Home | Subscribe | Contact Us | Advertise Home | Subscribe | Contact Us | Advertise
Conformer Expansion Products streamlines Oxford Health Plans’ mailer program
|
Marvin Makofsky, president of Conformer Expansion Products Inc., says his company was introduced to Oxford Health Plans to fix a serious problem that the health care provider faced.
Makofsky started his Great Neck, N.Y., company nearly five years ago when he invented its namesake, the Conformer Expansion Product: an “envelope that uses no more material than is absolutely necessary,” according to the company’s web site. Oxford Health Plans considered using the envelopes in its mailer program.
Oxford had been delivering enrollment forms, plan definitions and other marketing collateral to its customers in a gusseted envelope that was custom manufactured for the machines at Oxford’s fulfillment facility. “They were using an inserter to stuff seven pieces of marketing materials and they were placing the doctors’ booklet in the envelope by hand,” Makofsky explains. “But gusseted envelopes don’t work well with high-speed inserters. It kept jamming.” The project was made even more difficult because the thickness of the provider books varied depending on the region of the recipient. For example, the book for Rhode Island was only 1⁄4-inch thick while the book for New Jersey was more than 3⁄4-inch thick.
The health care provider tried to solve the problem by consulting the envelope manufacturer and then Pitney Bowes Document Technologies Division, the company that created the inserter equipment. But “they still couldn’t stop the inserter from jamming,” Makofsky says. So Pitney Bowes decided to contact Conformer.
When Oxford discovered the Conformer Expansion envelopes would not only run on all of Oxford’s existing inserter machines, but also the envelopes would be significantly less expensive than the gusseted envelopes, they leapt at the change. Oxford now uses the 93⁄8- x 125⁄8-inches White Kraft Conformer Expansion Envelope design to expand up to an inch and half.
“The Conformer Expansion Envelope still allows for some expansion to occur but it functions better than the gusseted envelope,” Makofsky explains.
The envelopes now hold Oxford’s member kits and have been distributed at health fairs in the 41 counties where the health care provider operates.
Makofsky says the order volume from this company has been large. “We’ve been doing about 300,000 to 500,000 a year for them so far,” he says.
—LaShell Stratton
