The SugarPop modular bagasse carrier prototype photographed against a clean background. Snap-fit carrier with cans loaded, showing the collapsible handle and modular cut-away design. Secondary image: the flat prototype in corrugated cardboard.
SugarPop
48 hours. One box. Won Best Out-of-the-Box Thinking — by designing the box upside down from a kid's perspective.
48hrs
Competition window
Award
Best Out-of-the-Box Thinking
100%
Biodegradable
Bagasse
Sugar waste material
The brief was to redesign cereal packaging. The insight was that the brief was wrong — cereal boxes communicate to parents while children are the ones who choose at shelf level. Every existing pack design is optimized for adult eye height and adult reading behavior. The decision-maker is 3 feet lower and doesn't read ingredients.
My Role
Package designer. Concept, structural design, material selection, prototype fabrication. Team: Rob Stout + Shrinka Roy.
Where judgment was required
The moments that shaped the product.
A diagram showing two eye levels in a supermarket aisle. Adult eye height (top) shows the standard box face. Child eye height (bottom, ~36 inches) shows what the child actually sees. The inversion makes the hierarchy visible.
The box is designed for the parent. The child is the one who chooses.
Most cereal packaging is optimized for an adult standing in the aisle — ingredients panel, nutritional claims, brand equity at eye level. The child who actually reaches for the box is at a completely different eye level with a completely different set of cues. Designing the box for the actual decision-maker required flipping the orientation and rethinking which visual elements earn attention at knee height.
A materials diagram showing the sugarcane → sugar extraction → bagasse fiber → formed carrier loop. Annotation: 'Zero new material stream. Fully biodegradable. Supply chain already exists.'
Bagasse as material: sugar industry waste becomes structural packaging
Bagasse is the fibrous material left after sugarcane juice is extracted — a byproduct of the sugar industry that is already produced in enormous quantities and is 100% biodegradable. Using it for a sugar beverage carrier closes a material loop: the carrier is made from the same plant that produced the drink. The People/Planet/Profit framework validated this at all three dimensions — cost-competitive, zero new waste stream, supply chain adjacent to existing beverage production.
An exploded view of the snap-fit mechanism showing snap points at different pack sizes. A folding sequence for the handle: flat → snap → carry position.
Modular snap-fit: any pack size, collapsible handle, no glue
The carrier snaps to any pack size by cutting between standard intervals — no retooling needed for 4-pack, 6-pack, or 8-pack configurations. The handle folds flat for shipping and snaps upright for carry. No adhesive, no secondary materials, no separate components. The structural intelligence is in the geometry of the bagasse form, not in added hardware.
Process
Identified the real decision-maker: the child, not the parent.
Chose bagasse — sugar waste, biodegradable, supply-chain adjacent.
Built snap-fit carrier in corrugated cardboard in 48 hours.
Won 'Best Out-of-the-Box Thinking' at the 48-hour Repack Competition.
What Shipped
48hrs
Build time
100%
Biodegradable
Any size
Modular
Won 'Best Out-of-the-Box Thinking' at the 2021 48-hour Repack Competition. Designed with Shrinka Roy. Fully prototyped in corrugated cardboard within the competition window. The modular bagasse carrier advances all three dimensions of the People/Planet/Profit framework.
- Won 'Best Out-of-the-Box Thinking' — 48-hour Repack Competition 2021
- 100% biodegradable material derived from existing sugar industry waste stream
- Modular snap-fit design serves 4-, 6-, and 8-pack configurations without retooling
- Collapsible handle ships flat, requires no secondary hardware or adhesive
What I Learned
The most useful move in a short-window competition is questioning the brief before executing it. The assignment was 'redesign cereal packaging.' The insight — that the decision-maker is a child, not an adult — changed the entire design direction. That reframe took twenty minutes and produced the award-winning concept. The material choice was the second lever: bagasse was not the obvious answer, but it was the correct one. It already exists in quantity, it's already adjacent to the supply chain of sugar-based products, and it closes a material loop rather than opening a new one.
What this demonstrates
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