Fates

KBPC has always had an affinity for art. We believe that package design is a marriage of art and science, and the creative impulse has flowed through our company for the last 60 years.

In 1995 the artist George McCullough and Tom Kelly decided to put up one of George's Daughter's of Fate Statues on top of the hill next to Kelly Box. Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of this event. 

George originally designed the statues for the city of Indianapolis for one of their downtown squares. He was a finalist but was not chosen.

His idea was based on Greek Mythology and the Three Daughters of Fate:

"There is some confusion as to the heritage of the Fates but there is no confusion as to their identities and their divine mission on the earth. Their names are: Klotho (Clotho), Lachesis and Atropos. Klotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis determines the length of the thread and Atropos cuts the thread when the proper time has come for death. Atropos is the smallest of the three but she is the eldest and superior to her sisters. Atropos is called "She who cannot be turned."

The three sisters are commonly called the Fates but Fates and Destinies seem to be interchangeable with most translators."  Read whole article here

Lachesis is on the top of the hill and was the first to be put up. It took a concerted effort from a wide variety of people over three weeks to complete the statue. When the task was completed setting the statue on the top of the hill seemed utterly impossible. The  following week the statue herself intervened. A visiting truck driver flicked a cigarette out his truck on a windy day and caused a big fire around Lachesis. Afterwards when the contractors were estimating the damage, they indicated that they had to bring in a crane to replace the siding so they could put Lachesis on top of the hill too. She arranged her own installation, as only the daughter of fate would have.

About 8 years later George and the KBPC team put up the other two. Once again Zumbrum came over with their crane and placed them on the hill.

If you ever get the opportunity to tour the KBPC facility in Ft. Wayne, take a moment to visit the sisters. It just might change your destiny.

A Store Without Packaging... Sort of

A store in South Korea has eliminated its shelves. (Virtual Store Opens in Korea)

In fact, they eliminated the products as well as the shopping carts, and the cashier. Ominously, for those of in the packaging business, they has also eliminated the packaging. Or did they?

As more of the world moves on line the role packaging continues to change. As people get more comfortable making everyday purchases digitally the packaging is going to become an even more important element of the relationship companies have with their customers. For those singular purchases a customer may put up with a package that does not reinforce the purchase and imbue the customer with s sense of well-being. But the companies that use every interaction to reinforce the brand and the relationship with customers will have a distinct advantage.

At KBPC we work with our clients to build a packaging experience that makes an impact, whether the package is on the shelf or waiting for them at home.

Corrugated Art Show Gallery

 The 2014 Corrugated Art Show was a huge success! It was great to see so many customers at the Artlink Gallery. Thanks to everyone involved including the artists, the gallery, the fantastic band and all of our organizers especially Lauren Kelly!                                                                                                                     For a link to photographs from Drew Allegre at Fahrenheit 128, click HERE                                                                                                                                    Also, there was a nice video shot by 21Alive news. To watch the video, click HERE 

Refrigerator of the Future

While we are all trying to fit that last bit of left-over pie in the fridge after our annual Thanksgiving feast we wonder how this new refrigerator might work. 

Russian designer Yuriy Dmitriev came up with this really interesting concept for a refrigerator that uses no energy. The confluence of bio-tech and every day life is really going to change things, even if this idea does not pan out.

Puts a whole new spin on the idea of stuffing something into the fridge.

Dimensional Weight Changes

On December 29th you may be paying a lot more to ship UPS.

Beginning on 12/29/14 UPS will be using dimensional weight to determine the shipping charges you will be paying for ALL your packages not just those that are greater than 3 cubic feet (5184 cubic inches) as in the past. FEDEX will start doing this on January 1st.

This means that 18 x 12 x 12 box that holds a 4 pound product that you currently pay $9.11 to ship to Zone 5 (The most common shipping zone for UPS) will cost you $11.81!

That is a $2.70 increase! Almost 30% more!

Dimensional weight is calculated by measuring the L (Length) x W (Width) x H (Height) of the outside of the box and dividing by 166.

