Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

inbound

Shoebox gains second life as 3-D llama

Zappos launches campaign to encourage customers to reuse the cardboard containers they receive in the mail.

Shoebox gains second life as 3-D llama

Most e-commerce companies see packaging as an expensive nuisance, but online footwear retailer Zappos IP Inc. has big plans for the humble shoebox.

To encourage its customers to reuse the cardboard containers they receive in the mail, Zappos has printed a collection of templates on the inside of the boxes. After removing their new shoes, people can cut and fold the box to give it a second career as a smartphone holder, a children's shoe sizer, a geometric planter, or even a 3-D llama.


The Las Vegas-based subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc. began shipping a limited number of the new boxes on June 1, encouraging shoe buyers to "think outside the box" and reuse the container in additional ways.

Known for its creative marketing and corporate culture—Zappos calls its top four C-level executives "monkeys"—the company also created a two-minute short film to get customers' creative juices flowing. Titled "Box Home," the video follows a young boy who builds a makeshift house out of household materials and donates it to a homeless man in his community.

To learn about additional uses for the boxes, check out www.imnotabox.com, the company's interactive website dedicated to creativity.

Watch the "Box Home" video below.

The Latest

More Stories

intermodal operations

Tennessee waltzes off with top prize at IANA case study competition

If you were in charge of attracting new drivers to the intermodal industry, would you choose an owner-operator or a company-driver business model? That was the question posed to students competing in the Intermodal Association of North America’s (IANA) 2024 Intermodal Case Study Competition.

A team from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, walked away with top honors at this year’s event. It was the school’s first time competing in the scholarship competition, which was held during IANA’s Intermodal Expo in September.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Cibao Meat Products logo

Deli-meat producer takes company communications into the digital age

Family-owned business Cibao Meat Products, a producer of Hispanic-style sausages and deli meats, has long prided itself on staying true to the traditions and values the company was founded on in 1969—like a commitment to high-quality ingredients and a family workplace atmosphere. Less of a source of pride, however, was its continuing reliance on the same, mostly manual, processes and data management techniques used at its inception.

With the company now selling its meats to retail giants such as BJ’s, Sam’s Club, and Costco as well as 500 supermarkets and restaurants across the U.S., Cibao president Heinz Vieluf Jr. knew that it was time to take the company into the digital age. “As a third-generation leader of a multigenerational company, I put an emphasis on bringing our business into the digital future and utilizing technologies that will help propel success,” he said in a statement.

Keep ReadingShow less
autonomous lift truck in warehouse

Going deep on self-driving vehicles

As autonomous systems take on a bigger role in logistics and industrial production applications, the race is on to make the equipment smarter, more efficient, and safer. To accelerate work in this area, the German lift truck and logistics technology vendor Kion Group is partnering with a local university to support expanded studies on artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.

Through a grant of $1.1 million over a period of five years, Kion has funded an endowed professorship for Safe Autonomous Systems at TU Dortmund University. The program will be headed up by computer science professor Sebastian Peitz.

Keep ReadingShow less
Palmer's product on the line.

Photo courtesy of ET Browne

Streamlining supply lines

American skin-care company ET Browne—best known for its Palmer’s Cocoa Butter—has trimmed costs, boosted revenue, and increased profits thanks to a recent IT upgrade from its longtime technology partner Syspro, a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider that specializes in serving manufacturing and distribution businesses. ET Browne has run on Syspro software for 25 years and racked up some of its biggest year-over-year improvements following a 2023 upgrade to the latest version of Syspro ERP—an enhancement that allowed it to leverage the platform’s material requirements and planning (MRP) capabilities to build a just-in-time inventory system.

The net result? A smoother-running supply chain.

Keep ReadingShow less
Clean Energy illustrations

Illustration courtesy of Clean Energy Fuels Corporation

Try before you buy

For consumers, the car-buying process generally includes a test drive so they can see if the vehicle lives up to its hype before they plunk down any money. But the process can be a little more difficult for commercial fleet managers.

That experience is about to get easier thanks to Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a California company that provides renewable natural gas (RNG) for the transportation industry. Last month, Clean Energy launched a program to allow heavy-duty fleets to try out a truck equipped with the new Cummins 15-liter X15N natural-gas engine.

Keep ReadingShow less