July 3, 2025
Company: Colorado Industrial Packaging
Established: 2008
Joined AICC: 2019
Phone: 720-339-2706
Website: www.cippack.com
Headquarters: Denver, Colorado
President and CEO: Carl Nickel
A call to Colorado Industrial Packaging (CIP) gets a real person on the phone, happy to take a message or track down someone who can help.
It’s all part of CIP’s customer-centric culture. “A lot of people say ‘service,’ but what does that mean?” says President and CEO Carl Nickel. “For us, we want to create a great customer experience. We want to be able to design, quote, and build product for our customers before, oftentimes, our competitors are able to move a quote out the door.”
CIP dates to 2008, when Brian and Janey Nickel bought a supplier of packaging materials—“stock supplies you’d find in a UPS store,” says Carl, their son.
With the realization that Colorado abounded with niche businesses demanding specialized protection for their high-end, sensitive products, the Nickels bought an AutoBox to develop short-run manufacturing capabilities.
That era launched a transformation that shaped today’s CIP, a custom packaging solutions provider for services including aerospace and defense, medical device, semiconductor electronics, building materials, manufacturing, and—naturally, being in Colorado—outdoor gear.
Capabilities and services cater to clients’ needs for industry-specific drop-testing, prototyping, military and copy-exact specifications, efficiency maximization, and cost and labor savings.
Carl Nickel joined the firm in 2018, implementing a plan to grow CIP’s Denver facility and upgrade its original Colorado Springs plant. The process stretched from a planned 18 months into four years, culminating with Brian and Janey’s phased-in retirement and Carl’s elevation to the C-suite.
CIP differentiates itself in design and engineering, says Nickel. Solutions are crafted from a toolbox of product capabilities that includes custom boxes, custom foam, custom crates, and heavy-duty and specialty packaging.
With its specialty mindset, CIP has produced packaging that protects everything from circus equipment to airplane seats. The process builds on understanding how products interact with packaging “from start to finish,” scrutinizing how they’re loaded, handled, shipped, and unboxed.
“There are two modes of selling in our industry,” says Nickel. “One is, ‘I’ll sell you a box for a penny less.’ We just don’t compete that way. We’re looking for how we add value through the entire life cycle of the package.”
Growth projections are positive. The new Denver facility—replacing a space so cramped that the conference room was converted from a tiny office—creates space for new equipment, and new sales reps are being hired.
It’s all geared toward keeping pace with industry trends. “We want to stay in line with supporting the markets we’re already serving and doing more of what we’re already good at,” Nickel says. “I think we’ve done a good job of carving out a good niche. Our objective is to double and triple down around that.”
Joining AICC in 2019 expanded Nickel’s network of peers, knowledgeable about industry challenges and opportunities. “I’ve always been a firm believer that it takes an army to be successful,” he says. “When I was looking at taking over the business, I knew that I needed to find some help and find some people who have done this before and know what they’re doing. That’s exactly what I’ve found with AICC.”
Before AICC, problem-solving involved Nickel and his father “troubleshooting and trying to figure out how to do it.”
Now, he belongs to an AICC CEO Advisory Group whose members tour each other’s plants and are always available for brainstorming. Whether he’s addressing a new process or product launch, Nickel knows he can call someone and get a timely response. “Before, something like that might take me months to find a solution, whereas I can find it in a day now,” he says.
His parents also taught him “more than I can remember,” Nickel notes. His father, a veteran of sales, knew how to connect with people and build relationships. His mother “was always looking around the corner at what could go wrong, which was really healthy, because I’m very much a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy.”
He adds, “Within our relationship, we had a really good dynamic. No one person can make good decisions consistently over time. It takes a team and a team that thinks very differently. Being in that environment gave me a North Star in what I can create in terms of a team.”
With Brian and Janey in near-retirement, CIP is rebuilding in-house expertise and skills in handling high-level decision-making, developing his existing people and hiring new personnel.
In CIP’s culture, staff can “feel comfortable with taking some swings.” It’s better to take initiative than shy away from innovation.
“It’s OK to make mistakes,” Nickel tells the CIP team. “Just learn from it, and don’t do it again. I’d rather see our staff trying things and actually being agents of change than to be afraid of trying something.”
The CIP team is excited about the future of the boxmaking and packaging industry and the company’s role in it. While CIP follows market trends that help inform decisions, its focus remains on its distinctive pathways to success.
“It’s really easy to overlook how much goes into making a box,” Nickel says. “Most of our customers, if they’re designing a missile or satellite component that’s going into space, the box is the last thing they’re thinking of, and that’s OK. That’s why we’re here. But by looking for how we can add value, there’s a lot more that our industry has to offer than a box at a penny less, and that’s worked really well for us. I think that’s why our customers tend to stick around.”
M. Diane McCormick is a freelance journalist based in Pennsylvania.
