On My Desk: Letter Openers

By Caryl Piper, Team Coordinator, PartnerSource

On my desk sit a couple of letter openers. They are small, simple letter openers—but they are also a big reminder to adapt and evolve.

My career before coming to PartnerSource includes 16 years spent at the company that became the National Envelope Corporation. I was there from the early 1990s through 2010, when paper was king. In my roles as executive assistant to the chief operating officer and as a marketing coordinator, I had a front-row seat to an industry experiencing a large amount of transformation in a short window of time.  

As email and digital communications took over in business, National Envelope had to evolve, and quickly. We pivoted and utilized what we knew to move into new business—and began producing packaging, just as e-commerce giants like Amazon exploded. Through reinvention, we were able to survive. In 2011, National Envelope was purchased by another company devoted to print-related products.

There were lighter moments, too, that my letter openers symbolize for me—like the time someone in our company suggested flavoring the envelope glue, which of course would require the involvement of the FDA. Just about that time, “Seinfeld” ran the episode where the character Susan, George Costanza's fiancée, died from licking toxic glue on cheap wedding invitations. We received many phone calls asking about the safety of our glue. Suddenly, envelope glue became both a liability and a punchline!

The Texas Option industry is another area of business that evolves quickly and creates that constant need to adapt. Laws change and we advise our clients on the best way to move forward in light of them. Most recently, the way we enter information on the DWC form changed; instead of submitting information in a form format, we now input the information directly into the TDI database. While it may sound minor, it is a large shift for many different reasons. We all had to adapt and figure out the best way to work around it to get it done—and we did!

These little letter openers remind me that change isn’t the end. It’s the way forward every day.