Grovemade — Transit Damage Reduction System

Overview

Grovemade produces premium wood and leather desk accessories with a strong emphasis on craftsmanship, material quality, and customer experience.

One of their core products — a large MDF desk riser system — was experiencing severe transit damage during shipping, creating operational losses and negatively affecting customer perception of the brand.

Damage rates were ranging between approximately 16–19%, with failures consistently occurring across three primary impact zones:

• Corner and end impacts

• Long-side compression

• Leg pocket structural cracking

The existing packaging system relied heavily on layered materials including corrugated structures, honeycomb panels, and EPE foam, but the packaging architecture itself was not engineered around the actual failure mechanics occurring during shipment.

Prior attempts to solve the issue had also failed. A third-party vendor proposed a ChamberPak air-cell packaging system costing approximately $20 per unit, but when tested under ISTA 3A elongated drop sequences, the system failed catastrophically.

Metal components bent, manuals creased, and the protective system failed to activate effectively at the actual impact zones.

Approach

Major Assembly re-engineered the packaging system from the physical failure points outward.

Instead of layering additional materials into the existing architecture, the new system focused directly on managing the specific forces occurring during transit.

Custom molded foam end caps were engineered to absorb corner and end-impact loads — the largest source of failures during shipment.

Center rib reinforcement structures were introduced to resist long-side compression during elongated drop sequences, while V-board geometry was integrated to redirect structural loads and improve energy distribution throughout the packaging system.

The entire packaging architecture was rebuilt around transit physics rather than material stacking assumptions.

The redesigned system successfully passed ISTA 3A testing validation.

Results

The final packaging system reduced transit damage rates from approximately 16–19% to below 3%.

Packaging cost was reduced by approximately 45% while simultaneously improving structural performance.

Most importantly, Grovemade received a packaging system aligned with the quality expectations of a premium product — protecting not only the physical item, but the customer experience and brand perception attached to it.