This rug shipped in the manufacture's thin plastic sleeve. As long as you keep the rug that's fine. But if I hadn't liked something about the rug after opening the packaging to look at it, I wouldn't have had anything to ship it back in. The other problem with the packaging was that it had gotten torn and beat up in several places which left the rug exposed to the elements in several places. There was one area of the rug that had gotten black coloring transferred on the white rug, but it's mostly on the underside so I think I can hide the majority of it. Other than that I believe the rug is nice and worth what I paid and I didn't have any issues with smell.