Fresh out of the box its held together into a tightly packed rectangle. At first you will think the poles are missing but they are in hidden between the shelves. Packaging I give it 4/5 stars, to get something this large into a tight space is impressive. After separating the shelves held together by hardware, you'll have a frustrating (& I mean swearing at it frustrated) time peeling off this protective tape that covers the top surface of the shelves. It actually took longer to do this than building the entire shelf. Its a stretchy sticky tape (doesn't leave residue) that tears easy but does come off easy. So you have to pull at light-medium pressure and slow otherwise you'll have to keep starting over picking corners with a fingernail to get it started 200 times. Oddly the tape doesn't cover all of it, just about 85% of the top surface. This tape adds a slight gap that probably prevents the shelves from rubbing and scratching during shipping. It does do a good job in protecting the finish since mine had a perfect surface shine look - but 30 seconds after handling and using it there's going to be fingerprints and if you're not careful - scratches will show instantly and permanently. Since this is for heavy duty storage, scratches are not a concern for me. If you're putting tools or anything with sharp edges on these shelves it will scratch instantly.As for rigidity and sturdiness this shelf is better than the rest, better than nearly everything else offered on amazon, but its quality is still lower than my expectations were. A shelf that's over 300$ should not have flimsy shelves. The photos make it look like its this solid hard as rock steel shelf system. They are flimsy and if you tap them they sound like thin baking sheet pans for cookies. They are solid enough where flexing under weight isnt really an issue because of the support bar built into the shelves underneath, but it would have better to just have thicker steel shelves instead of creative support ba
trisha 
