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Evolution of the Netflix Envelope
An anonymous reader wrote to mention an article over on CNN Money. They go into some detail on what seven years of tinkering has done for the simple red Netflix envelope. From the article: "Years of experimentation went into creating the perfect DVD envelope. In 1999, Netflix started out with a heavy cardboard mailer. With only 100,000 subscribers, costs weren't a concern yet. Then the company experimented with plastic envelopes, which proved not to be recyclable, and padding, which added too much to postage costs. Both top-loading and side-loading envelopes made an appearance."
They re use those things and don't forget what most people rent! I wouldn't seal them with a lick.
Imagine shipping 1 billion DVDs for one cent cheaper.
Netflix somehow always knows when I've sent a movie back before it actually gets there. I always assumed the barcode was somehow related to that.
As a long-time netflix user I think the paper envelope they have now is damn near perfect. It's dirt cheap, but keeps the DVD safe. It's recycleable too. It takes 5 seconds to put the DVD in securely and be ready to mail it.
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
That said, I've always wondered why Netflix didn't use more square envelopes. Some of the earlier designs looked that way. I wonder if it has to do with sorting or some such.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Would I save them any time by ensuring it is visible? Can anyone from Netflix corp answer this?
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Um, p2p?
I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
Only a pointless flame war can guide me through this conundrum. That's why I'm turning to you, O Wise Slashdotters.
For those of you who think that there hasn't been much technological progress since, say, 1980 (except perhaps computers which are special*), this is how it happens. Take this sort of incremental improvement by one company in one very small facet of our lives, and multiply it across any number of thousands of products, carefully trimmed and optimized and made more efficient. You only notice the things that the process isn't very good at; UI, for instance.
(*: And computers only seem special for two reasons: One, most fields don't get to experience exponential growth for decades at a time, and two, you know more about them. There's a lot going on under the hood of any number of other products, too. Familiarity breeds contempt; so does ignorance.)
I love the innovation but personally my postman always seemed to find that ONE weakness in em. I was at an apartment complex with those little metal boxes. I swear the postman would fold them every time and I'd still get a envelope of broken pieces. Happened more times than I'd like to recall.
It's a pain when you get your movie and you have to be careful to avoid damanging the return envelope while you open it.
Plus, I can't send it back with a different movie because we only get one at a time.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
I guess it's just the idea that incremental progress is quite fascinating when you look at it all at once.
That said, I also think it would be cool to see something on the evolution of slashdot interfaces,
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Sorry, but your calculations are a little off. It says 1.4Mil per day for 4.2Mil subscribers.
You are correct in that it works out to "3", but your units are wrong.
It is 1 movie per subscriber every 3 days which is in keeping with my personal use.
12.6Mil per day would be 3 movies per subscriber.
I'll go out on a limb and guess that word problems are not your forte.
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
Would that be +1 or a -1 dumbass mod?
I've noticed that the return address on the newer netflix envelopes now reads "Nearest Netflix Shipping Facility" and then has a PO box located in my very small rural town. It makes you wonder if they dont scan the barcodes in different locations and then once that nearby local has marked it as received your next disc is sent. There has to be something to the way they get movies to me so quickly when I live so far from a major city.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
My guess is that they are saying that at on any given day, 1.4 million DVDs are "in-transit".
If you ship 10 DVDs on one day, and it takes 3 days to get to the destination, you would still have 10 DVDs in-transit per day.
It sounds funny, knowing what's "in-transit" is an important inventory metric.
Plus, they might be counting the return trips as well.
It's impossible to know, however, without having the underlying data.
You may not have to be an engineer to send a letter, but to design an envelope that protects the DVD being sent while minimizing cost and customer frustration is quite a bit more complicated than simply sending a letter.
By continually evaluating and optimizing their envelopes, Netflix has been able to both save quite a bit of money (as someone above pointed out, saving 1 cent on every envelope adds up quick when you're sending out millions of envelopes a year) and design a sturdy envelope that is remarkably simple and easy to use. Good design should never be laughed at.
That's a fascinating look at innovation. But they still annoy me in several ways in that it's too easy to damage the return mailer while opening it. First, the perforations on the thin flap are too sturdy. Second, the circular sticker is a pain; unless I am careful I wind up ripping the thin layer with my address on it. If the circular sticker were thinner or perforated or had notches in it to act as stress risers then it would easily rip the way it should. Lastly there is, the flap with the adhesive strip on it to seal it. The line of perforations is often stronger than the fold on the other side of the adhesive strip. Several times I have had to tape a Netflix mailer closed because I accidently ripped off the adhesive strip. Simply cutting notches in the ends of the perforation would get it started ripping.
The fact that there is an "OPEN ALONG EDGE" notice says to me they aren't done innovating. I should be able to open it naïvely the first and get at my disk without worrying about damaging the return envelope.
We're sending DVDs.
In case you weren't aware, DVDs have several properties unlike letters:
1) Rigid
2) Reflective
3) Smooth
If your package alters any of those three properties then your DVD has become a coaster.
Additionally your package has other constraints outside of mailing DVDs:
1) Easy to use
2) Cheap
3) Useful
Cheap means making them lighter and more durable. Useful means making them more productive in the warehouse and as advertising. Easy to use means more users.
GPL Deconstructed
I tried Ubuntu's ShipIt service for a few free CDs. They came, but the cardboard holders had scratched the surface enough that the disks were no longer reliable. Of course I found this out 3/4 of the way thru an install in front of a bunch of people I was trying to impress with Linux.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Imagine being able to go online and request any movie you want, and be watching it within the hour. (OK, other than using BitTorrent!). You just go down to the local Redbox kiosk and pick it up within the hour.
