Food Packaging Becomes Dog Basket

As a goodie for its online customers and their four-legged pets, Bubeck Petfood delivered its range of dog food and accessories in special shipping packaging for a short time.

The dog food shipping packaging can be converted into a practical dog basket made of corrugated cardboard. The results of the promotionally effective upcycling campaign are enthusiastically posted by dog holders on social media. The design of the innovative e-commerce packaging came from DS Smith. The clever design was worth an award to the jurors of the Corrugated Board Innovation Award. They awarded the solution second place in the e-commerce category.

Almost half of German households have a pet. This is confirmed by the data collected by the Industrieverband Heimtierbedarf (IVH) and the Zentralverband Zoologischer Fachbetriebe (ZZF) for the German pet market in 2019, according to which owners of dogs, cats & co. spent over five billion euros on the daily needs of their animal roommates in 2019. Increasingly, products are being purchased over the Internet. The share of online business in the total sales of the pet industry has been increasing for years. In 2019, it was already at 13.7 percent, according to the study.

In addition to stationary specialist and food retailers, digital sales have also become an important sales channel for Germany’s oldest dog food manufacturer, R. Bubeck & Sohn GmbH. The premium-quality dog biscuits and complete food varieties, which are produced usingtraditional baking methods, are sold through various stationary stores as well as online retailers, and through the company’s own web store. In order to give the digital business an emotional boost and strengthen customer loyalty in the long term, the tradition-rich company has come up with a special goodie for its online customers in close cooperation with DS Smith: The three-part shipping box, which Bubeck used to ship orders weighing 20 kg or more during the promotional period, can be converted into a hexagonal dog basket in just a few easy steps using the „do it yourself“ method.

Thanks to the insertable base and U-insert, the sturdy e-commerce packaging guarantees safe transport of the premium products ordered online, even with heavy weights, and thus perfectly protects the contents. The corrugated cardboard recliner that folds out of it is warming, space-saving and thus ideal for travel, home and garden. At the same time, it offers creative dog owners enough space for individual designs. The photos posted on Facebook and Instagram show how comfortable the four-legged friends feel in their very own personal upcycled basket.

At the end of its service life, the single-material solution made of corrugated cardboard can be easily recycled via the waste paper recycling loop.