Paul Stack
BW Papersystems | Senior Advisor – Sales Enablement
Top Gun Sales Coach
More than 30 years ago, when I was still a young guy, I worked in a Bath & Body Works store. Of course I loved the products, the atmosphere, the feeling — it stayed with me like first love.
Years passed, and the world changed. There came a time when we could no longer walk into stores as we used to. Like everyone else during the pandemic, I ordered my favorite soap online.
It arrived like any other package — a simple brown corrugated box with one colour printing. Nothing special. I wasn’t expecting anything beyond the products inside.
But when I opened it, something unexpected happened.
Inside, I saw their signature blue-and-white gingham pattern — the same one I remembered from the store. And suddenly, in that moment, I was back there again.
It wasn’t just a box anymore. It was a feeling.
My heart literally skipped a beat. I felt that same atmosphere, the same connection, the same brand — right there, on my table.
And that’s when it hit me.
How much modern marketing has changed. How the role of a simple brown box has transformed in the age of e-commerce.
That moment made me stop and think — not as a customer, but as someone who has spent decades in corrugated industry.
I’ve been working with corrugated machinery and solutions for many years now, representing BW Papersystems and working closely with hundred converters around America.
And I started asking myself a simple question:
What does this moment mean for the future of the box?
Because what I experienced was not an accident. It was not design for the sake of design. It was something deeper — a shift.
So I began to look into it.
How strong is this trend?
How much does it really influence customer behavior?
And most importantly — are we, as an industry, ready for it?
The more I explored, the clearer it became: this is not a niche. This is not a temporary idea.
This is a structural shift.
Today, global e-commerce is projected to reach $6.4 trillion, growing at around 6.8% year over year. Nearly 20% of global retail is already happening online. The packaging market alone is worth around $80 billion, with corrugated accounting for $34 billion of that.
And by 2028, half of the global population aged 14 and above is expected to be active online shoppers.
This is not going away.
At the same time, consumer behavior has changed dramatically.
People don’t walk into stores like they used to. So, the brand has to walk into their home.
Ninety percent of consumers discover new products on YouTube. Billions of views are generated around unboxing content. Forty percent of people share unique packaging on social media. Sixty-two percent rely on unboxing videos before making a purchase.
That means one thing.
The moment of opening the box is no longer secondary.
It is the moment.
And inside-the-box printing is not decoration. It is communication.
For B2C brands, it becomes a space for storytelling, sustainability messaging, QR-driven engagement, and emotional connection.
For B2B, the opportunity is even more underused — from SKU identification and reorder prompts to unpacking instructions and visual setup guides.
This is a moment of value.
And too many people in our industry still ignore it.
I’ve even spoken to box salespeople who don’t bring it up at all — simply because their company cannot offer it. And I understand that. Why talk about something you cannot compete in?
But the reality is — your competitors are already talking about it.
Which brings us to technology.
If this is where the market is going, then the question becomes very practical:
How do we make this possible at scale?
This is where single-pass inside printing changes everything.
By enabling printing on both sides of the sheet in one pass, converters gain higher throughput, more available machine capacity, lower waste, reduced risk of sheet damage, and access to new applications and markets.
Margins improve. Customer retention improves.
And once customers experience it — they don’t want to go back.
At BW Papersystems, we approached this not as a feature, but as a capability.
Today, we offer single-pass inside print solutions across our G-Grafix and ServoPro platforms — in both flexo folder-gluers and rotary die cutters.
And the market response has been clear.
Demand surged in 2021–2022, and it continues to grow.
Some brands today intentionally keep the outside of the box plain — even for security reasons — while turning the inside into an emotional canvas.
I’ve seen outdoor brands print maps inside shoe boxes — customers unfold them, hang them on the wall, and keep them.
That box doesn’t get recycled.
It gets remembered.
And what’s even more important — this is no longer theory.
Recent installations at Harris Packaging and Boxes LLC prove that the market is already moving.
A five-color G-Grafix mid-line Flexo Folder Gluer and a five-color 66” Rotary Die Cutter — both equipped with single-pass inside printing — are now in operation.
These systems allow converters to print inside and outside in a single pass, reduce setup time and waste, and increase throughput by up to 50%.
But more importantly, they allow converters to offer something new — something their customers are already starting to expect.
When converters invest in technology like this, it means the shift has already happened.
This is not a prediction anymore.
It’s reality.
And in a world with fewer physical touchpoints, the inside of the box may be the last — and best — conversation a brand has with its customer.
If you’re not talking about inside-the-box printing, your competitors already are.
This article was prepared for corruga.expert
