There are few things in life quite as tempting as a fresh sheet of Bubble Wrap. Sure, technically it’s there to protect whatever new thing you’ve ordered. But once that package is open? That sheet of trapped air bubbles has another very important job to do. A pop here. A pop there. Maybe hand it over to the kids. Maybe keep it for yourself for a few minutes of stress relief. We’re not judging.
But what you might not know about Bubble Wrap is that it was a happy accident. In fact, the funny-feeling film could have been a failed experiment left on the drawing room floor if it weren’t for the resilience of two inventors who knew they had created something useful.
They just had no idea what that something was.
Wallpaper…But Make It POP!
In 1957, American engineer Alfred Fielding and his business partner, Swiss chemist Marc Chavannes, teamed up to create a textured wallpaper they hoped would appeal to the growing Beat generation. Their idea was to put two pieces of plastic shower curtain together and run them through a heat-sealing machine. The result was a sheet of plastic film covered in trapped air bubbles.
The wallpaper didn’t take off. And for good reason. Can you imagine a home with Bubble-Wrap-covered walls? Even worse, Bubble-Wrap-covered walls you aren’t supposed to pop?
But Fielding and Chavannes didn’t toss their invention aside just because its first intended use didn’t pan out. They had, after all, figured out how to create patterned air bubbles between plastic sheets. They secured patents for the process and started thinking about what else they could do with it.
And they came up with a lot of ideas. More than 400, in fact. Among those hundreds was a potential idea for greenhouse insulation. It made it past the drawing board and into actual greenhouses, but ultimately, that idea didn’t work either.
Strike two. Still, they kept going.
A POP of Opportunity
In 1960, Fielding and Chavannes founded Sealed Air Corporation to keep developing their unusual product. A year later, they decided to try something new: using Bubble Wrap as packaging material. Their timing couldn’t have been better.
IBM had recently introduced its 1401 computer, a machine that would become so influential it was called the Model T of the computer industry. But there was a problem. IBM needed a better way to protect the delicate machines during transit.
At the time, one of the best options available was balled-up newsprint. It was messy, ink could rub off on products and the people handling them, and it offered little protection. Suddenly, all those little pockets of air had a purpose.
Bubble Wrap was the answer IBM needed. The company could ship its computers without damage and other businesses quickly took notice. This breakthrough opened the door for Bubble Wrap to become the protective packaging product we know today.
POP Goes the Business
Once Bubble Wrap found its place in protective packaging, demand grew. Smaller packaging companies embraced the new technology and the product evolved right along with the market.
Big bubbles and little bubbles. Wide and short sheets. Large and short rolls. What started as experimental wallpaper became an entirely new packaging category. Somewhere along the way, people discovered another use Fielding and Chavannes may or may not have included in their 400 ideas: popping it for fun.
But while people discovered the pure joy of popping Bubble Wrap and businesses discovered its value, Sealed Air struggled to turn a profit. Fielding and Chavannes knew how to invent. Building a profitable global business was another challenge entirely.
In 1971, T.J. Dermot Dunphy became CEO of Sealed Air and helped turn that around. Annual sales grew from roughly $5 million in his first year to approximately $3 billion by the time he left the company in 2000.
Don’t Stop Until It POPs
More than six decades later, Bubble Wrap is still the POP-ular product that put Sealed Air on the map. The once-failed wallpaper became a packaging icon, a source of oddly satisfying stress relief, and a product beloved enough to have its own appreciation day on the last Monday in January.
But the real story of Bubble Wrap isn’t that Fielding and Chavannes accidentally invented something useful. It’s what they did after their original idea failed. They didn’t become so attached to what the product was supposed to be that they missed what it could be.
Wallpaper didn’t work, so they tried insulation. Insulation didn’t work, so they kept looking. And eventually, they found a problem their product was uniquely suited to solve.
At Gibraltar Business Capital, we know the first plan isn’t always the one that gets a business where it needs to go. Markets change, challenges show up, and opportunities look different than expected. What matters is having the flexibility to adjust and a partner willing to keep looking for the creative solution that works.
Because sometimes the idea isn’t wrong. It just hasn’t found its IBM yet.