From the News-Sun, May 27, 2001

Demand is bubbling up
Gurnee company in the business of selling protective shipping wrap

   At a recent bat mitzvah for Jenny Mann, about 40 of her teen-age friends and schoolmates danced on sheets of bubble wrap, making popping sounds as they giggled.

   "They stamped out all the bubbles on 50 feet of bubble wrap sheets," her father Alan recalled.

   Alan Mann is the owner of Bubblefast LLC, a family business in Gurnee that sells bubble wrap widely used in shipping.

   Mann, 43, a certified public accountant by training, sort of bumped into the business, he said, "totally by accident."

   He had been selling a sundry of things from his attic and garage over the Internet through the eBay auction site. He added bubble wrap because one of his clients was a bubble wrap manufacturer in Chicago.

   "I knew everyone uses bubble wraps, so I got some rolls from him and started to sell them over on the Internet," he said.

Internet sales
Before he knew it, Mann found himself all wrapped up in bubble wrap.

   "I quit my job in December 1999 and went straight into bubble wrap," he said. Mann received his bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Illinois in 1979 and worked as a CPA and consultant for nearly 20 years.

   With his wife, Robin, he founded Bubblefast LLC, operating first from their home and selling through the Internet, where they found most of their buyers or the buyers found the Manns.

   "We used to drive to Chicago in a mini-van to pick up about 50 rolls a week from the manufacturer," said Mann, who is also president of the Woodland Grade School District Board of Education.

   "Now, we're getting two semi-tractor trailers of bubble wraps delivered to us a week," he added.

   The selling activities on the Internet have been so brisk and geographically diverse that the Manns set up their own Website, Bubblefast.com, to meet the bubbling demand.

   "We have customers from all over the 50 states including Hawaii," said Mann, who is also the founding president of Congregation Or Tikbah in Gurnee. Membership has grown from six families to 120 families.

Worldwide customers
From abroad, the Manns have had customers from Japan, Mexico and Canada. "People have found us on the Internet," he said.

   They have become one of the best customers of the Gurnee Post Office, where they go mailing dozens of packages filled with bubble wraps everyday — sometimes several trips a day.

   "We spend about $1,000 a day on postage and we use priority mail," said Mann. "Sometimes, the Post Office comes to us with a truck to load up the packages."

   The packages contain bubble wraps valued from as little as $12 to as much as $6,500 and more, he said. The average value is about $40. Their customers range from individuals to electronic companies and antique shops.

   "Our prices are at least 50 percent to 60 percent lower than retail stores," Mann said.

   As business volume picked up, the Manns moved their operation from their home to a rented warehouse at 101 Ambrogio Drive in Gurnee.

   The 1,700-square-foot warehouse, jam-packed with miles of bubble wrap sheet, is already too small. They're planning to move to a larger facility across the street in July.

   Bubblefast LLC is strictly a family enterprise with no outside full-time employees. The Manns' two daughters, Michelle, 17, a junior at Warren Township High School, and Jenny, an eighth grader at Woodland, help them out after school. So do friends of the girls.

   "But their homework from school comes first," Mann said of the girls.

   Last year, the family business, which started practically with nothing, grossed $500,000. But it has been a lot of a hard work to reach that milestone.

   The couple themselves work long hours, nearly 12 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. They expect their business to grow by 40 percent this year.

   "More and more people pay respect to the packages they send out," said Mann.

   Asked if he misses his days as a certified public accountant, he replied without hesitation: "Not a tiny bit. Because I'm now my own boss. It allows me to spend more time with my family and do the things I've always wanted to do."

   He added reflectively: "There's nowhere in the world where you can start a business with practically nothing. Only in America."

05/26/01