who thought what mattered was inside the box, not the box itself. The companies have increasingly found that packaging, too, can contribute value for customers, as well as help achieve sustainability goals.

MiBiz spoke with four office furniture manufacturers to share some of their best practices in packaging.

Steelcase now uses EcoCradle for some packaging solutions, a move spurred by some major retailers mandating no foam be used in the packaging materials. EcoCradle is a Styrofoam alternative, bio-based product made from mushroom roots and agricultural waste that will break down in a short amount of time. COURTESY PHOTOS

Minimalist approach

Steelcase Inc. views packaging from two angles: First, that the best packaging is no packaging, and second, that packaging design development is crucial.

“We spent a lot of time developing products, but when we got ready to start selling these products, clients would request packaging. We would literally go out to the packaging companies and say, ‘Here is a chair. We need you to put boxes around this,’” said Dennis Carlson, engineering manager at Steelcase who handles packaging design for the Americas. “It sounds simple, but it costs us a significant amount of money.”

Steelcase had a difficult time accepting the cost of that packaging because it yielded no perceived customer value, he said. Moreover, customers started demanding that manufacturers discontinue using Styrofoam and expanded polystyrene (EPS). One leading retailer mandated a no-EPS policy, Carlson said.

Those cost and sustainability pressures led the company to look at different innovations, including EcoCradle, a Styrofoam alternative, bio-based product made from mushroom roots and agricultural waste.

“It doesn’t matter if the end user recycles it, composts it or throws it in a landfill because in 30 days, it will decompose in your garden; in 45 days, it will break down in a landfill,” Carlson said.

Steelcase continues to use corrugated paper because it is often recycled and because it usually has a high percentage of recycled content anyway, he said.

“(Using corrugate) supports our sustainability efforts and our cost as well as allows us to standardize across different product types,” Carlson said.

Roughly 15 to 20 percent of Steelcase’s packaging material has recycled content, but the company’s goal is to reach 40 percent mark and not sacrifice performance, Carlson said.

While the packaging content is increasingly recycled, the company’s thinking on packaging has become more one-of-a-kind. In the past, packaging design came at the back-end of product development; today, Steelcase Inc. prioritizes it.

“We took it from the tail end, where it was reactive, to the front end framework where we are talking about product design,” Carlson said. “It’s more proactive.”

This shift spurred Steelcase to consider the type of customer installation to target. Effectively transporting packaging materials affects the way the actual product is designed. Design modifications on packaging could save 50 cents to $1, but if the actual product is altered, savings range from $5 to $10 a unit.

Changing the product design to reduce cost is also a best practice embraced by Herman Miller Inc., which successfully eliminated 40 percent of its packaging material.

“We have one project where we are changing something on the product, which is allowing us to minimize packaging. At a rough calculation, it will save us 25 semi-loads of this packaging per year,” said David Martin, engineering lead for Herman Miller.

The effort to minimize packaging also has implications for the customer, who will have less material to take care of once the products are delivered. Martin said using less packaging can boost the chances that packaging — whether wood panels, bags or polyethylene — gets recycled.

“If you think about a skyscraper, a lot of times they’re unloading in the middle of the street in the middle of the night because there is no loading dock. To expect that they will have time to separate products for recycling, it’s just not going to happen,” said Martin.

Share the knowledge

The lessons for major office furniture companies can make their way to the smaller companies and throughout the supply chain. Bold Companies Inc. President Todd Folkert said Bold absorbs the best practices of its larger OEM customers in developing packaging strategies for its own products. Muskegon-based Bold makes its own line of furniture and does private-label manufacturing.

One example: Bold learned the benefits of blanket-wrapping products from one of its customers, Steelcase. With reusable blanket wraps, a company can fit more products per truckload, which opens space for other products and reduces the costs associated with transportation.

“Our first focus is making sure that the product arrives safely,” Folkert said, noting the company prefers blanket wrapping for full truckloads. “Oftentimes, we will use it in conjunction with a corrugated angle or other packaging supplies if we have to beef-up the packaging.”

Likewise at Herman Miller, to ensure product quality, the company does not blanket wrap products that ship through a common carrier or that get handled at numerous stops before reaching the end user, Martin said.

“About 35 to 40 percent of our products are fully assembled when shipped. Oftentimes, we can blanket-wrap them. There is a cost to do that, but the savings certainly offsets (the cost),” Martin said.

Case Study:
Herman Miller’s Flute

Herman Miller’s sustainability push has increasingly spread to packaging.

In bringing the Flute Personal Task Light to market, Herman Miller worked with the manufacturer, Cascade Engineering, to minimize the amount of packaging material required and yet still protect the lights during shipping.

The companies started with one light per box, but further discussions revealed most lights would go to multi-user sites that would order perhaps hundreds of lights at a time. It made sense to find a way to cut down on packaging, said Jim Gingrich, general manager of commercial accounts at Cascade.

Each Flute light, designed by Grand Rapids designer Tom Newhouse, weighs two pounds, so the partners decided to nest a pair of lights in a box originally intended to hold just one.

“Instead of shipping one truckload, we could ship half a truckload and fill the rest with other stuff,” said Pat Sigler, product manager and operations lead for Herman Miller’s Thrive Portfolio. “For the customer on the other end, that means less waste they have to deal with as well. It was a great success. It’s one of the first products at Herman Miller where we’ve done some multi-packs, and it works out great.”

The addition of an easy-to-handle perforated top resulted in a 40-percent reduction in the amount of packaging. COURTESY PHOTOS
The company had used EPS material attached to a corrugated container with adhesive. The EPS separated parts for protection, but dealers could not remove the EPS, rendering the parts unsuitable for recycling.  The solution was to hold the EPS in place with flaps in the corrugated boxes. COURTESY PHOTOS

Degrees of green

Amneon, a supplier-turned-OEM operation, is on the other end of the spectrum from the Steelcases and Herman Millers of the office furniture industry in that it’s a much smaller company. Amneon may not have access to the same levels of resources as the top-tier companies, but it also aims its products toward a much more affordable price point and operates a much more efficient operation overall, said VP of product development Doug Bonzelaar. As such, Amneon’s customers have different expectations for sustainable solutions for the sake of sustainable solutions when a much less expensive option exists.

“I do think there are marginal returns, to a degree, outside of the common-sense stuff that small businesses do, but if you do these common-sense things, you’re 95 percent of the way home,” Bonzelaar said.

Amneon does not blanket-wrap its products, opting instead for molded foam and small amounts of Styrofoam fillers. “On one hand, it’s foam, which is a negative, but on the other hand, by doing custom orders, you eliminate the need for a lot of other materials, even just corrugated. In my view, environmental impact is still a significant positive,” said Bonzelaar. “Ninety percent of the packaging in our industry is corrugated, and that is how it always was. The difference today is you’re consciously trying to use less of it. You’re trying to accomplish the same goals with less material.”

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• dennis carlson
• ecocradle
• herman miller
• steelcase
• todd folkert
• west michigan