We all think about the pop pop pop. But it works best when it doesn’t make a sound. Here is the beginning of Bubble Wrap and the Sealed Air Corporation.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us. But we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
[Tapper’s Jewelry Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast. I’m Dave Young, Steve Semple’s right there. And today, we’re going to talk about bubble wrap. I didn’t even know it was a brand. Is it a brand or is it just an invention?
Stephen Semple:
Well, it’s patented.
Dave Young:
Is it?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a company that owns the right to bubble wrap. Yep.
Dave Young:
I’m in. Let’s pop, pop, pop. Pop, pop, pop. Tell me more.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Well, it was invented in 1957 by Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes, I’m probably butchering the name, in Hawthorne, New Jersey. And today, it’s like a $10 billion industry.
Dave Young:
Gosh. I’ve got memories as a kid. I didn’t know it was that early. In 1957, is that what you said?
Stephen Semple:
Yep, ’57 is when they invented it. Yep.
Dave Young:
I remember my dad bringing bubble wrap home. We ran the radio station, if he got some fragile part in or something and it was wrapped in bubble wrap, he’d bring it home and give it to the kids.
Stephen Semple:
Early fidget toy.
Dave Young:
We’d fight over that stuff ’til it was all done. It was usually the big ones. I don’t think they had the little baby bubbles for a while, but the big ones were fun.
Stephen Semple:
One of the first games I remember playing on my iPhone was actually one where you popped bubble. Where you popped it.
Dave Young:
Yes, I remember. I’m like, “That’s why I got an iPhone.”
Stephen Semple:
So the idea today is a trademark brand of the Sealed Air Corporation. So the Sealed Air Corporation-
Dave Young:
Sealed Air Corporation.
Stephen Semple:
… owns the trademark to bubble wrap. And it was first made by sealing together two shower curtains with bubbles in between, that’s what they did.
Dave Young:
Nice.
Stephen Semple:
Yep. And there’s a number of things that they tried to figure out how to use it for. At one point, they tried to market it as an insulator for greenhouses. Alfred was really interested in how machine shops worked, and Mark was a chemist from a very aristocratic family. And at the time, they were doing work with waterproof fabrics to try to make raincoats and that’s kind of where this whole, “Oh, if we have a raincoat, we seal the air in between, it’ll be insulated raincoat,” and all this stuff going on. And there was a lot of work being done in plastics at that time because following World War II, what we started seeing was plastics being used in transportation and all sorts of different things. And in fact, over World War II, there was a 400% increase in manufacturing in plastics. So there was all sorts of stuff going on.
Dave Young:
Okay, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So they laminated these two plastic sheets together to create this breathable but waterproof thing, and it would give it texture. And again, no one was interested in it, but somebody did approach them and say, “Hey, could you make a textured wallpaper?” So they started playing around with making this textured wallpaper, but didn’t work out all that well. They couldn’t control the shape of the bubbles, and different types of air got trapped and whatnot. But what they did do is they filed a patent on it and started to look for a market.
Dave Young:
I can tell you right now, if my parents would’ve put bubble wrap wallpaper up, that would’ve lasted about a week.
Stephen Semple:
Well, depends how tall you were. They would be able to-
Dave Young:
Oh, we’ve figured it out. I had a BB gun. There would’ve been none of that left. This was not a good wallpaper product. What were they trying to figure out then after that?
Stephen Semple:
Well, started looking at using it in places like insulation. But again, the insulating qualities wasn’t that great. But here’s what was interesting, computer technology has started at this point.
Dave Young:
Mm-hmm.
Stephen Semple:
So in 1960, IBM launches a new computer. It’s super large, but it’s big. They released the 1401 computer, and it has really fragile components in it. These things, they were not rigorous, and it had to be delivered in good shape and work. So how do you send small, delicate parts? And at the time, how people pack things were in paper and sawdust. And dust does not work well for computer components-
Dave Young:
No.
