Structure, board, wrap and tie — priced as one set
Custom Gift Boxes: 1.2-Meter Drop-Tested Packaging to Cut Freight Return Rates
Protect delicate retail items through global fulfillment using 1,800 GSM rigid structures and custom die-cut inserts — keeping transit damage rates under 0.2%. Prevent corner dents, frame warping, and weak magnetic closures so every box arrives store-ready.
You are not shopping for a shape. You are choosing the movement a customer makes when the box reaches them: a lid that lifts, a tray that slides, a panel that shows the product without opening anything.
GB-01
Custom Rigid Gift Boxes
1.5–3 mm board
Heaviest of the nine. A wrapped board box that keeps its corners and carries a molded tray — the build a keepsake gift is expected to arrive in.
GB-02
Magnetic Closure Gift Boxes
N35–N52 magnets
Two magnets buried under the wrap. It closes with a resistance a hand reads before a word is read, and the lid stays shut in a bag on the way home.
GB-03
Drawer Gift Boxes
sleeve and tray
Slides out rather than lifting, so nothing tips on the way to the customer’s hands.
GB-04
Folding Gift Boxes
ships flat
Stored and freighted flat, then assembled by hand. The lowest unit cost and the smallest footprint in a stockroom.
GB-05
Window Gift Boxes
PET panel
A clear panel in the lid. The product is visible before the box is opened, which is the question a shelf asks.
GB-06
Corporate Gift Boxes
repeat runs
Built for repetition: a single artwork, hundreds of identical boxes, and a delivery date that does not move.
GB-07
Lid and Base Gift Boxes
deep base
The classic two-piece. A deep base holds the product low, and the whole lid lifts away to show a printed inside.
GB-08
Two-Piece Gift Boxes
equal halves
Half the height of a lid-and-base, both halves wrapped from a single sheet so the pair reads as one object.
GB-09
Eco-Friendly Gift Boxes
kraft, no plastic
Unbleached kraft, recycled board and a paper tie, with soy-based inks that cut VOC emissions by up to 25 %.
You approve a number for a magnetic box, then the tray, the tie and the printed inner lid arrive as three more lines — with the dieline already cut. All five decisions below come off the same brief, or the file re-opens and everything after it is a change order.
01
Structure
How the lid closes settles the board, the assembly step and the carton at once. It is the first decision, and the hardest to reverse.
5 builds
02
Board
Thickness is crush resistance, and it is also freight — paid for once as board and again on every mile it travels.
1.5–3 mm
03
Wrap
The paper the artwork lands on, and the finish laid over it. A matte wrap hides handling; a gloss shows every fingerprint on a counter.
300–400 gsm
04
Insert
The tray is cut to the packed size of the product itself, and nothing shifts between the filling line and the customer’s hands.
cut per SKU
05
Tie
Satin, woven or raffia, cut and knotted to the board. It is priced with the box because the lid is punched to take it.
The same jar of cream needs three different boxes: one for a counter, another for an employee gift, a third for a parcel that leaves every month. What changes is not the artwork — it is who opens it, how, and how long it has to survive first.
80 % recycled
Retail Sets
A beauty or tea brand on a counter, where the shopper decides in seconds.
What we do
Structure first, then the tray, then the wrap — all three drawn on one die.
What you get
A set that reads as a gift before anyone picks it up, with the recycled figure printed where a shopper can read it. The box sells where nobody is standing.
a fixed date
Corporate and Seasonal
Hundreds of identical boxes, one design, one fixed day — corporate gifting or a holiday run.
What we do
One artwork and one board, repeated across the whole run on embedded N35–N52 magnets and planned backwards from your date.
What you get
Every box identical, and the pallet on site before the day it is needed — nothing to re-check at your end, because nothing in the run varies.
same die, new tray
Subscription and DTC
Every month a different product set goes out in the same outer box.
What we do
The outer box ships flat and folds at the desk. Between cycles only the tray changes.
What you get
One printed design covers every cycle, so a refresh costs a new tray rather than a new box — and freight is paid on flat board, not on air.
Settle this before the paper
How to Choose the Structure
Settle the structure and the wrap follows; settle the wrap first and a dieline gets paid for twice. The structure fixes the board, the tray and the assembly step together, and the “avoid when” column is where those second dielines come from.
