PPB November 2021

with your product; this first impression, so to speak,” says Stephens. “There’s a reason why when you look out on your front porch and see [boxes from] all the big brands, they have packaging that’s custom- printed to promote their brand because they know that’s a real opportunity to create brand loyalty, to create relationships with the customer and to build around their brand messaging. All that real estate that’s on the interior and exterior of the product is important, and it’s valuable real estate if you use it to promote your relationship with your brand.” He adds, “In the old days, [customers] were going into a retail environment and having a salesperson describe all the benefits and features of this product that they’re then going to put into their shopping cart and leave with in a physical sense. All that interaction that takes place between the salesperson and the customer has been replaced in an online experience. When you have the product being delivered to your house, how do you establish that relationship?” BoxUp operates a digital platform that allows the supplier’s clients to custom design their own packaging online and eliminates the need for printing plates, salvaging costs. But from its inception in 2016, the supplier has focused on the goal to service businesses of all sizes, frommom-and-pop stores with an order as small as 12 boxes (BoxUp’s minimum) to large corporations with need for several thousand. The business was founded by Stephens and his business partner Ward Hubbard, who is co-owner and chief financial officer of BoxUp, which operates under Wabash Digital. After 10 months of development, BoxUp was launched at the inaugural 2016 Etsy Up conference in Brooklyn, New York, a two-day gathering that attracts thousands of makers and entrepreneurs who use the Etsy online marketplace to conduct business, and who could benefit from BoxUp’s business model. BoxUp served as a preferred vendor at the event, and Stephens sat in on a panel discussion to discuss the design of the platform, while Eric Kass, BoxUp’s brand designer, gave a talk on brand identity. “We wanted to use technology in the printing industry to change how we related to customers and how we could serve an area of the marketplace that we felt was very underserved, and that was customers who wanted custom- printed boxes, and those who didn’t find it affordable to do in the traditional way,” says Stephens. Their vision for BoxUp early on and still today, is “to democratize printed boxes,” he says. “We spent most of our career saying ‘no’ to customers who would describe to us that they wanted this beautifully printed photo, and then they’d say, ‘I want a lot of them. I want 250,’ and with everything they described, it would be too expensive.” He adds, “What we wanted to do is make beautifully printed boxes accessible at a much smaller threshold of volume at a much more competitive price than it’s been done in the past.” Stephens and Hubbard both share a background of working in the packaging industry, and a long history of working with each other “What we wanted to do is make beautifully printed boxes accessible at a much smaller threshold of volume at a much more competitive price than it’s been done in the past.” Curt Stephens | NOVEMBER 2021 | 75 THINK