Blog: Clip-n-Seal
Space oddity
12 Jul 05 by DL Byron
I sang Ashes to Ashes with the kids this morning in the car. They liked the synth flourishes, and the, "I'm happy, hope you're happy too" lyrics. I was about to explain to them the importance of David Bowie, when I heard, "ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know major tom's a junky," and thought about Space Oddity. That album and the hit title song were Bowie's first reinvention of himself. As I thought about it more, I realized the parallel with Discovery's mission to restore confidence in shuttle program. NASA is reinventing itself and about to fly. As I posted on the Clip-n-Seal blog, while we're thrilled to be a very small part of the shuttle program, we also realize the emotions and passions the Shuttle is carrying with it into flight.
If it's on board, we hope Clip-n-Seals work well and wish the crew good luck.
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Antarctica blogs
06 Jul 05 by DL Byron
With the Clip-n-Seal Cold Mondo en route to Antarctica, for the British Antarctic Survey, I googled Antarctica Blogs and found 75 Degrees South, a blog written by Simon Coggins. Simon is a BAS researcher, "who left England in November 2003 to work for the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica." BAS offers the fascinating Antarctic Diaries - Life Behind the Science and there's an Antarctica Technorati tag and one for Flikr. I also found the older Iceblog.
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Shuttle Countdown
16 Jun 05 by DL Byron
Today the Space Shuttle moved back to its Florida launch pad, a critical step in NASA's plan to launch it next month after a hiatus of more than two years. We're watching the Shuttle closely, hoping that Clip-n-Seals make it on flight. Our last update is that's it's a go, but that's not confirmed.
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Spacebound
15 Jun 05 by DL Byron
The Seattle PI reported on our shipments to NASA earlier this week. Jeremy Wagstaff of the WSJ picked it up, as did Oyayubizoku, and Coudal.com. It’s remarkable really and I’ve paused during the week to think about the “little clip that could.” If it does fly, and we’re hoping for “all systems go,” we’ll post on more of the story and roll out some marketing around it.
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A Passion for Plastics
11 Feb 05 by DL Byron
After the Blog Business Summit, Jon Lunddal Froda and Jesper Bindslev from the Copenhagen Business School interviewed me. We discussed blogging, product blogs, and more. At the end Jon asked me, “why the Passion for Plastics?” Good question and I responded that it’s because we made a product, launched it, people responded, and actually bought it. If it had been a failure, you wouldn’t be hearing me talk about it so much.
That passion is also discussed in the March issue of Fast Company. The article about Clip-n-Seal (subscription or access code required for 30 days) discusses our successes with blogging and how you have to be authentic on your blog. Being authentic is being passionate and vice versa. That goes for plastics or whatever you blog.
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SVN added to the Freshness Founders Club
10 Jan 05 by DL Byron
Our friends at SVN, scooped our Amazon announcement today. During the roll out, Jason was incredibly patient with our constant, "hey check this out, is this cool, and does that photo look ok?" questions. Jason is always helping out and we appreciate it. If we had a Freshness Founders Club, SVN would be our first honorary member.
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Our Fast 50 Entry
08 Dec 04 by DL Byron
Scott got our 2005 Fast 50 entry in, with two days to go! The Fast 50 is Fast Company magazine's annual readers' challenge, a worldwide search for ordinary people doing extraordinary things. We think Clip-n-Seal is extraordinary and sent our entry in.
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The Oprah Pitch
19 Nov 04 by DL Byron
The team has been reminding me to "write Oprah," so today I finally wrote a pitch on Blogging and Clip-n-Seal and sent it to Be on the Show
####
The blogosphere has reached the tipping point for personal sites, politics, and now businesses. My company invented a product and built a brand and market for it in the blogosphere. It has been a great success for us. We are a small business, with no marketing budget, and used blogs, in part, because getting into large retailers is very difficult.
2 years ago, I found myself out of work in the dotcom crash, had an idea for a product, invented it, built it, and launched it. I knew web design, so I started writing about the product on our site, as a blog, and the product started selling.
Now we are focusing on the market that came to us via our blog.
I suggest you have a blogger show with various bloggers who can talk about their success, including our story.
Here's our website:
Clip-n-Seal provides an air- and watertight seal to keep food and other products fresh.
And a link about blogs:
Thanks
####
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Clip-n-Seal Design Contest
12 Nov 04 by DL Byron
This week we collaborated with ID Fuel to launch a Design Contest called “Bonfire #3.” Clip-n-Seal is focusing on industrial applications and we are interested in what new closure concepts industrial designers can develop. Contest participants are encouraged to design a new interesting or unusual Clip-n-Seal product in a though-provoking way. We are offering some great prizes to the winners and their idea may make it to market.
An example is the Clip-n-Seal Shoe Concept designed by the Inventables Concept Studio and included in the November Design Aid, a hands-on, subscription magazine distributed to Fortune 500 companies. The contest extends DesignAid to designers everywhere. Clip-n-Seal built their brand and business in the blogosphere and now wants to give other designers a chance to offer an innovative product in a new industrial market.
Of course, the contest will be blogged and we are managing it with Basecamp.
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Clip-n-Seal to Focus on Industrial Markets
09 Nov 04 by DL Byron
Since we launched two years ago, an industrial market has found our product via Google, AdWords, and Blogs. Our original plan was to break into big-box retail, but as the industrial uses emerged, a new market for Clip-n-Seal developed. Specialty retailers continue to offer Clip-n-Seal and we sell directly to our customers via our website, but a big part of our strategy is to focus on industrial applications and to develop a new retail product from a successful industrial use.