Stephen Semple:
… at all.
Dave Young:
So he’s in a mad race to beat the packing peanuts guy to the market.
Stephen Semple:
Basically, yeah. So they realized they had a material for IBM ’cause it was lightweight, it was clean, and it was cool. Right? ‘Cause it also had a little bit of insulating quality to it. So they wrap up a computer chip in plastic, and they set up a meeting with IBM and they do a demonstration. Literally, what they do is they wrap up this part, the guy from IBM comes in, they show them the part, put it in the box and basically, slam the box on the ground, pick it up, open it up, hand them back the part.
Dave Young:
There you go.
Stephen Semple:
There you go. And it’s like, “Damn.” Right?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right. And they call the business Sealed Air Corp and IBM basically signs up a contract with them for shipping their computer stuff, which that point isn’t big, but is growing. But having IBM as your customer gave instant credibility to other customers.
Dave Young:
Absolutely. And back then IBM was shipping stuff.
Stephen Semple:
And in 1963, IBM agrees to doing all this. And the product at that point becomes known as bubble wrap.
Dave Young:
Hey, Stephen, I want to interrupt ourselves. That’s not proper grammar, but I did it anyway.
Stephen Semple:
There you go.
Dave Young:
In lieu of our commercial this time, I thought maybe you and I could just chat for a minute.
Stephen Semple:
Absolutely. Sounds great.
Dave Young:
Our goal with The Empire Builders Podcast is to talk about business building strategies that have worked for people that started out small and became empires. We want to help you. If you’re a business owner and you’re listening to The Empire Builders Podcast because you want to build your own empire, we’ve got a pretty sweet offer for you. And that is to just spend 90 minutes chatting with us. It’s not a sales call on our part, it’s a 90-minute session where beforehand you do a little bit of homework and give us some basic background information about your business. And then we get on a Zoom call, and we learn a little bit more about you, and we give you the very best advice we can give in a 90-minute session.
Stephen Semple:
And I’m going to say it is miles away from it. I hate these dog and pony sales calls where, “I’m great, I’m amazing. Here’s samples of our work. You should hire us.” Which is part of the reason that makes us different is the fact that there is the scorecard and questionnaire that goes out that the owner sends back to us because it allows us to take a couple of days, do some research, put some thought, and come with some solid recommendations. ‘Cause it’s my belief that if we can provide some good insights, that somebody may be more interested in hiring us. And certainly, that’s a way better experience than meeting with some sales guy who runs you through a dog and pony. It’s lots of fun. It’s great value. People get a recording of it. I highly recommend people take us up on the offer.
Dave Young:
Easy to find us. You’re listening to our podcast, so find a way to request your 90-minute session with us. Looking forward to talking to you. Let’s get back to the story.
Stephen Semple:
Back to the story. They also recognize they had a challenge ’cause what they didn’t want to be was a one trick pony. Having IBM is great, having the computer industry is great, but it means you’re completely reliant on this one industry. So what they started to do then was making smaller bubble wrap and putting it in the inside of envelopes. So remember, we go to the post office and you could get those bubble wrap envelopes. They sold those through the post office, direct to consumers. So they opened up a whole brand new market, which then also led to other ways of using bubble wrap. And today, $10 billion business.
Dave Young:
You can buy it by the roll all over the place.
Stephen Semple:
Yep. But $10 billion business today. So these guys, they came up with this idea and really became innovative. But what I love about it, they are a packing business, right? So they didn’t even really have a use for it. They’re trying to figure all these things out. But they looked at this brand-new industry, the computer business, and went, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, this could work for that because when you’re shipping that product, sawdust and paper doesn’t work.”
Dave Young:
I hate to go back to the drawing board on wallpaper.
Stephen Semple:
Right.
Dave Young:
Isn’t it funny how we think of it and we think, we really don’t think of much besides packing.
Stephen Semple:
Right.
Dave Young:
They didn’t even think of that.
