Today I was given a special back stage pass to see how our custom koi fish shipping boxes are made. I would never have imagined how much work goes into (what I thought) was a basic box. I’m a huge fan of the program “How It’s Made” and after seeing fish shipping boxes being built up close I now have a new appreciation for how we use them. It is great to see so many people passionate about what they do. I’ll like to share with you my story on why a fish shipping box, is NOT just a box! You may also notice that our company logo is not printed on these shippng boxes! Why?! Find out later in the story!
Koi Enterprise has always looked for pond related products and company’s that are the best at what they do. When it was time to explore the best in the box industry we looked across the USA and after much searching have selected one which exceeded our standards of what we thought a box should be! Working with a team of passionate people makes a huge difference in the quality of the final product. Let’s take a sneak peek on how our koi fish shipping boxes are made!
The first step in creating a koi fish shipping box was to come up with a layout. This was a simple task at first in just looking at what other boxes look like, however we wanted to improve our shippers. A plan was sent out to the design crew and they began working on a layout for our koi fish box. As you can see from the picture paper products are brought in early morning and most are used by end of day, running a number of other projects.
Depending on the style of shipping box and its complexity, die-cutters are made in order to cut the box out like a cookie cutter if you will. Believe it or not these plates are made using wood and the high tech machinery that made these is actually a very dedicated employee. While much of the process is automated human intervention was still needed and used. This whole process was fascinating!
Since our koi shipping boxes need a lot of print, the next step was to create the stamp used for making the colored text and images. The images/text of the fish box is applied in a machine that uses different stages, each of which paint a single color on the box. This process is done very quickly. Interesting enough that although it just seems like a regular box every detail is examined including crush tests to assure it meets shipping standard practices.
From this point we fast forward to another machine that can fold the boxes into the appropriate shapes. In our case the koi fish shipping box was left flat and will be assembled as needed. It is easier to store the fish box flat especially when you ship thousands of koi ever year. This method of storing the fish boxes saves a lot of room. As you can see from the picture boxes come in all styles, colors and sizes. Our box happens to be made for safely shipping live koi fish!
Foam cut outs were custom made for Koi Enterprise inorder to insulate our live fish shipping boxes and insure a constant tempurature when in transport. Our boxes are also double wall recycled paper which is found in only the best live fish boxes. Our boxes are clearly marked and labeled which meet our live fish shipping needs.
When all is said and done our full year’s supply of Live Fish Boxes was completed in a little over 10 minutes! WOW! Now that is fast! Mentioned earlier was the fact that our live fish koi shipping boxes do not have our name nor logo. Why? The simple answer is….it should have YOUR logo with YOUR name! Now for the first time in the koi industry we offer Live Koi Shipping Boxes without having to buy thousands. Just need one box? No problem. Have a koi show to attend and need to ship koi across the country? No problem. Koi Enterprise now offers our custom made koi shipping boxes to everyone in the koi industry for safely shipping your koi.
