Shrink-wrapped jackets can be put directly in the mail – as long as the package is securely sealed and easily handled, the USPS is happy. But there may be times when you want a more secure jacket- one with a zipper pull that can’t possibly come open. Or if want to inkjet addresses onto the jackets. Or how about if you are doing a recordable disc project with us – you’ll need to burn & insert the disc, so no options for shrinkwrapping them.

And while we’re at it, here are a couple of conceptual drawings we have lying around. It is by no means a complete collection but may help you visualize ideas. These are anywhere from 2 panel to 10 panel, and one disc to many. Everything we do is custom made, so we can vary any part of this—the pocket, the height, the folding configuration, the zipper placement, et.c etc. etc. You know us — custom all the way.

Pop Up Paks are a really, really neat product we make – it’s ours and we love it!

“Normal” (wow, we have a normal) pop-ups do not have a zipper pull, but instead have a velcro closure and are send shrinkwrapped. This gives the client the ability to reseal them (somewhat) once they’ve ton off the shrinkwrap and been duly impressed by the 3D nature.

We can, however make a variation on this (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?) and add a mailer strip as we did for this retirement home:

While we’re at (when are we not), we have yet another twist on this. We can make a TALL POP-UP Pak, and even with a zip strip.
Want to see a booklet in it? We can do that too. Ok, stopping now.

Wide mailers have become symbolic of “dvd mailers.” It somehow sets them apart and one gives the feel that it’s a DVD rather than a CD. You can put anything in them of course. This is rather like a tall jacket with a pinch pocket turned sideways.

One really key question you want to ask yourself, is how are you going to print the addresses. If you are planning on inkjetting them onto the mailers directly, you need to leave an address box on the back unvarnished. So we’ll do spot varnish on the front basically, and the back square can go bare. If there’s a gloss on it, the ink jetting won’t work. It’ll smear all over the place. John Smith will turn into JJJJJJJJJn SMMMMMMth and Mr. Smith won’t get his disc. Then you'll get his nasty call.

One of our government clients always does the distribution themselves, and they have us make the discs in mailers, leave a box unvarnished on the back panel, and then they run them through their printer. We’ve been doing that contract for so many years. New people are always concerned: "Won’t the printer hurt the disc?" So far we haven’t seen a printer hurt a disc in a mailer. But it might very well depend on the printer. Maybe they have really nice printers, whereas yours might eat your brand new mailer. We’re happy to send you a sample of your title to test out. (We sometimes think that printers have moods…have you ever noticed? Sometimes too they talk amongst themselves. Pretty sure.)

You could hand write the address on the mailer (unvarnished square too), but do be careful , Best Beloved, to not use a ball point on the disc. That will hurt it.

Optionally, address labels work quite well. If you like, you can send us your excel file and we can print them out and even apply them (ever have gummy labels get all messed up in your laser printer, not nice, let us do them.) But do check on whether you’re going to need presort & address verify & clean up and all that. That’s best handled by a mailing house. We print ‘em as we see ‘em.

Hey, we can even do envelopes if you want – but you won’t need them if you’re doing a zipper strip mailer.

Do we do it? Nope. Uh-uh. Not if you paid us a zillion bucks. Well ok- one exception – we do it for the IRS every year. But you know they’re such nice folks. (Actually, our guy there *is* really nice…how come he can’t handle our taxes??) We work with the mailing house, but we see what’s involved so we let them do the dirty work.

What we will do for you is give you a nice referral to a mailing house, help you get a quote for your project there, and drop ship your mailers to them. We can help you with samples so they can see the exact product and measure for postage, and discuss how you lot are going to go the addresses.

You really do want to have a mailing house handle these types of details – trust us- it gets very, very complex. You’re going to have to get a bulk mailing permit, and the postage is going to depend on all kinds of presort and address clear up thingies. Postal receipts and methods to PO boxes, international, first class, second, what to do with bad addresses, where they get returned to – oh my. You want a mailing house to do this stuff. Let us make discs and pretty packages for you. We’re good at pretty.

The USPS does have something against tiny packages, so you’re best of checking at the PO you’ll be using. Make sure they bless your package.
This client used a slightly larger version of the mini disc mailer to get around that size issue (yes we have a variation on this one too, but you guessed that?):

Here’s the regular size: