Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

New kitchen gadget has appetite for junk mail

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published December 23, 2006

Annoyed by relentless credit card mailings or blank cash-advance checks you're afraid to pitch without opening? Well, Staples designed a shredder that slices and dices them unopened.

It's looks like a coffeemaker because it's meant for the kitchen appliance counter where who knew? most people sort their mail.

Priced at $69.99, MailMate is touted as strong enough to chew up credit card offers (including plastic cards), blank cash-advance check pitches up to 20 pages thick, even those unsolicited AOL plastic CDs - unopened - in one chomp.

"We say shred it and forget it," said Connie Walsh, who leads a team that creates gadgets you didn't know you need for the office products retailer. "It empties like tossing out coffee grounds."

Instead of slicing junk mail into spaghetti strips that in some shredders come out like paper dolls, Mail Mate makes confetti.

The U.S. Postal Service delivers 212-billion pieces of junk mail a year.

To prod prospects to open envelopes, some credit card companies stamp letters "pre-approved" and tuck in a credit-card size piece of cardboard. Staples found people fear identity theft so much today they feel compelled to open and destroy mailings that contain personal information.

After surveys, focus groups and studies that tracked 18 people around their homes, Staples learned people often retreat to the kitchen after emptying a mailbox. That's where they open and toss junk mail into the trash or separate it for shredding elsewhere.

Staples declined to reveal MailMate sales two months after its launch, but they exceed company expectations.

"For most it's a second shredder," said Walsh.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

[Last modified December 22, 2006, 23:24:16]