Many of our products are packaged in our standard blue-and-yellow retail box, like the one on the left. It's designed to hold either a regular size or a Mega size Arduino compatible board with a USB cable and a quickstart guide, which is perfect for boards like the EtherMega and the Eleven.
But for most of our shields it's overkill, because most of the box is empty. So I'm working on a design for a new, compact box that will suit a standard size Arduino shield or an Arduino without a cable.
Ideally I want to make the new box exactly half the size of the standard box, because then they can fit perfectly into our existing shipping boxes. We use shipping boxes that hold either 2 or 6 of the standard product boxes like the one on the left, so they will now be able to hold 4 or 12 of the new half-sized boxes. Or it could be a combination: our small shipping box could now hold 2 standard boxes, or 4 half-size boxes, or 1 standard plus 2 half-size. It should also reduce our shipping costs because we are usually charged by volume, not weight.
Right now the "half-size" box is actually a bit longer than half the length of the standard box, because the standard box also includes a retail hang tag on the top which adds to its packing length. Two of the half-size boxes placed end to end are just slightly longer than the standard box plus its hang tag. It's close enough though: they fit perfectly into our shipping boxes, which is the most important thing!
