Verity Brown - Director ROKBOX

Verity Brown is Director at ROKBOX, a reusable shipping and storage solution for the art world. Verity has worked for 20 years in fine art shipping and logistics, initially with the specialist fine art shipper Momart as well as a Senior Registrar at Gagosian and Pace. She tells sustainable art haus about setting up the business and how the crate is being used in the art world.

Photo by George Selley

Tell us about ROKBOX; how have you found setting up a company and why was ROKBOX set up?

Starting up a company is a lot of fun. What I love is that I speak to tons of people in different galleries and organisations. It’s really nice to speak to a cross section of people in the industry. The people we speak to tend to be really excited about ROKBOX. I have a lot of respect for them - they are sticking their head above the parapet within their organisations to say that they think it’s time to do things differently.

ROKBOX was set up for two reasons, one is protection, and the other is the environment. So you can both protect the artwork better and the environment. When we started out, it was all about protection and I feel like most people know that about us now. We want people to know us for the environment side as well.

We want collectors to receive this new crate and think “wow, what is this new crate, isn’t this amazing”. For example, one gallery was trying to be more sustainable and had re-used a cardboard box for shipping artworks to collectors. They decided to purchase ROKBOX because a collector who had received a work they had purchased emailed them saying that the artwork had turned up in a cardboard box that had been used numerous times, taped and re-taped. He said the artwork was fine, but it didn’t make him feel great, or words to that effect. The gallery purchased ROKBOX and said it raises the game in terms of the client experience.

Photo by George Selley

Protection and sustainability are really important in our design, but so is cost. When we set ROKBOX up we really wanted it be as affordable as possible. People shouldn’t have to compromise on protection or sustainability because of budgets.

We see ourselves as an R&D company. We do the design, manufacturing and quality control in the UK.

Do you purchase or rent a ROKBOX? How are clients using your crates in their operations?

Clients can either buy from us, or rent from shippers. The crates are designed and manufactured in the UK so we are establishing a network of distributors around the world who can sell ROKBOX as well. For example in the United States, which is a really important market for the art world, we want to have a local distributor there so that we don’t need to ship the crates over, which is expensive and has a carbon cost. We do offset that carbon for both the manufacturing and the shipment, but a local distributor would make things run more smoothly.

Photo by George Selley

We have some people wait until the perfect time to use their new crate, and others who say, I’m just going to get started and work it out. That’s easier for some clients than others. One gallery we work with has two locations in London, one in Europe, and they go to art fairs. They have their own small inventory of ROKBOX which they manage. Auction houses use ROKBOX to move works internally between locations, until the artwork needs to go to a client. At that point, the auction house could choose to use a wooden crate or they could choose to switch from their owned ROKBOX into a rented ROKBOX with a fine art shipper. In terms of then getting the ROKBOX back, the fine art shippers do have relationships with their counterparts around the world - sometimes they have multiple locations around the world, other times because they have good partnerships - and they can share fleets. It’s happening, it’s not fully formed yet, but those relationships are developing in that direction to make the most out of each journey. The idea of shared ownership is also something that we are getting used to in our daily lives. It is something for registrars and shipping co-ordinators to think about as sustainability is becoming more important both personally and institutionally.

What makes these crates sustainable?

I tend to think about it in two ways, one is visible and one is invisible.

The visible is that you are not throwing away wooden crate shells every day. If I think back to how many instructions I gave for empty crates to be disposed of over the years [when I was working in galleries] it would be phenomenal. Those wooden crate shells are painted and/or varnished. Recycling of wooden crates usually means burning them. They do capture that energy and then feed it back into the national grid whilst the plastics and foams inside the crates aren’t easy to recycle and often would have gone to landfill. Our crates stop all that waste from piling up. You can literally take artworks out and put another one in without any internal degradation, different sizes, internal re-fits. In our hardware system you also don’t have to wrap the artwork up.

The invisible is because it’s lighter. We designed ROKBOX to be lighter because we’ve worked with technicians who have sore backs from lifting crates day in, day out. Happy technicians mean happy clients. You are also less likely to lose your grip on a lighter crate, especially if the back of the tail lift is wet, so it’s a lot safer as well. [Being lighter] makes a dramatic difference to the carbon footprint when it’s in transit. For example, from London to New York, around 80% of the carbon is about the flight after the road freight either side of the flight and the making of the crate itself. Our crates are about 40% lighter than wooden museum spec crates.

We’ve worked with environmental scientists and industrial designers on this. We stepped back from what we’re used to. If you’d asked me to design a new crate I would have come up with something pretty similar to what we are used to, but working with industrial designers means they’ve applied their knowledge and expertise and we’ve paired that with our knowledge of what really goes wrong. Everything is designed and manufactured with longevity and robustness in mind. The choice of materials and design features are built so that it will last. We’ve tested extensively with face drops from a full 90 degrees over and over again. We do advise working with fine art shippers though. We offer a one year warranty but they will last so much longer and especially if they are looked after. One of our updates has been to put sliding bits on the bottom corners so that they last longer. If a crate took a really bad hit and was structurally damaged and needed to be retired, then we could recycle the component parts. The plastic beams are made of virgin plastic. It’s a bit like a bag for life - it’s made of plastic but lasts for longer.. The front panels are made of recycled material. Where we are able to do we use recycled materials, but it’s not a perfect science.

ROKBOX is a durable and reusable crate made from medium density polyethylene with medical grade silicone foam interior, offered in two sizes and available for purchase or rent worldwide. All ROKBOX purchases are carbon neutral at delivery and ROKBOX will recycle all recyclable components of a ROKBOX crate at the end of its lifecycle. Find out more at: https://rok-box.com/