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.

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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. There’s a company that owns the rights to bubble wrap. Yep.

Dave Young:
I’m in. Let’s pop, pop, pop. Tell me more.

Stephen Semple:
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.

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 bubbles.

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 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. 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. 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. In fact, over World War II, there was a 400% increase in the manufacturing of 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, that if my parents had put bubble wrap wallpaper up, that would’ve lasted about a week.

Stephen Semple:
Well, depends on how tall you were.

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 weren’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 launched a new computer but it’s big. They released the 1401 computer, and it has really fragile components in it. These things were not rigorous, and they had to be delivered in good shape to work. So how do you send small, delicate parts? At the time, how people packed things was in paper and sawdust. And dust does not work well for computer components 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 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. They call the business Sealed Air Corp and IBM basically signs 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 agreed to do all this. And the product at that point becomes known as bubble wrap.

They also recognize they had a challenge ’cause what they didn’t want to be was a one-trick pony. Having IBM is great, and 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 make smaller bubble wrap and put 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, directly to consumers. So they opened up a whole brand new market, which then also led to other ways of using bubble wrap. And today, it’s a $10 billion business.

Dave Young:
You can buy it by the roll all over the place.

Stephen Semple:
Yep. A $10 billion business today. So these guys, they came up with this idea and really became innovative. But what I love about it is 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 don’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. That wasn’t even the reason they invented it.

Stephen Semple:
So to me, there were 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 a 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 have 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, and pop. Right? Kinesthetic, feel. So you think about when somebody is popping and playing with that afterward, 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? It has to be a little of both, right?

Stephen Semple:
It’s a bit of both. Yeah. I’m sure about it.

Dave Young:
Yeah. 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 questions@theempirebuilderspodcast.com.

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