The “E” word…
Elements to Envelopments.
Everything evoking encouraging evolving.
Each day exploring the “E” word.
Expanding everyone’s ethos.
It was exciting.
It seemed endless.
But nothing is everlasting.
Thanks to entropy.
Emancipated.
Ended.
Exuding emotions.
Endings can be difficult. Or, maybe we don’t want some things to end. Then again, there’s those times we can’t wait to get to the end. Sometimes we can see the end ahead and struggle with what’s to come. Other times endings completely catch us off guard surprising the most alert of us. Either way, to get to the endings you have to start someplace. Oh, and let’s not forget endings are exits to new enticing beginnings.
How it started…
Never imagined I would be cofounder of a company selling designer paper goods and printing for creating custom invitations and announcements considering what world I had previously left. Gave up an amazing job years ago as the lead designer for a company because I was responsible for lots of printing and marketing communications for the just exploding personal computer industry 1979-1985. This was before the internet, email and digital communications so we had lots and lots of paper waste. I’ve been living with the cognitive dissonance ever since.
It was thanks to my friend and mentor Jim I met the Hefter sisters in 1985, five years after he first told each of us we should meet. The timing was perfect as I had returned to California from Boston for a few months. Holly and Deborah were getting ready to open their first business but didn’t have a name or branding direction. After speaking with them we took on the project which led to coming up with the name “Elements.” From there I conjured the logo featuring the custom hand drawn “e” eventually used for their signage.
Then I left for Europe for five years. Upon my return in 1990 they were enlarging their store and had taken on one of the first desktop publishing software packages specifically developed for stationery and invitation design. Together we remodeled their store to feature Elements “Custom Card Bar” where you could work with a designer to co-create your custom communique.
Elements pioneered turning a retail card and gift store into a fully functioning design studio with products on hand to speed up the turn around times and customizations. This eventually led to the first three dimensional designs Deborah created for her customers. She seeded the product foundations for what Holly would eventually name, “Envelopments by Elements.” A product line designed and created by designers for designers.
A prototyping and test marketing endeavor followed rounding out a systematized line of products with mix and match colors, shapes and sizes. Based on this initial success, Envelopments, Inc. was formed in 1995 by sisters Deborah and Holly adding me and my brother David as founding partners. Holly oversaw administration of the business, Deborah product development, while David and I took us to market. A number of key Elements employees came along who grew with, and helped to grow Envelopments emerging into what it would become.
This quickly launched us out of operating from the back room of Elements retail store. We took on our first warehouse lease of 1500 sq. feet. Two years later we doubled our space. Thereafter in 2005 we ended up in our own 12,000 sq. ft. facility redesigning the interior of the property to meet our needs.
Our big PR break came in 2000 when Envelopments was voted as the top invitation choice in one of the first live wedding on-air cross-promotions with NBC TV and The Knot online. The reverberation of that attention energized the Envelopments team with a new sense of intention.
What started as a “build-to-order” method to fabricate custom paper goods in an expedited way for our resellers and offer design solutions so they did not have to reinvent the wheel or hold inventory, turned into designing a business that was a full service design, production, print and assembly services enterprise… oh yeah that also included customer service and sales teams and producing all of our own photography, advertising, trade show booth designs and everything else on the creative front that might pop up.
With this increase in demand and offerings we took on upgrading our business and manufacturing software systems. This led to working with SAP Business One customizing it for efficiency, flexibility and connectivity to the internet.
We also created one of the first Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud extensions for invitation designers and an online tool on our website wherein you could design, prototype and order our products.
Things were looking great. We had established ourselves as one of the leading suppliers and design companies encouraging and supporting other custom invitation and announcement designers.
How it ended…
Then COVID19 snuck up on us all. After 25 years in the business we were stunned. No celebrations, gatherings, announcements needing our products and services. Business stopped. Like it did for many. We sent everyone home and had some difficult decisions to make as time went by and we felt into how uncertain the future was.
Its been almost five years now since 2020 when we closed our doors essentially walking away from the business. It was time to let it go, not wander into debt to try and save it with so much uncertainty. We did find a way to keep the brand alive at first but it has changed hands three times over the four years since we exited the business. The last to take it on acknowledging how hard it would be to do what we did.
Apparently they couldn’t make it either. The website is no longer available. I just found out from an old employee who followed on with the brand as a key employee, that the current owners of Envelopments had stopped attempting to revive it in October. She is officially the last original employee to cross the Envelopments finish line. And now the last company to attempt to continue the brand has led it to rest.
Its time has finally come for us to say goodby. The evolution of the retail business Elements Custom Card Bar evolving into the wholesale design and manufacturing company Envelopments has truly ended.
To all of those who traveled the path with us, at Elements, Envelopments, our suppliers and customers… it felt like we never had the chance to have an ending. We couldn’t say anything at the time to upset the business potential moving forward for the new owners.
Little did we know when we began this story the journey it would take, the joys our offerings would tickle, the difficulties we would encounter, the changes in the marketplace, and how quickly humanity’s methods of communicating would radically shift since the 1990’s.
To be honest I’m kind of sad to see Envelopments go. But as my mom would have said, I’ve got a case of the “M.E.s” …mixed emotions tripping all over themselves. It was a business I struggled to be comfortable in for 25 years yet afforded us the ability to raise a family, support a number of other families, design systems and solutions for other designers, and learn about ourselves along the way.
After the challenge of closing down Envelopments life took a completely unexpected direction. But that’s another story… and also features one of my favorite “E” words. Oh and if you didn’t know, Deborah and I have two beautiful adult daughters… so in essence this story will never really end ;-)
Following you’ll find some photos from our archives I almost forgot about. Or maybe I wanted to forget how difficult that time period was rummaging through everything while moving out of our facility alone during COVID. Its just a smattering of all that has transpired but seems to represent the milestones that wanted to be memorialized and mark the end of this story.
The Story of “E” — Exquisitely Elementally Envelopments
The Eleprocon Chronicles
Eleprocon mythOS 2birds BEAMing noosphere
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