Investors

What the company does

Gridlock cuts custom-fit cardboard inserts for people who ship something fragile. The intake is a scan taken in our app rather than a drawing, a sample mailed in, or a call with a packaging engineer, and the software that turns that scan into a cut file is patent-pending. Inserts are made in the USA and the material is recyclable corrugated board. The way in today is the beta at Try Gridlock, where the build goes out directly while both store listings are in review.

The problem is measured, not asserted

A Harris Poll conducted for DS Smith in November 2024, across 3,071 US adults, found that 60% had received damaged goods bought online, and that 34% had a package arrive crushed or torn, or the product inside smashed.

Returns are the other half of it. The National Retail Federation put 19.3% of online sales and 15.8% of all US retail sales as returned in 2025, totalling $849.9 billion.

For a marketplace seller the cost is not only the refund. Amazon treats an order defect rate above 1% over a rolling 60-day window as putting the account at risk, and eBay drops a seller to Below Standard above 2%, evaluated monthly. A handful of breakages is an account problem, not just a margin problem, and that is what makes this a purchase rather than a preference.

Why the existing options do not reach this buyer

Custom inserts already exist. They are sold through a process built for buyers who order in volume: Box Genie quotes 10 to 12 business days after design sign-off, Packlane requires the physical product to be mailed in for every custom insert, and a new steel-rule die runs $200 to $800 for each new shape. A shop selling twenty candles a week cannot reach any of that.

The buying preference points the same way. McKinsey’s B2B sales research finds only about 20% of B2B buyers want an in-person sales rep, and TrustRadius’s B2B Buying Disconnect puts 87% of technology buyers as wanting to self-serve the purchase. The conventional insert business is built almost entirely around the consultation those buyers are trying to avoid.

Who buys it

Independent makers and Etsy-scale shops first, small businesses next, and B2B warehouse shipping after that. What the product needs is specific: a boxed item that ships the same shape repeatedly, roughly 3 to 16 inches. The range of categories that sits inside that is not specific at all. It covers most of what a small shop sends out fragile, and the economics favour every one of them that ships the same shape week after week, because the design work happens once and everything after it is a reorder.

What is not on this page

Unit economics, pricing by volume band, the raise and its use of funds, and the milestone plan are in the deck rather than here. The deck is confidential and we send it on request rather than publishing it, which is also why every figure above is third-party research you can check rather than a number of ours you would have to take on trust.

Getting in touch

Email gridlockboxllc@gmail.com and say you are asking as an investor, and we will send the current deck. The Team is who you would be backing, and the beta programme is where the product is being tested with real shops right now.