Gift box structures, what each opens with, where each is the right choice and where it is the wrong build
Structure
Opens with
Best for
Avoid when
Ships as
01Magnetic
A buried magnet pair
A gift opened once and kept. The lid stays closed in a bag and opens flat on a table.
The lightest boards. There is no room to sink a magnet in that grade without a bulge showing through the wrap.
Formed
02Lid and Base
A friction lid
The widest range of sizes, and the cheapest rigid build. Print reads on the lid and inside it.
An unlined friction fit on a long crossing. Wrapped board relaxes in humid air and the lid loosens.
Formed
03Drawer
A tray in a sleeve
A gift opened in stages, where the product should arrive without being lifted.
A loose tray. It needs a tolerance under a millimeter, and a thin sleeve will not hold it.
Flat + tray
04Window
A hinged or magnetic lid
Retail, where the product has to be seen before it is bought.
A heavy product. A PET panel does not stiffen a lid, so the board has to do it alone.
Formed
05Folding
A tuck or a self-lock
Volume, subscription cycles and anything that must store small between runs.
A box meant to be kept. A folded board is thinner in the hand than a wrapped rigid build.
Neither of these appears in your artwork, and both move the number further than the print does. A heavier board survives a shelf and adds freight to every unit; a cheaper wrap saves at the die and scuffs in the first customer’s hands.
Greyboard
1.5–3 mm
Keeps a lid square and survives a stack, so the box still feels like a gift after a pallet has sat on it — and every extra millimeter is weight you pay freight on.
Fluted Board
E-flute
Same stiffness as a solid board, less weight, because the air trapped in the flute does the work. Lower freight for a parcel that ships in its own carton.
Recycled Kraft
20–30 % cheaper
The cheapest ground here, 20–30 % under a rigid build, and printable in a single color or two so a one-color mark looks deliberate.
Printed Wrap
300–400 gsm
What the hand reads first. Paper weight is what makes a printed box feel considered instead of flimsy before anyone opens it.
Two of these are not what you think
Gift Box, Rigid Box, Jewelry Box
“A gift box with a ring slot” names a purpose and a cut in the same sentence, and it comes back quoted twice. Naming the object before the brief is written is the cheapest decision on this page.
A gift box is a purpose
Sized to an occasion rather than to a pallet, with the cavity left open for tissue and a tie. What gets priced is a structure, a wrap and a tray taken together — and every box on this page is quoted that way.
A rigid box is a construction
Greyboard wrapped in paper, built wherever a lid has to keep its shape. The same build serves a gift, a keepsake or a plain shelf carton with no tray at all — the construction is not the job. See how a rigid box is built.
A jewelry box is a rigid box with a cut insert
The board is identical. What changes is the tray: wells cut to hold a ring or a chain in place. Where a box needs slots rather than a tray, the wells are cut and priced separately. See the jewelry cut.
Told it is included, then it is not
What Else Comes With the Box
Three things are treated as free by almost every buyer and as separate operations by every factory. They are the difference between the number approved and the invoice that arrives.
01
Printing Inside the Lid
The first surface a customer reads once the lid is off, and it is priced as its own print. Specify it in the brief and it prints with the wrap; ask for it once the dieline is cut and it needs its own board and its own press pass.
02
A Tray Cut to Your Product
Cut to the packed length, width and height of the product itself rather than to its category. A tray holds whatever settles into it; a jewelry well pins a piece in place, and the two are not interchangeable.
03
The Chip That Matches Run Two
Filed against the run are the retained wrap chip and the dieline, so a second order is matched to the first instead of rematched by eye — the whole difference between two runs that agree and two that nearly do.
The part hands meet first
The Tie, and the Three That Get Quoted
The tie is the first thing a customer’s hands touch and the last thing most briefs specify. Widths run 2–4 mm for twine and 9–25 mm for ribbon, and all three take a printed or hot-stamped mark.
Satin
flat sheen
A flat sheen that photographs well and takes a hot-stamped mark. It slips, which is why a satin tie wants a double knot or a seal.
Woven
ribbed grip
Ribbed, so it grips: it holds a knot without heat, resists a crease, and prints a matte mark cleanly.
