Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
100-year-old box producer sees sales soar
Texas company can thank Amazon, ‘unboxing’ trend
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Sometimes everything old is new again.
Just ask the folks at Pollock.
The maker of millions upon millions of corrugated boxes is celebrating its 100th anniversary with renewed vigor thanks to the “Amazon effect” — where every sort of product is being bought online and shipped to people’s doorsteps in those lowly, ubiquitous containers.
Pollock’s two Grand Prairie plants churn out nearly 2 million square feet of corrugated products every day — about 450 million square feet a year.
To put that in perspective, if the boxes were used as carpet, it would be enough flooring for more than 400 50-story skyscrapers.
One can only hope that consumers are recycling most of them.
Pollock doesn’t make mailing bags. But it distributes a ton of them — literally.
“The Amazon effect has affected freight and shipment,” said Lonnie Pollock III, chief executive officer and controlling owner of his family’s $275 million industrial packaging and distribution company. “So many items that didn’t used to be shipped are today. Pills come in mailer bags instead of boxes.
“Mailers cost less than corrugated [boxes] and have a more positive public perception.”
The centenarian company is also getting a New Age boost from the latest thing in marketing — the “unboxing experience.”
Popular on YouTube, unboxing videos show people as they find out what’s inside a box they’ve received as a gift or of companies explaining and demonstrating their products by unboxing them.
There are even professional unboxers with millions of followers who grade the experience once the top of the box comes off.
For them, plain packing paper and bubble wrap are nonstarters.
“Here’s the deal,” said the 63-year-old CEO. “The unboxing experience is now a marketing tool. Seriously. Companies measure themselves on the reaction of people opening their boxes. Three years ago, we never sold anything for the interior of a box. Now it’s not just a box. It’s the box and the stuff inside it.”
Just how snappy products look on the shelves is key to getting those products to move into consumer hands. Pollock has a design department that helps customers come up with eye-catching
exterior and interior packaging and point-of-purchase product displays.
Craft beer is a growing segment.
Pollock’s designers came up with a 99-can, 7-foot-long box as a marketing gimmick for Austin Beerworks’ Peacemaker pale ale.
“They did TV commercials with the box sticking through a Volkswagen,” said Pollock. “It’s not about the box. It’s about the promotion.”
The company has been working with Pickle Juice Co. of Mesquite for three years. It has designed little shot bottles in various sizes and bladder bags for the concoction that’s used by bicyclists to prevent cramping.
Filip Keuppens, vice president of global sales and marketing at Pickle Juice, said Pollock has done such a dandy job at improving designs at a lower cost in the past three years that it is now his company’s only supplier of packaging materials.
“We value vendor relationships that work beyond simply taking orders and shipping products and help us be innovative and find creative solutions to complex problems,” Keuppens said.
This specialty work is the company’s added value, said Pollock, and just one way he intends to keep his family’s namesake going for the next 100 years.
Boxes — those it churns out and those it buys and distributes — make up only about 20 percent of Pollock’s annual sales.
“Today we’re a multifaceted distribution company selling pretty much everything you need to run your business,” said Pollock during a tour the corporate office, warehouse and manufacturing complex next to Lone Star Park.
Pollock goes by Lonnie III, a tradition started by his father who thought Lawrence was too stuffy but hated the name Larry.
Under his third-generation, three-decade leadership, the company now distributes $215 million in goods — everything from eco-friendly cleaning materials and biodegradable fast-food packaging to dishes and floor-scrubbing machines.
“It’s our hundredth year, and we’re excited about that,” said Pollock. “But it doesn’t really matter what you did last year or even last week. It’s what are you doing now and for the future. We’ve built a really strong base and been through a lot of things. But you can’t live on your reputation. You have to build on it.”