Puma's Clever Little Bag

As part of a huge long-term sustainability program, PUMA teamed up with renowned industrial designer Yves Béhar to develop a new package design for PUMA's line of sneakers. The new packaging "uses 65% less cardboard than the standard shoe box, has no laminated printing, no tissue paper, takes up less space and weighs less in shipping, and replaces the plastic retail bag."

Now, I've gone through a few pairs of PUMAs in my life and was never really a big fan of them, but I have to admit that PUMA's new Clever Little Bag is... well, pretty clever. Besides the obvious fact that it's better for the environment and cheaper for PUMA to do something like this, the new packaging and overall effort to be green is a great way for PUMA to position itself away from it's major competitors and get positive publicity. I don't know if I'd use the bag for carrying groceries, but I could definitely imagine myself using PUMA's new bag to carry an extra pair of shoes (PUMA or not) around with me, which would inevitably result in even more free advertising for PUMA.

If you wanna see more pictures, visit here. Peep the video above too if you haven't already. It's short, catchy, and very well designed.


UPDATED 04/30/10
There's a lot of conversation going on on YouTube poking fun at the fact that it took 21 months to figure out that "you don't need boxes to sell sneakers." 21 months really isn't that long when you take into consideration how much testing needs to be done, how big of a decision this is considering how many shoes PUMA sells annually, and all the different levels of hierarchy involved in a company such as PUMA to approve something like this.