Want More Napkins? Fax Us

Maybe every linen supply company does this, and I’ve never noticed it, but I thought this was pretty clever. They put their fax number on every napkin:

Fax Number on Napkin

This ensures that, even if a restaurant fires its entire staff and hires new people, it’ll be easy for the new floor manager to order more napkins. The lesson here is an obvious one, I suppose: make it expectantly simple for your customers to contact you.

3 comments

  1. Do you think it’s a fax number rather than a URL because:

    – The company finds customers use faxes more?

    – The napkins are so old they pre-date widespread use of the Web?

    – The fax number fits easier?

  2. Well, if I were speculating, there’s probably two reasons:

    * This is Malta, and most restaurants don’t have web access.

    * More practically, if they do mostly handle orders by fax, it’s an extra step to visit the website to find the fax number.

  3. One of the most well-known eCommerce cases within Information Systems is a very early case (70s, I think) about a hospital supply company.

    Near the back of each of the boxes they delivered to hospitals they put a punch card that had information about the product number, customer number, etc. That made it easy for hospital staff to re-order supplies; they’d just drop off the punch card at the supply clerk’s desk.

    They effectively eliminated orders to competing companies because reordering was so much easier than ordering with any other company.

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: