T H E   M A I L B O X   S T U D I O

It was during March break when my Dad, Marcus & I were on our way home from the local movie theatre. As the headlights illuminated the dark country road ahead of us, we couldn't help but notice several old and decrepit roadside mailboxes which looked like they were just barely hanging onto their posts. At that point, just for fun, we started counting all the neglected looking mailboxes as we passed by. . . and there were lots ! Some appeared like they were held together with Tuck Tape, while others were held onto their posts with wrapped wire and still others were just rusty or deformed with missing doors. Marcus brought up the question if the mail delivery person would even bother stopping at some of the really bad ones? We talked about if maybe some people, due to unknown circumstances, might just need a little help. Since Dad taught us years ago how to operate power tools during the re-construction of our own roadside mailbox post, we immediately had the same idea ! We could not just offer to fix these but could create and build far more attractive looking replacement roadside mailboxes.

 As March break continued (and never actually ended due to this Pandemic), we got the news that our summer jobs would be cancelled. Marcus had signed up as a group leader working with small kids in a summer camp and I was looking forward to helping out at a hobby farm near Hockley Valley. This was all not going to happen. When we were told even our summer vacation plans were also to be cancelled, we then decided to just do our own thing and go the entrepreneurial route of starting our own business.

When March break continued into April, we focused on designing three product versions to offer and built prototype samples for the purpose of having a few pictures in hopes of eventually making a webpage. Before we could launch our webpage, we had received several orders from friends and neighbours just through word-of-mouth. To keep things rolling, we put together a printed flyer at the same time as finally posting our webpage and persuaded Dad to drive us around regularly in the countryside to hand deliver them. It was only then when we truly realized the demand for what we started. We were getting not only requests for local installations but surprisingly had customers willing to pick up from out of town. We got orders from as far south as Lakeshore in Mississauga, as far north as Elmvale near Collingwood and even from Kitchener and Oshawa!  I'm still not sure how that happened.