When you check the mail, you can usually expect to find a predictable mix of bills, a clothing catalogue or two, and, probably, more bills
But mailboxes once held a bit of magic. Some of us might remember the small thrill of receiving an unexpected postcard or a letter from a loved one.
For those who miss that feeling — or who’ve never known it — mail clubs are returning some of that whimsy back to our mailboxes.
Signed, sealed, delivering
The concept is simple: For a small monthly fee, mail club subscribers receive an envelope of hand-curated print material, like illustrations, poems, stickers, letters, etc.
They combine Gen Z’s love of physical media and the excitement of a blind box, and have become a popular way for the digitally exhausted to connect offline and slow down from the fast pace of the internet by engaging with things they enjoy in a tactile, distraction-free way.
And while, for some creatives, the point might be to share their art, it’s also proven to be a lucrative side gig, per The Wall Street Journal.
- Last month, designer-turned-crossing guard Christine Tyler Hill started sending out a zine detailing her streetside observations for $8/month. Now, she has ~2k subscribers and pulls in ~$14k a month.
- The Tiny Post by Texas-based Hannah Gustafson, a monthly mailer that includes a personal letter and recipes, brought it $45k+ in revenue in January.
In some cases, demand has been so high that creators, who create, assemble, and send out the packages themselves, are struggling to keep pace.
Not long after launching, Hill had to pause new subscriptions, leading to a 3.6k-person waitlist.
Snail mail’s revival…
… is taking other forms, too. Not all are necessarily analog, but they all tap into the same desire to slow life down just a smidge.
- For ~$88 a year, History By Mail sends subscribers reproductions of historical letters and documents along with explainers.
- The Slowly app takes snail mail digital by connecting users with pen pals around the world. But unlike sending a DM or an email, messages take longer to deliver based on how far pen pals are from one another.
- Escargot, an AI-powered app that just raised $2.8m in seed funding, lets users send physical greeting cards from their smartphones. For $8, it’ll print, stamp and mail a card for you — no post office trip needed.
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