8 x 8 x 8 = 512/166 = 3.08lbs. This package will now ship at 4lbs  (UPS/FEDEX always rounds up) regardless how much the content weighs.

We got to thinking about the factor for domestic shipments:166. Where did this number come from? It is a number selected by UPS and FedEx- but why 166?

Then, like a bolt a lightning, it struck... the rounding factor for 'STOCK BOXES'!

A quick calculation shows that all the standard sizes 8x8x8, 10x10x10, 12x12x12 will be just over the next pound up (In our example above the 8x8x8 box is 3.08 which = 4lbs in UPS/FEDEX land).

The trend is alarming. This also means that we can engineer a box to be a full pound less by designing customized packaging to lower shipping costs that will have little or no discernible impact on your packaging.

At Kelly Box and Packaging, we have been working with our customers to right size packaging and educate our buyers as well as their shipping departments on ways to reduce the effect of these shipping increases. Have you looked at the impact to your shipping costs? Do you want to work with experts that understand these new rules and know how to effectively change your packaging to reduce costs? Get in touch with your KBPC rep today!

2014 Corrugated Art Show

When most people think of corrugated, they imagine the boxes in the shipping department or the recycle bin at the curb. However, we have found that this medium is much more versatile than that. We are very excited to showcase Corrugated Art at our upcoming exhibit at Artlink in Fort Wayne, IN.

Artists from the community as well as students from the University of Saint Francis have transformed these utilitarian sheets into works of art. The Chainsaw (left) was created for our last show and we can't wait to see what this year brings.

Check out our website for more pics from previous shows and check back next week for this year's creations!

http://www.kellybox.com/corrugated_art.html

Predicting the Future

“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.” 
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

We all wonder what's next. At KBPC we try to get a feel for the shape of things to come. Our customers give us the clues, technology is always pushing us around, but the real roadblocks to progress are the ones that we have built into our brains. Trying to let go of what we know to embrace what we don't can be a harrowing experience.

This is a great article form io9.com that highlights some of the more obscure things that are shaping the near future.

Self Driving Trucks

Mercedes Benz is pushing to have driver less trucks on the road by 2025 according to Wired Magazine.

Would this eliminate the driver?

I doubt it. At KBPC our drivers do far more than drive. They are the tip of the customer service spear and work hard to ensure that our customers get the product they need the way they need it.

Assisting with unloads, evaluating dunnage, organizing delivery times and reporting back suggestions for making the customer experience even better. A driver is an essential point of contact between KBPC and our customers. Its about a lot more than holding the steering wheel.

Money the Old Fashioned Way - Making and Selling Stuff

At KBPC we are proud of the fact that we manufacture the packaging we sell.

It is not easy to Build the Plants, Find the Equipment, Manage the Sales People, Design the Packaging, Develop a Great Customer Service Team, Hire the Production Team, Cut, Fold, Glue, Print, Label, and Assemble the Materials, Buy the Trucks, Hire the Drivers, Deliver the Packaging on Time at a Good Price.

It is not easy but we love it. Its in our blood. It makes sense to us.

Then we hear that Snapchat is valued at $10 Billion. Seriously? They are pictures that fade away. But not really.

Now we realize that these companies are valued very differently than a solid, profitable, well run but sort of dull business like ours, but we often wonder how they get all that money.

Now, thanks to Fast Company, we know.

This is a great Info Graphic on how to make money on the internet. Maybe.

In the meantime we will stick with the packaging. If any of you read this and start shipping a lot of "whatevers", give us a call, we will package it perfectly for you.

Brand Packaging Chases Consumers - So Knowing How They Feel Matters

One of the best ways to sell anything is to tap into what the customer is feeling. The massive jump in visits to the Dollar Store segment over the last few years Forbes - Dollar Store Traffic up 14% is clearly an indication that consumers feel less secure.

Research provided by Mintel.

Each segment of the consumer block has its mind on its money in a very different way. Designing packaging that reflects the attitudes, fears and hopes of the target group is the key to success. Here is the latest snapshot of consumer sentiment from Mintel. 

As we design Packaging we need to think long and hard about who we are trying to attract and why. Sometime the most effective packaging is the kind that says quality at a price point. Know the customer.

