How We Pack an At-Home IPL Device for Export

Most conversations about a hair removal device are about the device. Fluence, cooling, flash count, sensor. Then someone asks how it ships, and the conversation gets vague, because packing is the part of the deal nobody photographs.

I’m going to be specific about it. This is how an iShine handset leaves our factory, what each layer is for, and which numbers you’ll see on the documents that come with your order.

I’ll use the Venus (SKN010) as the worked example, because it’s the platform most of our European and Gulf buyers start with.

The unit we’re packing

Inside the brand-facing gift box:

• the IPL handset
• the power adapter
• the accessory box
• the user manual
• the divider insert
• shaver blade — optional
• safety glasses — optional

Everything above is what counts as net weight later on. Hold that thought.

Two ways to put it in the master carton

There isn’t one answer here. There are two, and the choice has real consequences for cost and for how the carton behaves in a parcel network.

Option 1 — gift box straight into the master carton

The gift box goes directly into the master carton, separated from its neighbours by corrugated dividers.

Because the gift box is now the outermost consumer-facing surface, we add a plastic film wrap around each gift box. This is a moisture barrier. A container crossing the Indian Ocean passes through temperature swings that will condense water inside a carton, and a printed gift box that gets damp is a gift box that arrives looking secondhand. The film is cheap insurance against that.

If you’d rather not have plastic in the pack — and a growing number of European brands would rather not, given where EU packaging rules are heading — we can leave it out on request. Say so at the order stage, because it changes the packing bill of materials.

That direction of travel is worth knowing if you sell into the EU. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation replaced the 1994 Packaging Directive, and it sets recyclability and waste-prevention requirements across all packaging placed on the EU market. It doesn’t ban a protective film tomorrow, but it does mean the film is a design decision you should be able to justify rather than a habit.

Option 2 — each gift box inside its own remailer box

In this configuration every gift box gets its own remailer box — a brown corrugated outer that protects the retail unit through the last leg, and that a marketplace or fulfilment centre can put a shipping label on directly, without over-boxing.

This is the configuration most e-commerce sellers choose, because it removes a packing step at the fulfilment end.

If your route to market is Amazon, the remailer box is doing the job of a Ships-in-Own-Container pack — the retail unit ships as its own shipper, with no over-box. That path has its own qualification requirements, and Amazon publishes the vendor programme terms separately from the test procedure itself. Worth reading before you assume a standard remailer box clears it; the pack may need to be qualified for that specific programme.

“So what is this remailer box, and what does it survive?”

That’s the question every buyer asks, usually worded more bluntly. Fair. Here’s the answer.

It’s a single-wall brown corrugated remailer, a regular slotted container, glued at the seam joints and tape-sealed across every opening. The gift box sits inside it with the void filled.

And yes — it’s been drop tested. Third-party, not by us. A US national catalogue retailer put this exact mailer box through a drop test at an independent laboratory, on a functional production unit in its retail kit rather than an empty shell:

What was tested	Result
Drop height	30 inches (762 mm)
Number of drops	10
Sequence	one corner, the three edges at that corner, then all six faces
Overall rating	PASS
Damage observed	none

For a package in the 1–20 lb / 1–9 kg band, 30 inches is the drop height specified for the ISTA 1-Series, and the corner–edge–face sequence of ten drops is the 1-Series method — which is the level our standard remailer box is tested to. ISTA publishes these procedures openly; see their test procedures page, where the 1-Series is described as a non-simulation integrity test: it challenges the strength of the product-and-package combination rather than simulating a specific journey.

That distinction matters and buyers often miss it. Passing a 1-Series test means the pack survived a defined drop sequence. It does not mean the pack has been simulated across a parcel network’s vibration, compression and atmospheric profile — that’s what the 3-Series does, and it’s a bigger test with a bigger bill.

If you need a heavier box, that’s a different budget

Some buyers come back and ask for a thicker corrugated board, double-wall, and a higher drop height. That’s a perfectly reasonable ask, and we’ll quote it.

It is not free. Heavier board changes the material cost, the tooling, the carton weight and the freight band, and it needs its own test pass. What you’re buying is a package that survives a more punishing sequence.

The current remailer box passes the ISTA 1-Series level. That’s the level we ship as standard.

Test it yourself, at a lab you choose

Here’s something worth knowing if packaging risk is on your mind.

Send us the lab you want to use. We’ll pack the sample to their submission requirements — their labelling, their form, their sample configuration — and ship it to them. Not to our lab, not to a lab we picked. Yours.

And if that sample fails, we pay for the second drop test in full.

I’d rather put that in writing than argue about it later. If our box can’t pass at the lab you trust, the cost of finding out shouldn’t land on you.

The corner guards, and what they don’t do

Every master carton has plastic corner guards protecting all eight corners of the carton.

They do real work. Corner crush is where cartons fail in stacking and in container handling, and the guards put material exactly where the load concentrates. They give the box enough structural support to hold its shape through the journey.

They are not armour. Under genuinely rough handling — a dropped container, a badly operated clamp truck — a plastic corner guard can crack or snap. If that happens the carton loses that corner’s protection, and you may see deformation at that corner. I’d rather say that plainly than imply the guards make a master carton indestructible. They don’t, and no corner guard does.

What’s on your packing list, and what the two weights actually mean

Once the order is packed we issue a packing list, and every master carton label carries its carton dimensions and two weights.

These two weights cause more confusion than anything else in the pack, so here’s precisely what each one contains:

Net weight — the gift box and everything inside it:

the device itself + the power adapter + the accessory box + the shaver blade (optional) + the safety glasses (optional) + the user manual + the inner divider and insert

Gross weight — the complete master carton:

the master carton + the corner guards (optional) + the outer stretch film around the pallet or carton (optional) + the inner plastic protective film (optional) + everything that makes up the net weight

If you’re calculating freight, landed cost or duty, use gross weight. If your marketplace or customs broker asks for net weight per unit, that’s the gift box figure above.

Anything else, tell us and we’ll show you

The default pack is a default, not a constraint. Buyers routinely change it, and we’d rather you specify than assume.

Things we can adjust on request:

• no staples or straps on the master carton
• no watermarks on the master carton or the remailer box
• label content, placement and language
• whether the plastic inner film goes in at all

On the label and watermark points specifically, we’ll send you a physical sample or a photograph for sign-off before the run goes ahead. You shouldn’t be approving artwork you can’t see on the actual board.

Two platform notes

If you’re comparing our platforms, the pack differs slightly by model and it’s worth checking before you specify.

The Venus (SKN010) gift box is 14.7 × 20 × 10 cm with a single-pack weight of 934 g, packed 18 to a carton. The Lumi (SKN002) is more compact — 16.5 × 12.5 × 10 cm, 610 g single pack, 24 to a carton — which is why it freights more cheaply per unit.

Same factory, same standards, different cube. If freight is a meaningful part of your cost model, that difference is worth running through your forwarder before you commit.

You can see the full packaging and logistics picture on our packaging and logistics services page, and the platform specs on Lumi and Venus.

The short version

Two pack configurations, both in use: gift box straight into the master carton, or every gift box in its own remailer box.

The standard remailer box is drop tested by a third-party lab at 30 inches over ten drops, corner-edge-face, and passes. Heavier board and higher drop heights are available at higher cost. Send us your chosen lab and we’ll build to their requirements and cover the retest if it fails. Corner guards protect all eight corners and are support, not armour.

And you’ll get a packing list with the dimensions, net weight and gross weight on every carton — with the two weights defined exactly as above, so nobody has to guess what’s inside either number.

If you’d like the pack specified against your own market’s requirements, or the drop test documentation released under NDA, get in touch.