Earlier this year, Inventables found us via an ID Fuel blog post and decided to feature Clip-n-Seal in their November DesignAid, a magazine of new materials packaged for Fortune 500 companies. We are very excited about DesignAid because it supports our effort to increase industrial applications. To coincide with the publication, we collaborated with ID Fuel to launch Bonfire 3#: Clip-n-Seal It!, a design contest. DesignAid is not accessible to everyone, so we wanted a way to get other industrial designers involved and see what ideas they develop. The Clip-n-Seal shoe concept drawing is an example. ID Fuel also published an interview where we discuss how we brought Clip-n-Seal to market.
Full-Circle Blog Marketing
Also interesting is the full-circle blog marketing: Clip-n-Seal to ID Fuel to Inventables back to ID Fuel and Clip-n-Seal. DesignAid is reaching potential corporate, industrial customers, the IDFuel contest is reaching even more designers, and the blogosphere is part of our business model.
We are expecting some outstanding opportunities and ideas to come from DesignAid and the ID Fuel Contest. A creative spark started Clip-n-Seal and creativity, in new markets, drives us today.
The Clip-n-Seal news page has more info and the related press releases. Core77 posts More from the Trenches about the interview.
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Blog: Clip-n-Seal, Dreeping
Sex Sells, but who is buying?
27 May 04 by DL Byron
Preparing resources for blogging panels and lectures is relatively bland when compared to the media coverage of blogging this week. There are sex scandals, Nick Denton saying he’s not making money, while Jason Calacanis says he is, and more articles from the NYTimes and Wired. Last month, I posted about blogging overload and I still don’t see a business in blogging — neither does Nick. He posts that it’s “Media about media about media” and business journalists’ sad, “wish fulfillment.”
Markets are conversation
While the media hype continues, more businesses are communicating with blogs. See TechEd Bloggers for an example. A business blog isn’t a revenue generator, it’s a market conversation. Last month, I was talking with Lenn Pryor about Clip-n-Seal and he said, “you’re riding the cluetrain.” I hadn’t really thought about it that way and googled the Cluetrain Manfesto.
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Trifecta of Blog Marketing
26 Apr 04 by DL Byron
Clip-n-Seal hit the Trifecta of Blog Marketing last week: Boing Boing, 37Signals, Gizmodo. I'm just starting to get caught up with all the other Texturadesign, Inc. business. On deck for this week:
- Writing a new Flash article
- Redesign
- Preparing the presentation for WebVisions 2004.
- Case study on Blog Marketing!
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WebVisions
14 Apr 04 by DL Byron
I'll be on a panel discussing how to use Weblogs to communicate with your customers at WebVisions 2004, this July in Portland, Oregon. I haven't attended WebVisions previously, but I know it attracts a great lineup.
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The Clip-n-Seal Brand and Blog
11 Mar 04 by benishs
In preparation for Byron’s appearance on the Blogging for Business Panel he asked me to write up some of my thoughts on how the Clip-n-Seal blog has affected the Brand…
I think the blog has extended our brand by exposing the human side of the business. In a world increasingly overrun by faceless mega-corporations, being small can in many ways be a brand asset. I believe there is an emerging trend for people to buy from local businesses, to buy things locally, to support the corner market, to help keep the little guy in business and stave off the Wal-Mart-tization of our country.
Clip-n-Seal is a small company started by a group of designers - we don’t hide that, we celebrate it. The blog gives a personal voice to the site, something that people can relate to. Yes, we are trying to sell you Clip-n-Seals, but we’re also sharing the excitement that comes with starting a company. I think there is a growing number of people who appreciate and respect that. And those are the people that tell their friends about us, those are the ones that are the key to our success.
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Blog: Clip-n-Seal, Design
SXSW Bits and Bytes
07 Jan 04 by DL Byron
The SXSW Interactive Festival blog runs a weekly tech question and I’m quoted, with other speakers, for this week. It’s an interesting and pertinent topic related to an outsourcing article by Micheal Bean.
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Blogging for Business
02 Jan 04 by DL Byron
I’ll be on the Blogging for Business Panel at SXSW March 14th to talk about the Clip-n-Seal blog. The panel invite was good news at year-end; and what a year it was: setbacks, success, stress, an engagement, and more. DKR and Nick will be there as well.
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IC-Style, Schiphol and more
11 Oct 03 by DL Byron
Fawny.org has started watching the trend of designers and developers who are committed to following official specifications. Fawny calls it the International Compliant Style (IC-Style) and added Clip-n-Seal to the list. As a design trope, IC-Style is an ethical-professional aesthetic as well as a graphical one. The simplest sites often require the most work. We didn’t specifically code towards an IC-Style, but are glad it’s being recognized. It’s just part of our business.
Owen describes it as Schiphol, Cloninger as HTMinimaLism, and Zeldman writes books about Designing with Web Standards.
I explain to my clients that with web standards we can finally design for the web and not print to web. That we’re using the medium for what it is and not trying to make the medium something that it isn’t. Call it minimalist or reductionist, for us, it’s a response to the drum-solo design of the late 90s and back then we coded many drum solos.
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Blogstakes Rant
09 Sep 03 by DL Byron
Pausing from adjusting the speakers once again in our home theater, I read "all blog marketers are going to hell." Blogstakes has been a remarkable branding success for Clip-n-Seal. Type Clip-n-Seal into any search engine and see the return. What we found the most interesting, is that some bloggers have added Clip-n-Seal to their list o' links, right next to their other favorites. I think they appreciate our approach. The web has been my career and I'm using my skills and medium to market a product I invented. I feel good about that. Much better than the dotcoms fantasies I once lived. A recent Seattle PI business article explains how we went from From High to Low Tech.
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