Vote For Your Favorite - Brand Packaging Contest Entrants

Brand Packaging - Packaging That Sells Show is coming up and there is always a people's choice award for various brand packaging categories. At KBPC we work with an array of designers in the Flexible Packaging category. Checkout this year's entrants and help choose a winner.Vote for the People's Choice Awards 2014

KBPC Corrugated Art Show

The KBPC Corrugated Art Show is coming November 14, 2015.

This is an amazing event with some fabulous pieces produced by local artists and university art students using corrugated material as the medium.

There is music, food and drink and this year Fort Wayne Artlink has agreed to host the event.

Hope you get the chance to see this really terrific display of artistic thinking!

Important Corrugated Terms to Understand

You are only as good as the materials you use. At KBPC we work with a variety of different sheet feeders to find the best possible performance/price for the sheets we use to produce the packaging our customers rely on. 

Recent changes in the market, and the constant effort to drive the total fiber content of paper down have made our commitment to consistently review key quality requirements with our suppliers even more important. This process involves a lot of careful evaluation of a lot of characteristics.

Let’s review some of these and explore their properties.

ECT: We all know it - but do we understand it? Box compression loss will vary with supply chain elements, trucking, storage, warehouse, climate, but the deterioration rates vary by actual amounts of board crush or flute degradation and the use of semichemical or recycled mediums as well. These must factor into performance evaluations.

Caliper: This is the amount of spring back or recovered thickness after crushing. While fluting is a resilient material and recovers from much of the sever deformation that occurs during combining and/or converting, its inherent strength contribution to the corrugated may be significantly compromised by compression. We implemented end of the line caliper testing some time ago to help identify sheets that failed to recover sufficiently form the converting process.

Flat Crush: This is measure of actual combined board crush verses the potential resistance to crushing as predicted from the Concora strength of the medium. This, however, is not a good predictor of actual board crush. A more difficult real world test that we have had to work hard to simulate in the design process, but cannot really determine in production.

Pin Adhesion:Determines the strength of the bonds between the liner(s) and the medium(s) and is a good test to identify delamination failures.

Four Point Bending Stiffness: Measures the rigidity of the combined board and the sidewall wall robustness of the corrugated box. This gives you a lot of real world performance characteristics.

Torsional Stiffness:Relatively new to the US, but known elsewhere. This maybe the single best overall determinant of board strength.

Warp:Should have no more than 1/8 deviation from flatness per foot.

New Face at KBPC

We are pleased to welcome Cliff Weikel to the KBPC team. Cliff is our new Facilities/Maintenance Manager. Cliff has an extensive background in manufacturing maintenance. Welcome, Cliff!
 

KBPC Picnic

The annual KBPC Employee Picnic was a huge success again this year. Food was great, there was lots of kids games, balloon toss and corn hole tournament were wildly popular and of course the Bingo for prizes always gets people going. It was great seeing all the families together and a lot of people really enjoyed the Zoo passes as well.

• 135 Adults/ 89 Kids/ 7 Babies attended picnic.
• 115 Adults / 88 Kids / 5 Babies attended the zoo.

 

Balloon Toss!

Planes were a hit!

Using the tents this year was a good change and the kids really liked the airplanes. Mini golf and Corrugated mask drawing, the moon walk, made it an exciting event for the younger kids. 

Water Balloon Toss was a lot of fun - particularly for those who got wet on a hot day.

Many thanks to all those who worked so hard to make this event a great experience for the whole KBPC Team.

We appreciate everything you do to take care of our customers! 

See all of you at the Christmas Party!

Keep Going

Some days it seem as if all we see are the issues that need to be addressed, the problems that need to be solved, the obstacles, impediments, roadblocks and brick walls that must be removed, or maneuvered around to get where we want to go. 

Facing problems is an important part of our work, to be sure, but when we get so focused on what is in the way we can often lose sight of the larger goals that put us on the path to these obstacles. I came across this little reminder of that this morning and wanted to share it. Thoughts on Motivation

Problems are there to be solved, but sometimes its a good idea to take a moment, lift up your gaze and get a fix on the goal. Going too far is far more fun than not going far enough. 

