The Man Who Pushed The Blue Envelope

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Terry Loebel wasn’t looking to start an advertising phenomenon when he went to his mailbox in 1967 and inspiration struck.

Valpak, the company Loebel soon started, is today an advertising giant, sending its trademark blue coupon-stuffed envelope to 45 million homes each month.

Valpak wasn’t the first company to start targeting consumers by mail, but it has become one of the most successful - it expects to ship 20 billion coupons in 520 million envelopes to U.S. and Canadian households this year from its massive new $220 million facility in St. Petersburg, Fla.

As advertising has become more intrusive, spawning annoying pitches via e-mail, popup ads and flimsy mailbox fliers, Valpak has managed to find ways to stay in consumers’ good graces with discounts for everything from oil changes to kitchen cabinets.

Valpak’s early success could be filed into the annals of “beginner’s luck.”

In late 1967, Loebel was living on Florida’s Gulf Coast, a self-described scruffy factory worker on furlough from the American Motor Co. plant in Milwaukee.

That’s when he did something he usually let his wife do - he picked up the mail.

He stumbled upon an envelope stuffed with coupons for store products, and a spark of curiosity sent him to the post office. After learning that bulk mail could be sent for less than 4 cents, Loebel hatched his plan for Valpak.

His first pitch to a Clearwater TV repair shop quickly led to other business owners who were skeptical of Loebel’s plans, but enticed by his promise they wouldn’t have to pay if the experiment failed.

Days after the first white, coupon-stuffed envelopes arrived in mailboxes, the business owners started calling. When was the next mailing, they wondered, and more importantly, could he expand to other cities?

He began selling Valpak franchises, hired graphic designers and soon bought a factory.

Loebel decided Valpak envelopes should have a distinct color, and began polling women at his factory. They chose blue - a color reaffirmed by focus testing.

Within 11 years, the company was mailing nationally. Loebel semiretired in 1979, eventually selling his interest in 1986.

Photo by Associated Press.

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