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Durable, Reusable Sampling Packs Reduce Waste, Improve Brand Experience

New Balance Team Sports made the leap from traditional corrugated in D2C sampling and sizing returns to a durable, reusable PET fabric pack. It’s branding makes a nice impression and distinguishes it from other shippers, while being more sustainable.

New Balance Team Sports switched to a reusable, returnable pack design to improve branding and reduce waste in a sampling and sizing program that previously shipped product in traditional kraft corrugated.
New Balance Team Sports switched to a reusable, returnable pack design to improve branding and reduce waste in a sampling and sizing program that previously shipped product in traditional kraft corrugated.

Global shoe and sports apparel brand New Balance outfits some of the world’s leading athletes, from Olympic stars like nine-time U.S. National Track and Field Champion Emma Coburn, to Major League Baseball luminaries like former all-star outfielder Curtis Granderson.  Internal dividers can be used to keep shoes organized, or removed so the pack can double as a jersey or uniform shipper.Internal dividers can be used to keep shoes organized, or removed so the pack can double as a jersey or uniform shipper.

Meanwhile, any old weekend warrior in a softball league or running club at home can benefit from New Balance shoes or gear, even this PW editor. Now, Granderson and Coburn doubtlessly receive the latest, top-of-the-line gear first and directly from the source at New Balance. I, on the other hand, purchase much more pedestrian New Balance shoes from a third-party neighborhood running shoe store.

But between these two opposite ends of the athletic gear-buying spectrum, there is a wide swath of commerce that’s hidden to average consumers like me. This exists in sampling, sizing, and outfitting the multitude of intermediate levels of athletics that exist in the wide chasm between an MLB outfielder and the average Joe.

New Balance breaks out its business categories by sport, with each sporting category being assigned a manager or team of regional managers. Since this athletic club team space is so far afield from of what Packaging World usually covers, maybe it’s better to let David Chaney, New Balance Team Sports Sales Manager, explain.

“We outfit athletes at all levels with premium performance products,” he says. “And when I say all levels, we truly service professional athletes, all the way down to grassroots youth teams. Our primary market is in the team sport space, given the demographics and the sheer number of participants at the youth grassroots level between ages 8 and 18. It’s primarily in club sports, but that also includes recreational and institutional sports as well. Within that institutional bucket, we service high school and collegiate programs all the way up through semi-pro and professional sports here in North America.”


Watch video   Watch this brief, five-minute video about different durable, refillable packaging and consuming formats, including Truman's, Grove Collaborative, and Unilever's Dove refillable deodorant. 

The 30-plus member category management team is decentralized, meaning they’re located all over the country, and don’t have regular access to a central office or shipping department. These folks do the sample shipping themselves, so they are closely attuned to the mountain of packaging materials and the shipping and return logistics headaches involved.

The reusable, durable packs are constructed with rigid corrugated plastic within screen-printed PET fabric.The reusable, durable packs are constructed with rigid corrugated plastic within screen-printed PET fabric.Packaging’s place in sports sampling

Sampling for club teams entails a category manager like Chaney, who specializes in lacrosse and hockey, working closely with his customers, who can be dealers, retailers, or end consumers, to arrive on an aesthetic, look, and feel, that will be used by, and sold to, the entire club. That means color swatches, logos, patches, and fabric types, all at different price points and sophistication levels, need to be shipped, sampled, tried on, tested, and ultimately returned via D2C shipping with a return tag.

Many of the larger club teams—say, soccer or lacrosse—may have on the order of several thousand members, ranging in age (and size) between third graders and high school seniors. Not to mention there are coaches, parents, referees, and line judges of all ages and sizes. Outfitting an entire club team requires a lot of back-and-forth to eventually arrive at a purchased line of gear. Chaney says this can involve several shipments, with much or most of the sampled product coming back to him and his fellow category managers.

And uniform selection isn’t the end of the packaging saga. Once the aesthetic is decided upon, then teams often have what are called “sizing nights” or “sizing parties” where some or all of a club team try on the entirety of what New Balance would call a size run, or the full range of available shoe and apparel sizes. These sizing nights allow a club team to find its perfect size and fit, and then return the tested gear. Armed with that sizing info, the customer can then confidently make a tailored jersey or shoe order. New Balance category managers send sizing kits to teams specifically for these purposes, and the kits are shipped back to them for re-use. From an e-commerce and logistics perspective, it’s a manual, packaging-heavy operation.

Sustainability and brand perception

One obvious outgrowth of the sampling and sizing process was, at least historically, it used a lot of corrugated shippers that may or may not have been recycled. That’s a sustainability concern that has been brought into sharp relief among consumers during the pandemic, with people being more aware than ever of waste tied to shipping, returns, breaking down of boxes, removing tape and dunnage, and ability to recycle.

The positive side of the sustainability story with regards to club sports outfitting is that RSC-style corrugated shippers can withstand more than one use in this back-and-forth of sampling and sizing, and in most cases are at least recyclable (though not infinitely so). But the practice of using (or re-using) plain kraft corrugated brings up another problem: brand perception.

“We’re at the forefront of the brand and the consumer’s engagement,” Cheney says. “We are the physical representation of the brand to the athlete on the team side. Our athletes’ direct, first-hand experience with the New Balance brand is with us, what we send them as samples, and the packaging those samples arrive in.”

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