Structure Deconstructed

At Kelly Box and Packaging we think about growth. Specifically we think about how to build the proper structure for growth. Corporate structure matters. It's the tool we use to capture and develop organizational knowledge and capacity, but it can also be the impediment to growth and flexibility.

Fundamentally, corporations are people (yes, it's true) organized to achieve a specific mission. The structure is about how those people can work together to grapple with the complex and changing environment of the marketplace. It's a critical undertaking and this article about GitHub's approach is worth looking at.

Would it work for boxes?

Habits Change Into Character - Ovid

We all know we must commit to continuous improvement to succeed in the marketplace. The root of this effort is constant change. Change is difficult. We are the habits we have created and many of us are wedded to habits that have helped us achieve some success or we would not be where we are today.

As high achievers we often shoot for the moon, but when it comes to changing behavior these efforts often fall dismally short. I have found that my most successful transformations occur incrementally, with simple, easy steps. This article is a great synopsis of my experience.

Keep is so simple it's stupid.

Writing

I am a famously verbose writer and always benefit from a firm editing hand. I came across a pretty interesting little post about the power of sentences: This sentence has five words.

Negotiations and Love Songs

We all have to negotiate at various points in our day-to-day business lives.Some people view negotiation as a war, others as a collaboration. At KBPC we fall into the collaboration camp.

We sell packaging, a low margin business that requires a long term relationship to be successful. We also ship our products to our customers everyday so any deal that does not work for everyone gets exposed pretty quickly and dies.

We cannot survive without good win-win negotiations.

I recently came across an interesting article: Steve Jobs Negotiates for e-Books.  It describes how Steve Jobs negotiated the e-Book deal for the iPad (now the subject of federal lawsuit).

It's worth looking at how a strong negotiator who believes in his deal works to find a way to bring the other guy over. He sets it up as a take it or leave it proposition, but then he was Steve Jobs and compromise was never his strong suit. (I stuck with Amazon- BTW - and read Kindle on my iPad)

Time is the Soul of this World - Pythagoras

Attention is the new currency.Work, Girlfriend/Boyfriend/Wife/Husband, Kids, School, Homework, Kids Sports and Activities, Golf Game, Gym, Dinner, Sleep, Reading, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, the NFL, and these days the NCAA tournament are constantly competing for our attention.

And the battleground is Time.

Came across this pretty good post from Kevin Kruse on that topic - worth sharing...

kevinkruse.com/14-secrets-to-expanding-time

Most of us love what we do for a living (or should) and spend a lot of time at work, but Kevin makes a great point:  What we DON'T do matters as much as what we do...

Paper, Paper Everywhere...

"US containerboard inventories jumped to their highest level in five years at the end of February, as snow put a chill on box shipments, while containerboard mills ramped up production in anticipation of spring mill maintenance outages, latest industry statistics indicate."

But will we see an announced price decrease? 

"Will inventories melt away? Current high inventories should melt away this spring with the seasonal pickup in box demand plus heavy maintenance and project downtime, according to analysts."

"Over the last 10 years, inventories throughout the system have dropped on average 202,000 tons between March and May as producers take spring maintenance downtime," 

The Power and Flexibility of Corrugated

At Kelly Box and Packaging we love Corrugated! It is a powerful, flexible, and cost effective packaging medium. it is also a responsible choice that let's your customers know you care about the environment as it the most recycled material on the planet.

But we are aware that people think corrugated means a square brown box... so every other year or so we sponsor the KBPC Corrugated Art Show and whenever we come across fun examples on the web of others doing interesting things with this amazing material, we like to share....

http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/2009/cardboard.htm

Creative Packaging

It is always tough to keep the creativity high, and what passes for interesting doesn't always lead to sales, but at KBPC we are constantly thinking about how we can make your pack stand out.

Here are some interesting packaging designs that I came across when I was "working" at my computer....

http://www.themost10.com/10-most-creative-packaging-design/


Just some thoughts to get the creative juices flowing.
(get it?)

Call us up and let's brainstorm...