Sealed Air Corp, the maker of the original Bubble Wrap, last week announced it would roll out a new, ‘unpoppable’ version of its signature product.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports the new bubbles look like traditional Bubble Wrap, but won’t burst when pressure is applied.
Bubble Wrap was invented by Sealed Air Corp’s founders in 1957, but is now widely manufactured due to the patent expiring in 1981.
The new version, dubbed iBubble Wrap, is sold in flat plastic sheets which are filled using a custom-made pump sold separately by Sealed Air Corp for $US5000.
The original Bubble Wrap contains individually sealed pockets of air which make a satisfying popping noise when squeezed. However, iBubble Wrap is laid out in columns of connected air pockets, meaning air is pushed into neighbouring bubbles.
The North Carolina-based company is making the drastic change to appeal to space-conscious online retailers and revive its flagging business.
Traditional Bubble Wrap ships in large, pre-inflated rolls which are hard to ship and take up huge amounts of space. One roll of the new version uses roughly one-fiftieth of the space before it’s inflated, according to the WSJ.
Sealed Air Corp is seeking to boost its flagship product, which has lost market share to imitators in far-flung markets as a result of prohibitively expensive shipping costs.
Rob Thyen of Ozburn-Hessey Logistics LLC told the WSJ the logistics industry earns on average $US25 in revenue per square foot, so if a facility used 3000 square feet of space to store Bubble Wrap, it would lose $75,000 a year in potential revenue.