Raffia and Twine
natural fiber
Natural fiber for a kraft box — the lowest-cost tie, and the one that reads handmade rather than luxury.
Count back from the date
How an Order Runs
Your launch date is fixed and everything else moves backwards from it. A printed sample has to exist before bulk starts and a container has to cross before the boxes reach a shelf, which leaves the date as the only decision that cannot be late.
Day 1
Brief
Packed dimensions, the unit count, and the day the boxes are needed.
Day 2
3D Mockup
You see the structure and the artwork on screen before anything is cut, which is what makes a change free at this point.
Day 5–7
White Dummy
A size-only box, unprinted. This is where a product that does not fit the cavity is found — the cheapest place to find it.
Day 12–17
Printed Sample
The real board, the real wrap and the real mark in your hands. Your approval here is what opens the bulk run.
Week 3–5
Bulk Run
Board cut, wrapped, assembled, and inspected as the run moves rather than once the pallet is closed.
Week 6–8
Ship
Four to six weeks by sea to the destination on the quote, with the paperwork sent ahead of the container.
Board, moisture and color are checked as the run moves, not once the pallet is wrapped.
A folding box travels and stores as a stack of boards. A rigid build travels at its own volume and is paid for along the way — worth knowing before the board gets thicker for a shelf that will never see it.
“We put a three-piece skincare set into a printed sleeve over a plain carton, and on the counter it read like a sample rather than something worth 89 dollars. The set was fine; the box was doing nothing for it.
The rebuild moved it into a magnetic rigid box with a molded tray, so the three bottles sit in a fixed order and the third bottle cannot roll onto the other two in transit. Two sample rounds came back, and the second had the tray adjusted to the bottle shoulder.
Gift sets now go out to 11 stockists in that box, at a higher price than the same three items sold loose. Nothing behind the counter has to explain it, which is what we were paying for.”
Michael P.Founder, Green Living Goods
“Our entire claim is that the packaging goes into a home compost bin, so a laminated box was never going to survive the audit, whatever it saved us per unit.
The version that shipped is unbleached kraft with our mark in one color and a paper raffia tie. No tape, no plastic window, and nothing for the customer to separate before the box goes in the bin with the scraps.
It lands about 8 percent above the laminated quote we were carrying, and the questions stopped. Four of our five stockists now ask for it by name when they reorder.”
Before the first sample
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions that arrive after the first quote, answered with the numbers behind them.
What is the minimum order for a custom gift box?
500 units per size, per structure and per wrap. Volume tiers sit at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 units, and the unit price steps down at each rung. A second size is a second die, quoted as its own run.
What should I check on the printed sample?
Three things, and they are the three that cannot be fixed later: that the tray holds the product without pressing on it, that the lid closes with the same resistance the mockup showed, and that the mark sits where the dieline put it. A change at that point costs one more sample rather than a re-cut.
Do you need a print-ready file to start?
No. A logo and a colour reference are enough — the dieline is drawn to the box and the artwork is placed on it. A print-ready file skips one proof round, which is the only difference it makes to the schedule.
What happens if my product changes after the order?
The tray changes with it. The die, the board and the printed wrap belong to the box, so a new tray is a new cut rather than a new run — which is exactly why the tray is quoted on its own line.
Where is the box made?
In China, at a facility holding ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and FSC certification. Samples and bulk both ship to the destination named on the quote, with no third party in between.
Can a gift box be shipped on its own?
Two boxes do two jobs, and keeping them apart is the point. The gift box is built around the reveal — a wrapped rigid body on a cut tray, drop-tested at 1.2 m so it comes out of the master carton unmarked. The parcel around it is a corrugated carton, and that one takes the courier network on its own fluting and edge-crush specification. They are engineered against different tests.
Send the Details, and the Quote Comes Back Once
The date cannot move. Send the packed dimensions and the deadline those boxes have to hit; the insert, the tie and the print can all be settled in the same pass.
GB-01
GB-02
GB-03
GB-04
GB-05
GB-06
GB-07
GB-08
GB-09
Jane D.Marketing Manager, Luxe Beauty Co.
Michael P.Founder, Green Living Goods