Stephen Semple:
They didn’t even think of that.
Dave Young:
That wasn’t even the reason they invented it.
Stephen Semple:
So to me, there was a couple of lessons that came out of this. And first of all, and it’s an idea that’s been lost a little bit, we used to hear it a lot in the computer industry, in the technology space. The whole idea of killer application. So in other words, because again, when there’s all this innovation going on, what happens is things get invented where you go, “Well, this is really cool, but I don’t know what to do with it.” And so one of the things we used to hear a lot about in the ’90s was, “Well, what’s the killer app? What’s the killer application?” Because what everybody understood was if you had a killer application, you could get something out into the marketplace. They had to figure out what that first killer app was. Now, a lot of times people are hesitant to do that ’cause they go, “Well, it’s a small industry. So now, I need to think bigger than that.” It’s like, “No, get that killer app going. Get the credibility that that gives and then figure out the other things.”
‘Cause look, they were able to pivot from this being used by IBM and technology businesses specifically for wrapping up computer components to you know what? Sending out a little China doll to grandma in an envelope. They were able to make that, but without the first one, they wouldn’t have had the second one.
Dave Young:
Yeah. It becomes the little bag, that Hallmark ornaments are packaged in. All kinds of things.
Stephen Semple:
All kinds of things. Even if that first opportunity is small, that first killer application is small, don’t worry about it. Still, go after it. But the other smart thing that they did is they did not stick there. They went, “Okay, this is great. But we got another problem. We’re a one trick pony, we need to be something beyond the one trick pony. How can we expand this out to consumers through the post office?” And it was really simple, take the bubble wrap, wrap up the paper envelope around it. Done.
Dave Young:
Yeah. They got the extra bonus of making a product that was fun to handle after it was used.
Stephen Semple:
I was in a course last week run by Dave at the Wizard Academy, and we’re talking about all the different ways of communication. One of them is being sound, pop. Right? Kinesthetic, feel. So you think about when somebody is popping and playing with that afterwards, in terms of remembering bubble wrap, what place has that taken somebody’s mind?
Dave Young:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right? Because there’s now a kinesthetic and audible link to the product.
Dave Young:
Mm-hmm.
Stephen Semple:
Just accidental happenstance, really.
Dave Young:
Like I said, you probably had fun with it when you were a kid. When you think about packing something that’s precious, you start looking around for some. Right? Everybody’s house, we have a drawer, we have a little shelf somewhere that’s got some bubble wrap in it.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. I didn’t have any, that’s the reason why I was surprised I couldn’t find any.
Dave Young:
Oh, okay.
Stephen Semple:
So there’s something wrong with me.
Dave Young:
Well, I just moved two and a half years ago, and since we haven’t unpacked everything. I could go out in the garage, and I have yards of the stuff somewhere.
Stephen Semple:
And again, there’s that old game on the iPhone. I’ve forgotten about that.
Dave Young:
Yeah. I wonder if you can still download that.
Stephen Semple:
I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. I thought it was a fun little story, but at the same time, I, like you was surprised where I go, “Wow. You mean actually this technology is owned by somebody?” It’s like, “Yep. Yep, yep, yep.”
Dave Young:
Yeah, it’s a business.
Stephen Semple:
It’s a business.
Dave Young:
Do they just sell it all or is it licensed? Got to be a little of both, right?
Stephen Semple:
It’s a bit of both. Yeah. I’m sure about.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Yep.
Dave Young:
Definitely spawned an empire and a whole industry around air wrapped in plastic.
Stephen Semple:
Who would’ve thunk?
Dave Young:
Who would’ve thunk it? If we just get some air and seal it up in some plastic bubbles?
Stephen Semple:
Well, I can tell you who, Mark and Alfred. They thought of it.
Dave Young:
Well, bravo. Thank you for sharing the bubble wrap story. That was fun.
Stephen Semple:
All right. Thanks, David.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to [email protected].
