Buckeye Boxes

For 50 years, Buckeye Boxes has been finding ways to reduce costs for its customers through corrugated design, a strength that has set them apart from their competitors and helped them to grow throughout their five decades in business.

Craig R. Hoyt, president and CEO and son of the original founder, Robert B. Hoyt, leads the company and has been working for Buckeye Boxes since he was in high school.

“There is a saying in the corrugated business: You get paper dust in your lungs, and you stay there forever,” says Hoyt. “That’s kind of what happened.”

While he spent a few years in the industry with a major integrated company learning their so-called tricks of the trade, he came back to the company his father had founded, using the knowledge he gained to make Buckeye Boxes more effective. Now his nephew is in the business, and they are bringing him through the succession process so the business can move on to the next generation when the time is right.

His years with a major integrated business helped him figure out what Buckeye Boxes should not be doing, says Hoyt, and helped them focus on their core business and the basics that would make them successful.

Knowing Your Limits

“Some of what has kept us alive is recognizing the difference—if it is something the majors want, we can’t afford to be doing it. We don’t spin our wheels chasing the $30 billion corrugated market versus the stuff we can do in the local area of that market. What has separated us is staying ahead of what everyone else can do. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to do what everyone else can do—we do—but we get into things that other people either don’t do well or don’t do at all. That’s one of the keys to our longevity.”

One example of how they do that comes in the use of their specialty folder-gluer. One of the major integrated businesses in their market has exactly the same machine they have. So they formed a relationship with them so when the integrated’s machine is busy and they get items they are just too busy to do or something they don’t want to do, then they outsource the joining to Buckeye Boxes. Hoyt says they run product on that machine for seven or eight of their competitors. Likewise, with their coater, they run coating not only for themselves and their customers, but also for their competitors’ customers.

Hoyt says there are three basic things that make the industry a lot of fun.

“One is that you get to see how everything in the world is made. What doesn’t come in a box? That’s a fun thing. Second is all the people you meet in doing that. That’s fun. The third thing is design.”

Design is where Buckeye Boxes really distinguishes itself from its competitors. The company’s salespeople meet with customers and help them identify any problems they have and what kind of solution will get around that problem. Usually, Hoyt says, the solution involves design.

“Sometimes it is redesigning their packing area to use a different product, but most of the time it is looking at the container they are talking about or the inner pack and coming up with a way to do something better for their packaging system.”

Many of Buckeye’s solutions involve addressing the labor their customers use to package their products.

“Boxes are very inexpensive. Labor is extremely expensive,” says Hoyt. “So, a lot of our projects involve figuring out ways to reduce somebody’s labor.”

He gives the example of a customer who was sold out and back-ordered and couldn’t get enough products out to its customers in time. Buckeye Boxes went in and looked at the box and packing area. They were able to reduce the customer’s packaging area by one person, and get the company totally caught up and working two shifts. It saved their customer money and made them happy.

Edging Out Competitors

Buckeye Boxes also prides itself on a quick response time—coming up with a design and quotes faster than their competition. This means they rely heavily on their sales staff and being able to meet with customers to give them exactly what they need. They also work at timing their solutions for the customer.

Craig Hoyt (left) with his nephew, Chris M. Pieroni (right), and sister, Sue Anne Pieroni.

“People are very happy with what they’ve got until they realize they can save money or their customer starts putting pressure on them,” Hoyt says. He describes meeting with a customer and telling her that she didn’t need their services right then. He told her, “When your customer comes in and says they need a reduction in price of your product, give me a buzz and we’ll start working. You don’t have any problem right now—the customer isn’t complaining. When they hit you, because every customer will, call me, and we’ll start figuring out how to save you some money on your packaging.”

He says they ended up redesigning her packaging three times over the course of the next eight years. He says that’s the kind of thing you can’t do over the internet. You’ve got to meet with customers one-on-one.

Buckeye Boxes encourages its salespeople to be in the position of being the second person a customer will call. The first, Hoyt says, will always be the supplier they are currently working with. Buckeye Boxes wants to be the second person, the one who can provide the solutions that the current supplier cannot. That requires the salesperson, and Buckeye Boxes, to be the experts.

“Expertise is what separates us from others,” Hoyt says. “That takes a desire to learn. We’re very much into continuous learning in our organization. We are a founding member of a corrugated advisory group that meets once a year. We visit their facilities, attend expos, are a member of AICC, and all that it brings.”

Best Practices

Hoyt points out that the cost of expertise is higher than the cost of imitation, which leads him to one of his company’s best practices—pre-commitment.

“If we see a situation where we think we can improve someone’s packaging, we get a pre-commitment first,” says Hoyt. “We give a statement that we have an idea—the customer may not want to buy it, and that would be fine, but if it is a good idea and the customer decides they want to do it, it will take some design work and money and investment to come up with a solution. All we want to know is that if it works, the customer will buy it from us and not our competition.”

Another best practice Buckeye Boxes engages in is holding a preview meeting. They pull in the designer, the sales rep, the production manager, and the customer service person—along with anyone else who has a stake in the issue being discussed. They examine the item together and determine what needs to be done to make it a success. Close to the end of the meeting, Hoyt says, they ask, “How are we going to screw this up?” He responds by saying they have years of experience screwing stuff up, and that’s how you learn. They then come up with the most likely area where problems can arise and communicate to the leadership to watch for those problems. It helps them head off the and make the project a success.

Hoyt also attributes Buckeye Boxes’ success to its focus. The company is always focused on what the customer needs, what a box can do for the customer, and why it is important to the customer’s customer.

Hoyt says they hold two meetings a day to focus on making sure that what they say they’re going to do is what they end up doing. They make sure they’re going to meet their commitments and communicate with each other what might need to get moved around or done differently.

“There is a tendency in our business, because we are so capital-intensive, to fill the machinery,” says Hoyt. “We are more customer-focused than we are machine-

focused. We’ve got to help our customers improve their packing systems. That’s our whole brand; that’s who we are.”

Virginia Humphrey is the director of membership and marketing for AICC. She can be reached at 703-535-1383 or vhumphrey@aiccbox.org.