Interview: Clip-N-Seal

Clip-N-Seal is among the best-known blog-based success stories—for good reason. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. We interviewed DL Byron, founder of Textura Design, Inc. and Scott Benish, a Textura Design Principal and Clip-N-Seal brand manager.  The following is a compressed version of the comments.  We have taken some very slight liberties with it, and if we have made it less than accurate, we hope they’ll join in as fact checkers.  Byron, by the way, gave us a few choices on what his two-letter surname represents. Based on how Click-N-Seal is doing, we’ll stick with “Damned Lucky.”

It will be included in a chapter that is scheduled to be published here in just a few days.

For something you invented to keep food fresh on hikes, you’ve acquired some interesting applications including sealing up weapons of mass destruction. What new extraordinary apps have come in that we have not heard about?

Mostly medical uses, including:

• Bio-artificial liver
• Body bags
• Organ donor banks
• High-end Teflon bags (for use in the aerospace industry)

You are now in national distribution through The Apartment and also continue to sell directly. How are these two channels working for you?  Which do you prefer?

Our long-term goal is to land in a national chain like Target and we’re working hard to achieve that. We’ve done well In two years, but we’re just getting started. Our launch on Amazon.com has also opened up new markets.

Can you give me some numerical sense of how Clip-n-Seal has been doing in terms of sales and revenue? Can you tell me some interesting places where you’ve shipped product?

We expect to be profitable this year and have shipped all over the world, including Poland, Japan, Australia, Brazil, the UK, and more. We’ve shipped over 40,000 units.

What role has blogging played in the Clip-N-Seal story?

Blogging built our business because customers were able to find us on Google. New markets came to us, including those listed above and more.  When we launched, we just saw it as a superior way for consumers to re-seal bags in their home or kitchen. [You could] keep your chips and cereal fresh. Our obvious approach was to eventually get it in to large retailers. We started by selling directly to consumers via our web site and we spread the word via our blogs and linking to friends' blogs. We also placed a few ads in Google AdWords, just to see what would happen.

Next thing we knew, industrial customers were contacting us about all sorts of crazy uses. The market was coming to us - it was nirvana. Scuba divers, nuclear labs, dairy farms and others were finding us and showing us Clip-N-Seal's industrial potential. We recalibrated the website and AdWords to focus on these industrial applications and are currently running a Clip-n-Seal concept contest with an industrial design blog to encourage more innovative applications.

Clip-N-Seal is actually your sideline.  You’ve made it a subsidiary of Textura Design,Inc., of which you are founder. How has the success of Clip-N-Seal changed your core business?

It’s certainly raised our profile and we’re now consulting with businesses on how to blog. Note: Textura Design, Inc.

How have your blogs impacted your core business?

Textura Design's core business is now blogging. Clip-n-Seal's core business is to sell products.

How much traditional marketing, advertising and PR do you do to support Clip-N-Seal?

Very little,  but I think we’ll eventually have to do more traditional to get attention beyond the blogosphere. As big as we’d all like to think it is, the [blogging] community is still very small.

Where do you think Clip-N-Seal would be without the blog?

One of the millions of inventions that never make it.

How has blogging changed you?

More work! My career has been on the web, since 1994, and it finally feels like the industry has hit its stride. It’s more work, but way more satisfying.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes you’d like to share?

Our favorite one is the customer that bought Clip-n-Seals from our online store on a ferry with his PDA. That was a huge success, in terms of all that we do: Standards-based design, product development, blogging. It all hit with that one sale.

Additional comments?

I doubt that any of our industrial customers care that we have a blog or even know what that is.  What’s important is that they can find us, they got to know us on the site and our product meet their needs. “It’s not about the blog.” It’s about the product.

Comments

[orcmid]

You sent me off to the dictionary on this one. (I loved the article and it is certainly easy to try the product. Vicki will love it.)

I think "Brady" is DL Brady's surname, unless he's done something with making his first name appear last. I learned something new: for Catherine the Great, "the Great" is a surname.

[-b-]

Correct. Byron is my surname and DL (De Luxe) is my initials. If you try out Clip-n-Seals, please let me know how they work for you. And Shel thanks for the great interview.