Aisle Think Makes International Move

Marketing and business clichés lend themselves to the packaging industry.
Packaging By Design of Rogers is no different.
In its fourth year, the company recently changed its name to Aisle Think as part of a changing business model and vice president Tevian Rose couldn’t help herself.
“Our company is expanding and growing and we felt the Packaging By Design name, pardon the pun, put us in a box,” she said. “We knew we had branding and a strong customer base but we felt most of our customers would understand the name Aisle Think fits us better.”
What the name means for Aisle Think is a move into the permanent display design business in addition to its original focus on temporary corrugated displays.
In a major move to fill the rapidly growing need for sustainable packaging, Aisle Think has aligned with Pratt Industries in Bentonville for manufacture and order fulfillment.
“We’re branching out, growing and changing,” Rose said. “We’re aggressively trying to work with suppliers to take it to a higher level and provide more services to them.”
Led by president Mac Freeman, Aisle Think is also preparing to launch an international division focused on temporary displays this year and plans to be running projects for Asian suppliers by the end of 2007.
The company added four employees domestically in the past year and has small teams in Taipei, Taiwan and China. Aisle Think now has eight employees at its Rogers office near Pinnacle Hills Parkway.
Pratt Industries, headquartered domestically in Conyers, Ga., bought out Love Box Co. of Wichita, Kan., in December 2005 and took over its display division in Bentonville.
Pratt is the only corrugated miller in the United States to use 100 percent post-consumer product by “Harvesting the Urban Forest,” according to its Web site, and has been doing so since opening its first of two domestic mills in the early 1990s.
Pratt Industries, based in Australia, is the seventh-largest paper and packaging company in the U.S. and one of the fastest growing.
Its use of 100 percent recycled paper sets it apart in an industry where no one else uses more than 20 percent, Rose said.
Rose said Aisle Think’s in-house structural and graphic designers help set the company apart as well.
“Our design team has a knack for getting the customers attention in the four seconds you’ve got,” she said.
The allegiance with Pratt began with a sales call and has blossomed into a strategic alliance that has taken some load off Pratt’s in-house sales team.
“They do unique, innovative designs on displays,” said Pratt sales manager Shannon Drummon. “It started as a sales call and now they basically represent our display sales group.”