Mail Box Center Opens Store On Sullivan

Thu., July 27, 1995

By Ward Sanderson wards@spokesman.com

After eight years of owning the Mail Box Center at Sprague and Argonne, owner Karen Mauth has shipped just about everything.

She’s packed things you’d expect - delicate items like fine art, china, glass picture frames and computer equipment. She’s also sent live trees and an 80-pound concrete duck off to their destinations.

About the only thing she won’t stuff in a foam-filled box is a real mallard. “No live animals,” Mauth said, laughing.

That limitation hasn’t seemed to hurt the business any. Mauth, a 38-year-old single mother of two, opened a second location this month at 415 N. Sullivan Road.

Mail Box Center specializes in packing and shipping items via standard Postal Service, Airborne Express, Western Union or United Parcel Service. The trick is more in the packing than the shipping.

“You have to pack things so they won’t break when they fall off of a conveyer belt,” Mauth said. That’s not always as easy as filling a box full of plastic bubble material.

Expensive items such as sculptures sometimes need to be completely encased in a foam mold. The artwork is placed in a box, and liquid foam is injected into it - it solidifies perfectly around whatever is in the box. To get the item out again, the foam shell has to be cracked.

“It won’t move,” Mauth said.

Although shipping accounts for the bulk of the business, Mail Box Center also provides other services. The stores offer copying, faxing, lamination and business card printing.

Obviously, those services appeal to the business crowd, and that’s exactly why the new store opened where it did. Jennifer Keister, a Mail Box Center manager, said the growth along the Sullivan corridor makes it the ideal spot to cater to the needs of the other new businesses moving there. Keister said about half of the original store’s clientele are business people. She expects that percentage will be even higher at the Sullivan site. “But it’s still a good location for people living in Otis Orchards, Greenacres and Liberty Lake,” she said.

More so now than ever, Mail Box Center doesn’t have a monopoly. Larger chain and franchise stores offering similar services have opened in the Valley. What keeps customers loyal to the Valley vendor is customer service, Mauth said.

The company employs a total of five people, plus Mauth. Regular customers gain familiarity with the staff. “That’s important to me, getting to know the customer’s name,” Mauth said.

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