Old World Quality

The boxes sat on my garage floor, daring me to try to open them. Four of them, all marked with Turkish shipping labels. The beautiful, expensive ceramics that I had hand picked in Cappadocia back in March had finally arrived.

However, the packaging. Wow.

The boxes were so cleverly packed that I was stumped as to how to begin. They were made of fiberboard, stapled so tightly that I had no clue. I located a screwdriver and a hammer, and gingerly set to work.

The box had been solidly stapled together so tightly that I was sweating by the time I was able to pry all the huge industrial staples out. Then I hammered the edge of the screwdriver carefully to drive a wedge. I could barely discern the top of the box. Not without a fight, I pried open the top to reveal the innards.

A sea of pure white styrofoam, wedged so tightly against the edges that I couldn't get my fingers inside the box. I padded back inside to secure a knife.

Holy cow. These guys were serious.

By using the knife, my fingers, and the screwdriver, I carefully began to nurse bits and pieces of the glued styrofoam out of the box. This revealed the ceramics, which were carefully nestled inside.

Here was what my $250 shipping fee had paid for:

Someone had painstakingly custom-cut precise dimensions in the styrofoam so that each and every one of my priceless ceramics was so tightly fitted that they didn't move. Not one centimeter.

This is the shipping equivalent of a Herve Leger bandage dress. The fit was so crisp and delicate that I was in a state of wonder appreciating the workmanship that had gone into making sure that no matter what, my gloriously gorgeous ceramics were going to arrive in one piece.

This is what a brand promise looks like, ladies and gentlemen. It's worth paying for in every way. Old World Quality. When my Turkish friends squired me to two different ceramic facilities in Cappadocia, I had been shown the masters' work. I spent a lot of money. There was genuine concern as to whether my pieces would arrive safely. I needn't have worried. While at the time I bristled a bit at the cost of shipping, I now see what it bought me.

Someone, or several people, had taken the same level of artistic skill to carve out perfectly-formed shapes in the styrofoam, fit multiple layers of the foam together, and fit those layers into a dense box so safe the shipping container itself was a work of art.

That takes pride in your workmanship. It also took me one hell of a lot of careful work to gently coax each precious piece out of its tight cradle of customized packing. It took me forever.

However it taught me something.

The Turks in the back room who prepared my pieces for shipping were just as skilled artisans as those who had created and painted the expensive pieces I purchased. They wouldn't dream of trusting such beauty to packing peanuts. Only the best will do.

That's Old World Quality.

American businesses could learn something from these guys. We all could.