Ending my workday as I usually do everyday at approximately 5:00pm, I turned off the lights, and locked the doors here at Fastpack headquarters. Then I jumped into my pickup truck and shifted into drive with only one more work related duty remaining, checking the mailbox. I have done this Monday thru Friday for the past 15 years, and usually it is the same thing day after day, week after week, year after year. Open the mailbox, pull out the white and manilla envelopes, toss them on the seat next to me and head home. But a few days ago something different happened, true story. I pulled up to the mail box and pulled out a stack of mail.

There were the white envelopes, no manilla envelopes this day. But what is this red envelope, a red bubble mailer? Well, to be honest with you my first instinct was, it's just a customer return, which honestly, nobody likes to see, right? (We sell this exact Red Bubble Mailer called Shiny Shippers™) We also actually use them to ship small parts or items to our customers, so the norm when I see one is, "it's a return". So I threw the truck into park, picked up the red envelope and flipped it over for a clue as to what it was that was being returned. To my shock and surprise, this was not a return! 

This was an actual marketing mail piece with a sample inside! I was excited, as the mailbox usually has the same white and manilla envelopes... Every....Single.....Day. You would think that I, being the President/CEO/Owner of Fastpack, selling these very same envelopes everyday, that I would be resistant and unresponsive to this mailing piece. But I was not, I was actually drawn in as would a mosquito to bug light, a fly to a flytrap. I sat there in my truck, on the side of the road, intrigued by this piece of magic that was in my mailbox while the white and manilla envelopes sat there on my seat and would do so until I arrived at work the next day to be sorted and filed accordingly with no real interest.

It was time to open this mail piece. (Still on the side of the road in my truck) I opened it not knowing what to expect inside, almost as a child opening a birthday gift. It was a marketing piece for a very cool little box called Stop Drop. You affix to a package that you are shipping, maybe it is very important or fragile package. By way of a blinking light, if the package is mishandled, it alerts you the sender and receiver that the package was mishandled and the contents could be damaged. It also lets you know how many hours ago it was mishandled. This lets you narrow down to who was in possession of the package when the rough handling happened. Thus giving you knowledge of who, or what company mishandled and possible damaged your very important cargo.

Let me tell you what might of happened to this very cool little device if it had NOT come in this red envelope. It would have sat on my truck seat until the next day, then I would have tossed it on the receptionists desk and it might have been trashed, looking like every other marketing piece, without even being opened or directed to me. The red bubble mailer grabbed my attention. I am the person here at Fastpack Packaging that decides if we purchase a product or not. Stop Drop, did what others have been unsuccessful at doing, getting their product in the hands of the person making the purchasing decisions. It's a great product, and we are looking into purchasing it for resale on our website. This probably would not happened if the envelope looked like all the others. Great job to the Marketing Department at Stop Drop!

If you are interested in our Color Bubble Mailers, Click Here We offer many more colors, we also have green, yellow, blue, purple, gold, silver, pink, & orange.