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House Plant Box's D2C Biz Blossoms with Protective E-Comm Packaging

The rough and tumble, many-touch world of D2C and e-comm shipping can take a toll on any product, but live house plants were a particular challenge for brand House Plant Box. A sustainable, stylish, and robust pack system with bracing tabs did the trick.

Beyond robust packaging to withstand the D2C supply chain, custom branding was a bonus, as all products are packaged in boxes designed with the House Plant Shop logo, taped with paper-based branded tape, and more.
Beyond robust packaging to withstand the D2C supply chain, custom branding was a bonus, as all products are packaged in boxes designed with the House Plant Shop logo, taped with paper-based branded tape, and more.

A pair of childhood friends and eventual post-college roommates once were uniquely interested in livening up their home with house plants. But they were disappointed when they found it hard to find a place online to purchase houseplants that was easy to navigate, and wasn’t just geared to wholesale.

So in 2017, Andy Burde and Tristan Schmitt founded House Plant Shop with the intent to become a destination for consumers to purchase house plants directly from the web. First launching under the main House Plant Shop brand, House Plant Box monthly subscriptions followed not long after, in late 2018.

Originally working out of the small house they shared, HousePlantShop.com and HousePlantBox.com have now grown to occupy large, well-equipped greenhouses based in southern California and central Florida. Today, the company also uses a network of growers, alongside those in-house greenhouse operations, to work with retailers to offer a large selection of indoor foliage. Meanwhile, another business unit, House Plant Wholesale, can assist in reducing cost and growing indoor foliage sales, including drop-shipping and gifting services, from sourcing and storing plants to transporting large quantities nationwide. But as almost always the case, as the House Plant family of businesses grew, transportation issues began to affect profit.

“Most plants are inexpensive to purchase, but the shipping costs can be quite high. When plants get damaged in transit due to inadequate packaging, that is when our margins are affected,” says Schmitt, COO. “So having a low damage rate, specifically aiming towards less than 10%, is very important to us. If the product arrives damaged, we will have to refund the customer or send them a new one which impacts margins significantly over time.”

Plus, House Plant ships across the country so keeping the plant upright and secure in transit is a priority, especially if it’s shipping a multi-pack with 20 to 30 plants. And as stands to reason, maintaining the health of the plan is a challenge when transit via FedEx and USPS can take up to three days.

“There is always room for improvement when shipping live plants, but it has to be cost effective. Once we reached a certain volume of orders it became worthwhile to look into custom solutions with the help of a partner like Veritiv,” Schmitt says.

From off-the-shelf to a custom solution

House Plant initially had been using standard corrugated boxes from another vendor, but the founders say they were expensive and didn’t fit the specific products’ needs, contributing to damage. The company also wanted to reduce its SKUs to maximize limited dry storage in a dry room—a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment used to preserve the plant before it is shipped. Dry storage is a costly real estate investment which means the company prefers to maximize the space for its plants.

“Prior to finding Veritiv, we ... were limited to stocked items,” says Schmitt. “We had heard good things about Veritiv from other businesses and decided to reach out for our packaging needs. When we started working with them, they helped us through every step of the development and production of our packaging, and we have been very pleased with the outcome. Veritiv helped us by creating a customized package that fit our products more securely, cut our box SKUs in half, and in the end was cheaper than [the legacy packaging supplier].”The items are delicate, and the packaging solution must transition from summer to winter without having to swap between multiple solutions. To do this, Veritiv and House Plant focused on strength of the package around the base of the plants. This ensured the plants were stable and protected when they were stacked on one another and when we place multiple plants in one box.The items are delicate, and the packaging solution must transition from summer to winter without having to swap between multiple solutions. To do this, Veritiv and House Plant focused on strength of the package around the base of the plants. This ensured the plants were stable and protected when they were stacked on one another and when we place multiple plants in one box.

Beyond the custom packaging with secure fitting, the new solution scratches a host of other itches.

“Our packaging is paper-based, and we try to avoid single-use plastic within our entire supply chain,” Schmitt says. “We also wanted to optimize space within a larger package to fit more products in one space. To do this, we added a second set of tabs on the other end of the box so that we could now fit two plants and pots on each end, with the leaves touching each other.”

Custom branding was another bonus, as all products are packaged in boxes designed with the House Plant Shop logo, taped with paper-based branded tape, and more.

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INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for All Industries at PACK EXPO Southeast