boxshop24.com is already making a good name for itself as an online supplier of special print products. The web shop was set up by an established manufacturer of folding boxes whose speciality for many years has been the production and printing of individualized boxes, with a focus on box orders with smaller order quantities. Built on HIFLEX's unique 'Webshop' Web2Print technology, HIFLEX has now created the first Web2Print storefront where customers can dynamically select, configure and order folding boxes via the Internet. Following product selection, boxshop24.com offers free downloads of die-cutting templates for the most common DTP programs such as QuarkXPress, Adobe In-Design, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Photoshop, permitting the customer to match their design to the exact contours of the box. The corresponding print data are then sent to boxshop24.com by way of the integrated data upload function.

Working with professionals

The start page of the www.boxshop24.com web shop immediately shows users that they are dealing with high calibre, box ordering system. As professionals use the system to order, they are presented with the detailed and complex subject matter normal to box procurement professionals but in a simple and immediately understandable form. Easy to navigate and simple to see with its superb graphics and workflow representation, the system gives users a powerful tool for creating box designs and orders with the internet's first professional folding box procurement solution.

Mr. German Brodbeck, the sites proprietor, has positioned boxshop24.com as a new and independent brand alongside his long-established production operations and takes advantage of both the know-how and value chain of his existing company. "One aim of our storefront is to reduce the administrative costs of particularly short-run orders for folding boxes. It is intended as a self-seller, functioning without personal advice and consultation." As the manager responsible for sales at the parent company, Mr. Brodbeck is also naturally keen to promote an additional "contact-free" sales channel. After all, he has identified a new market segment with customers who are interested in standard folding boxes, but for whom the conventional order processes are too time-consuming and thus too expensive. "We are not necessarily talking about new contacts from the industry or agency scene," says Brodbeck. "In many cases, they are simply customers looking to buy a relatively simple folding box at a more favorable price."

As the parent company already possesses a vast collection of dies which can be used for this kind of standard folding box, no tooling costs need to be added to orders placed via boxshop24.com. The production timeframe is shortened by eliminating the need for further consultations. And the similarly streamlined approval process ensures that deliveries, too, are on their way to the customer in next to no time.

Explore the diversity of folding boxes

The new boxshop24.com web shop presents an extremely broad choice of purchasing options. In fact, some users may well be surprised by the diversity of folding boxes available. Alongside so-called straight-line boxes, which are glued along one side to form a tube, the portal also offers boxes with suspension lugs (as we know them from supermarket display racks), pillow boxes, carry boxes for bottles or the like, and slip-lid boxes comprising a top and bottom tray. Further product variants are counter dispensers, leaflet holders, bag hangers and flat sleeves (for example for CDs and similar products).

The possible forms and dimensions can be combined into literally thousands of different products. After all, a folding box is a three-dimensional object which can take any of a multitude of shapes, from cubes or blocks to columns, pillows and many others. Various DIN formats are catered for, as well as long thin boxes for pens or packets for cigarettes. The scope of variants is extended still further by the facility to order white, i.e. unprinted, boxes. Otherwise, all products can be supplied in colored cardboard or printed with a logo or individual design. To this end, the portal permits the user to download a corresponding template and to send the final design to boxshop24.com via a data upload function.

As simple as possible

The box shop deliberately concentrates on four-color printing (CMYK) as a new area of focus for the company. Traditionally, packaging is focused on spot color work so our focus on doing process work for on-line ordering is counter to our idea of a simple and uncomplicated Internet-based process," says Mr. Brodbeck. HIFLEX provides boxshop24.com however an automatic preflight data check, and after generating the printable PDFs informs the customer of the results via an e-mail with an integrated link. The customer can then view a proof of his product before granting his final approval.

"Everything should – or rather must – function as simply and automatically as possible," as Mr. Brodbeck explains. This includes even product dispatch, which is initiated by the system itself. "We want to be sending parcels wherever possible, avoiding the hassle of shipping orders and pallet handling." But Brodbeck is confident that this will rarely be a problem for Internet sales, as the majority of orders are in any case for smaller quantities between 500 and 1,000 units.

Ambitious plans

"HIFLEX was the supplier whose solution best matched our requirements," says Mr. Brodbeck. The portal has been online for some time now and designers continue to work on enhancing the site's flow and functionality. In precisely these efforts, they can rely fully on the flexibility offered by the HIFLEX Webshop.

The HIFLEX Webshop is a Web2Print system which is tailored to the specific needs of the print market, but at the same time, grants users full layout freedoms and accesses an integrated MIS package to organize the processes and to administer customer, order and article data in the background. It is thus designed to be suitable for any print provider, irrespective of whether they are already using other HIFLEX products.

German Brodbeck and his team also experienced this two-pronged development: A targeted entry into the world of management information systems on the one hand and into the complex procedures of a logically designed Internet presence on the other. But as Brodbeck points out: "HIFLEX Webshop offers invaluable assistance, especially with those little details which are not always immediately obvious."

"We will be developing our web shop further – both for customers who know their business and for those less familiar with the ins and outs of folding boxes. The challenge here is to find a way to take the customer by the hand without being able to communicate directly" says Mr. Brodbeck. It goes without saying that this calls for a certain sensitivity, to be able to take into account the customers' possible reactions. "The implementation must be absolutely systematic" but Brodbeck has no doubts that this aim will be realised with the aid of the HIFLEX Webshop.