This is on the way, and you can't beat the current prices ($1/day) for new releases. And, there is a website with Redbox codes where you can get A LOT of free rentals, too.
So, if you are in one of 10 major metros you can get this today.
So, forget the red envelope, and get ready for the Redbox.
If they don't properly affix the sticker that seals the flap, the USPS sorting machines can mangle them pretty good.
In fact, just today I received only the address flap in the mail. It must've been ripped off from the envelope (who knows what happened to the dvd), and those persistant bastards at the post office delivered just a red flap.
I've also received a disk that had the flap partially torn off. It took two days longer than normal, and the USPS had placed it in a "Sorry we damaged your mail" envelope.
So not quite the perfect solution, but still pretty good.
As a long-time netflix user I think the paper envelope they have now is damn near perfect. It's dirt cheap, but keeps the DVD safe. It's recycleable too. It takes 5 seconds to put the DVD in securely and be ready to mail it.
I don't think their so perfect. I work for the post office and have to handle the damn things. I'm not the guy that stuffs your mailbox, I run the sorting machines. (about 95% of your letters are sorted by machine). Problem is, the DVDs jam the machine because they don't flex (enough). They need to be run on a special machine used to sort magazines. I regularly see their ripped envelopes and occasionally broken DVDs from the letter sorters, where they are mixed in with normal letters and difficult to see and remove. The envelope is too flimsy, and the adhesive sticker to "seal" it is a bit of a problem. It sometimes sticks to the adjacent mailpiece. You are seeing the result of "engineering" something to just barely meet requirements, to save a penny or two.
The Blockbuster mailer is great from my point of view. Envelope is sturdy, and fits and protects it's contents well. The NetFlix mailer has the floppy empty "tail" because it is rectangular rather than square. Difficult to handle to load into the machines. This deficiency requires more time to handle the NetFlix, so it costs more to process. But that's OK, 'cause you're paying for it by subsidizing it with your first class postage on other mail. You do realize you subsidize the discounted postage bulk mail pays with your full rate first class postage, right?
I dunno. Sounds more like intelligent design to me.
Now, if this 1.4 million mailers daily idea is to be believed, even $0.0001 saved in printing/scanning/postage comes out to saving over $51,000 annually per hundreth of a cent per mailer. If Netflix decides to spend the extra cent to add padding or a second envelope, that's a loss of over five million dollars to them each year.
In short, your FlixClone can get away with 'better' packaging because it's not having to deal with these ridiculously marginal values. Once and if their subscribers grow to as much as Netflix's current base, they'll either notice how much it's costing them or else cripple themselves financially.
Now, if we make a change to the accounting software to redirect a fraction of that penny left over from rounding operation to a different account we could bring down the evil of Netflicks! Who's with me?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Weight (within reason) shouldn't be an issue. You can send letters up to 1 ounce, for base USPS postage. Since a DVD only weighs half that, and they only send one at a time, they could have very heavy envelopes before it would cost them any extra money. I think it would be a good idea for them to send 2 at a time (and in an envelope 2/3rds as large) which would make this more of an issue, but that's another story.
DVDs will occasionally break in the mail, no matter what. An envelope would have to be incredibly strong to even slightly reduce the incidents of damage. So, it's the DVD's own strength and flexibility that keeps them from breaking, which has NOTHING to do with the mailer. The envelope is just scratch-protection...
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The referenced article is very interesting and I often wonder about the process that goes into such things or what seems to be a lack of process. One thing that has me wondering is the rack managment of some servers. You have companies like HP that in the past has made some great contributions to technology with a wide variety of electronics, test equipment, and computing with both hardware and software. All that being said, HP has some of the strangest contraptions for server wire management. A few years ago, they had this setup with these retractable cables that could probably sever your fingers if they let loose (like those retractable keychains) connected to what looked like a small cargo net with about 6 sets of velco straps, the contraption even had numbers so you knew where to attach what as you were fighting with the velco glob. You put your wires in that thing if you could. They eventually moved over to the swinging metal rack and after several years of revisions, they finally have something reasonable. For a company that was one of the most respected engineering companies in the world, you'd think they could make better progress with wire management and rack slider setups then what they have offered up to this point.
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YES! Yes, we realize that. We do. We really do. It's okay. We all totally realize it. And we're grateful. Did we say we're grateful? We are. Okay. Now. Just put down the rifle...
You do realize you subsidize the discounted postage bulk mail pays with your full rate first class postage, right?
i on
Funny, I was always told the exact opposite. Namely, that the discounts given to presorted bulk mail were actually less than the labor saved by the Post Office as a result of the presorting, thus most "junk mail" and stuff shipped at the bulk rate is more profitable, on a piece-by-piece basis, than individual First Class letters. So that really it's all those catalogs and crap that are subsidizing the Post Office's ability to deliver your letter to Grandma for 39 cents.
If what you're saying is true, and it's the other way around, then what I've basically been told my entire life about the Post Office is wrong.
I just ran some quick Google searches and I'm not the only person under this impression:
"Most people are unaware that bulk mailing is highly profitable for the U.S. Postal Service and it subsidizes first class mail." http://www.lawmall.com/abuse/abe-mail.html
"Bulk mail thereby subsidizes low cost stamps for letter, magazine, and book mailing." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_mail#Legislat
&c., etc.
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That sounds right, but I think bulk mail is still bad for us. I would rather spend a dollar apiece on the 2 or 3 letters I send out each year than spend time almost every day wading through junk mail.