Kelly said that they too had experimented with other message vehicles, like carrots, but that the basics remained the most popular. Bekhit’s company now offers a “potato postcard” feature where you can upload an image and they will print it directly onto the side for Christmas this year they experimented with holiday-themed gifts - a potato Christmas-tree decoration, or a lump of coal. Kelly and Bekhit both said they consider their companies “gag-gift retailers” rather than potato-only ventures. “But I guarantee it was the only potato people received.” “It’s not the cheapest way to do holiday cards,” he said. What Rojek liked was that it was a “warmer” way of communicating than a text or short email. Merry Christmas from the Rojek family” printed neatly on it. Each one had “we forgot to buy cards so here’s a potato. But when Christmas day came around, people started texting them, or posting pictures on Facebook with their potato. He told his wife that he had fixed their Christmas card problem. “I think it’s fun to throw people a curveball now and again and this fulfilled that plan perfectly,” he said. Mark Rojek, one of Bekhit’s best customers, told the Guardian that he and his wife had struggled with Christmas cards until, last year, he discovered Potato Parcel. ‘Here’s a potato.’ Photograph: Courtesy of MysteryPotato “So there isn’t any underhanded competition going on, but there are times when other businesses will crop up that will attempt to get into the space.” “Among the three potato-sending companies, we each have our different space and our different sub-niche,” he said. Kelly downplayed the competitive aspect of the market. “Other people are trying to copy our idea and offer potatoes with messages on them. “I mean, if you search in Google for ‘send a potato’ or ‘potato message’, we pop up first, so we’re getting all the Google traffic for search.” “There’s been a few copiers and they copied us after seeing our stuff,” Bekhit says of the competition. “The messages can be anonymous so when people open the package and it says ‘happy birthday’, ‘I miss you’, ‘I love you’, people get a real kick out of it because it’s something they haven’t seen before.” The company has also been franchised out, he said, with local “ambassadors” in the UK, continental Europe, Australia and Canada. “It’s the art of surprise,” Bekhit explains when asked about the appeal of sending a message on a potato. With between 25 and 50 orders a day, Bekhit told the Guardian that his company was processing between $10k and $20k every month in sales. The bigger PotatoParcel, founded by Riad Bekhit, has a claim to be both the first, and the largest, potato-sending company in the game. Among the three potato-sending companies, we each have our different space and our different sub-niche Riad Bekhit, founder of PotatoParcel Kelly said that his company – which also offers glitter-bombs – was profitable, though not so much yet that it covers his and Owens’ living expenses. MysteryPotato is a more boutique outfit, moving around 10 potatoes per day. Mail-a-Spud specialises in sending just the potato, with no packaging sticking postage on the legume itself. There are three main potato-sending sites in the US: MysteryPotato, Mail-a-Spud, and PotatoParcel. The owner, who found himself inundated with orders he could not fulfil, was ready to sell Kelly and Owens the business. They discovered the two month-old site MysteryPotato, which had been set up to post potatoes with little messages – “printed on the side through the mail.
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