“We had to scale without losing control of quality,” said Lina Ong, Operations Director at MoveMate Asia. “Our reject rate sat around industry high-single digits, and our customers were moving fast—literally. They wanted boxes today and reliable status updates. Some even asked about upsstore locations and tracking as reference points for what ‘good’ logistics should look like.”
MoveMate is a Southeast Asia–based relocations company that ships moving kits to homes and small offices. The packaging is simple on paper—corrugated cartons, inserts, labels—but the execution matters in the real world: scuff-resistant print, legible barcodes, and clean edges that tape well. The team set a goal to cut waste, stabilize color, and make carton builds less error-prone during peak season.
This case follows their complete project: from baseline audit to technology selection, trial runs, and a measured roll-out that took six months. Here’s where it gets interesting—what worked wasn’t one hero machine, but a disciplined mix of Digital Printing on corrugated, water-based ink, and small structural tweaks that removed bottlenecks where no one was looking.
Company Overview and History
Founded in 2018 in Kuala Lumpur, MoveMate Asia built its name on same-week relocations for apartments and micro-offices. The company ships kits with tape, labels, cushioning, and a range of cartons, including popular large moving boxes for wardrobes and bulky items. Volumes flex from 5–7k kits per month, with weekend spikes and monsoon-season delays that play havoc with materials and scheduling.
Early on, the team outsourced print work to multiple local vendors and kept a small in-house line for emergency reprints. That patchwork approach made sense while orders were small. Once they expanded into Singapore and northern Malaysia, misaligned color and inconsistent barcodes started showing up in returns. The brand voice also drifted—fonts and hues varied by lot, and customers compared their experience to carriers and storefronts they knew, including upsstore drop-offs and tracking norms.
Internally, the packaging lead called for a reset: one print spec for corrugated, an approved ink set, and a tighter process for dielines and folding. They didn’t aim for perfection; they aimed for repeatability. That mindset shaped every decision that followed.
Quality and Consistency Issues
The baseline audit surfaced three problem clusters. First, color drift. On promotional kits, measured ΔE sat between 4–6 across lots, enough for trained eyes to notice on shelf photos and unboxing videos. Second, barcode readability. Re-scan failures hovered around 5–8%, forcing manual relabeling. Third, FPY stuck at 78–82% on multi-SKU packs, mainly from crease cracks and misaligned die-cuts that complicated taping.
Carton performance told a similar story. During humid weeks, fibers softened, and edge crush variation crept up. Tape peel failures showed up on heavier wardrobes. Customer service even fielded basic “how to tape moving boxes” questions—so the team wrote a three-step card: 1) H-tape the bottom with two overlapping passes; 2) fill voids to avoid bulge; 3) H-tape the top and burnish. Simple, but it cut mishaps in last-mile handling.
One more surprise: queries to the call center about “where can i get free moving boxes.” Not their product, but a signal that price sensitivity was real. The packaging needed to look consistent and feel worth paying for, without pushing costs out of reach.
Solution Design and Configuration
The team compared Flexographic Printing for long-run economies with Digital Printing for agility. Pilot lots on a single-pass Inkjet Printing line won out for mixed-SKU kits and seasonal runs. Corrugated Board with FSC-certified liners and Water-based Ink provided good rub resistance after a light Varnishing pass. Structural tweaks—tighter score specs and a revised flute orientation on wardrobe sizes—cut edge cracking. Die-Cutting and Gluing recipes were documented as “recipes,” not tribal knowledge.
Variable Data became the quiet hero. Every kit now carries a QR that maps order milestones to a status flow customers recognize—think of the steps you see on upsstore tracking pages. MoveMate kept control of its own system, but borrowed that familiar language: “label created,” “in transit,” “out for delivery.” Returns dropped when people knew what was happening.
For same-day inserts and apology cards, the team tested retail short-run capacity near depots—yes, quick services such as upsstore printing proved handy for tiny batches under time pressure. It wasn’t a replacement for their core line, just a smart buffer. One caution: Water-based Ink on some coated labelstocks needed extra dry time; the crew staged airflow and temperature rather than forcing speed, a trade-off that kept scuffing under control.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months. Scrap fell by 28–35% across kits. FPY rose into the 92–95% band on mixed SKUs. Barcode re-scan failures now sit under 1–2% on routine checks. Average ΔE tightened to roughly 1.5–2 on brand-critical panels, enough to hold a consistent look in customer photos. Changeover time dropped from 45–60 minutes to 12–18, which mattered on short windows between SKUs. Throughput on promotional weeks went up by roughly 20–25% without adding floor space.
Payback landed in the 8–12 month range, depending on how you account for avoided rework and courier delays. Not every outcome was neat: monsoon humidity still slows certain liners, and the team schedules drying time to avoid ink rub. But the core goals held—less waste, steadier quality, and a cleaner build that helps customers tape and move with confidence. Customers may still compare their delivery experience to familiar brands like upsstore, and that’s fine; MoveMate now has the visual and process discipline to meet those expectations more often than not.
