“We had to launch two new pet-care SKUs and lift capacity by roughly 30% without adding a second shift,” says Luis Ortega, Operations Director at WagSmith, a North American pet-care brand selling direct-to-consumer and through specialty retail. Their team searched for where to get custom boxes made and read through packola reviews before calling in a few partners to pressure-test options.
Early in the conversations, the brief was practical: control waste, tighten color across substrates, and cut changeover time. A simple plan on paper rarely survives the first press check, but the team stayed focused on measurable outcomes. That’s when they reached out to **packola** to prototype dielines and finishes before locking the run plan.
Here’s where it gets interesting: instead of a single “big run,” the project split into anchor SKUs and seasonal micro-batches. The turning point came when a pilot proved they could move short runs to Digital Printing with UV-LED Ink and keep long-run mainstays on offset without confusing operators or starving capacity.
Company Overview and History
WagSmith started in 2017 with artisanal pet-care products and grew fast through online subscriptions and boutique retail in North America. By 2024, the brand was juggling 40+ active SKUs, monthly volumes ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 cartons, and frequent promotions—exactly the mix that exposes weaknesses in setup, scheduling, and inventory buffers.
The product line included a new grooming bar, packaged in folding carton with kraft sleeves for an eco-forward look. The team wanted sturdy, cleanly cut custom dog soap boxes with a soft-touch feel that wouldn’t scuff in transit. They also bundled gift experiences for retail, which meant accurate color and tight structure on small-format gift card carriers.
Materials leaned toward FSC-certified paperboard and kraft, with foil accents reserved for high-visibility retail packs. Asking suppliers to hold ΔE under 3 across SBS and kraft—and to do it on short runs—was a stretch. Still, the brief asked for it, and so did channel partners who had endured too many mismatched lots.
Quality and Consistency Issues
Before the redesign, scrap ran in the 8–10% range on short runs, driven by color drift between substrates and longer-than-planned makeready. FPY hovered around 82–86%, and changeovers routinely sat at 45–60 minutes. On seasonal SKUs, the problem compounded: runs were small, artwork changed often, and the window for rework was thin.
The gift sets needed crisp carriers and sturdy custom gift card boxes. Early tests showed foil registration off by 0.3–0.5 mm on the small footprint, which looked worse under retail lighting. Soft-touch coatings looked great but trapped dust on a couple of presses, forcing extra wipes during QC. None of this sank the program, but every hiccup ate into the promised launch window.
Let me back up for a moment: lead times stretched to 21–28 days on some SKUs because the team batched to hit offset efficiency. That made sense financially per unit, but it tied up cash and left the e-commerce side scrambling when a post on social media spiked demand. The team needed a path to 7–10 day turns on small batches without introducing chaos.
Solution Design and Configuration
The final configuration split by run type. Anchor SKUs with steady velocity stayed on Offset Printing with UV Ink and G7 targets; seasonal and micro-batch cartons moved to Digital Printing with UV-LED Ink on SBS and kraft. That shift controlled color without plates and cut makeready sheets. A shared set of dielines and a color-managed library kept artwork consistent across both technologies.
The team partnered with **packola** to prototype structural details, fine-tune creases, and confirm embellishments like Spot UV and soft-touch coating. A 300–500 set pilot (yes, they used a packola coupon code for the trial) screened for cracking on tight folds, lamination curl, and rub resistance. For the grooming bar, two dielines were created—one for e-comm with extra cushioning and one for retail with a die-cut window—so the same artwork worked in both channels.
Process-wise, they standardized QC: ΔE checks at incoming, mid-run, and end-of-run; registration tolerances under 0.25 mm on small-format carriers; and a structured handoff checklist covering die changes, ink families, and finishing sequences. There was a catch: soft-touch increased scuff risk on the summer run, so the team raised carton caliper slightly and added a light varnish beneath the soft-touch layer. The change kept the feel while protecting edges in transit.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Waste on short runs fell from roughly 8–10% to 3–4%—about a 60% reduction—once Digital Printing handled the seasonal batches. FPY moved into the 93–96% range. Average changeover time dropped from 45–60 minutes to about 20–25 minutes on the split workflow. Throughput on the combined schedule rose by about 18–22% because the crew stopped waiting on plates and batched less aggressively.
Color stayed tighter: ΔE landed under 2–2.5 across SBS and kraft when the library and profiles were used correctly. Lead times for micro-batches moved to 7–10 days, while anchor SKUs stayed in the 14–18 day window with offset economics intact. A rough carbon estimate, using kWh/pack and transport deltas, suggested a 12–18% CO₂/pack reduction on the short-run cartons due to fewer reprints and closer-to-need production. These figures aren’t lab-grade, but the trend held across four launches.
Payback sat in the 9–12 month range, driven mostly by scrap avoidance and reduced expediting. Not everything was perfect. One summer lot scuffed more than expected, which drove the coating stack tweak mentioned earlier. Still, channel partners reported fewer damaged returns, and customer reviews called out the retail packs for their clean finish. For the team that first skimmed packola reviews while wondering who could handle this mix, it was satisfying to close the loop with **packola** still in the supplier mix.
