Wes Cutshall

From time to time we send out promotional items for Fido Finder and order boxes from Uline. Uline is a great company with great products and customer support. What Uline doesn’t provide is screen printing on their boxes. I decided for the most recent batch of promotional mailings that I wanted to order boxes with the Fido Finder logo printed on them. When searching for a company to do this I ran into BoxGeek.com which will print your logo on the boxes you purchase. One of the other features that BoxGeek offers is custom box sizes which I also wanted to take advantage of.

So I ordered 120 12×9×5 boxes with the Fido Finder logo printed on 2 sides (standard option). The cost was $2.05 each. Similar-sized boxes from Uline would have been only ~$0.50. The price to me wasn’t an issue, as I saw it as only $2 per marketing kit, as opposed to 4-times the “normal” cost. The boxes I received are considerably lesser in quality than boxes that Uline sells. The (custom) cut lines on the BoxGeek boxes are less than perfect; with jagged edges and cardboard material hanging from some cuts (see image at bottom of post). The fold lines on the box flaps are not perfect. When you try to assemble the boxes they do not fold perfectly on the line where they should fold. Some times the box bows out or crumples along the line when you try to fold the flaps for the first time. On some of the boxes I got a z-shaped line where the flap folded instead of a clean, straight, crease. The glue used to put the boxes together is applied less carefully than with standard boxes. From the inside of the box you can often see glue spilling out from behind the box edges (see image at bottom of post). Most of the boxes I received were slightly glued shut/flat because of this glue being applied haphazardly and then the box closed flat for packing/shipping. This just meant I had to pop them open by sliding my hand inside each box. If I were assembling hundreds, or thousands, of boxes this would add noticeable time to assembling. The printing on the boxes is less than stellar. The location of the logo seems consistent but the printing quality varies from box to box. All of the boxes have some type of imperfection on the printed area. The ink is never applied 100% in any area, and many of the logos have a faded line or two vertically through the logo (see image at bottom of post). I’d say the print quality is 7 out of 10 at best. Overall the quality of the product would be 6.5 out of 10. I doubt these boxes could be used for more than their first shipping use. I’m scared to see what they look like after traveling across the country in a USPS truck.

For my need these boxes serve their purpose of getting a slightly more professional-looking box in the hands of potential customers/partners. For me, having the logo printed, in any quality, on the boxes out-weighs the lower quality boxes as I’m not shipping an actual product, just marketing materials (t-shirts, acrylic countertop display, and business cards). I’d use BoxGeek again, but I would find a better solution if I was mailing out actual products.