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The aim of the newsletter is to document the business ideas swirling around my head in the hopes that one of them sparks enough excitement that I work on it. At that time, the newsletter will come to an end. In the meantime feel free to take any idea I post or maybe it’ll even give you some inspiration for something you can start!

Estimated reading time - 4 minutes

Background (The problem)

In our modern lives, anything and everything about us is stored digitally on the internet. Any picture we take, every email and text we write is stored for posterity. But sometimes, that just isn’t enough.

I came up with this idea when someone very close to me lost a loved one. They were scrolling through images of the two together and said ‘I wish I had something I could touch”. It made me think about how much, in that moment she would have valued a hand-written letter, a note, something she could keep.

Losing a loved one is different to each of us. Everyone grieves differently. But I think many people would love the opportunity to feel a connection to someone even after they have passed.

The idea of sending or leaving letters behind after you die isn’t new. There are many sites that suggest doing this for family if you’re diagnosed with an illness. And solicitors will often allow you to give them letters to provide after your death.

There are websites and apps of all sorts which do it all virtually, with texts, emails and messages where you can upload your letters and they’ll be virtually sent some time in the future of your choosing.

The idea:

The idea for this business is similar to these online platforms like The Postage but in physical form. We would collect pre-written letters from someone with their instructions on who and when to send them. Then once they have passed we would follow these instructions and post them as per the instructions.

This would provide a personal touch from the person who has passed away to their loved ones outside of just receiving an email. A physical letter in the post is much more of an emotive experience, it brings back memories of times before emails, where your grandparents would post you birthday cards.

This idea isn’t all that different from the service some solicitors and estate planners will provide. But it could be sold as a separate service, or even offered as an outsourced service to funeral planners, solicitors and estate tax advisors.

Operationally it would require the customer to purchase a product, we would then send a box with the required instruction documents, letters, envelopes etc. This would then be posted back and held in storage. Each letter only being sent when the criteria are met.

It would be nice if options for sending these letters could be conditional over time or even events. Like sending a letter on a person’s birthday, 10, 15 or even further into the future. Imagine a grandparent who never got to meet their grandchildren. That’s a powerful proposition.

Risks and Opportunities:

The Risks:

• Holding letters for people after their death comes with it huge responsibilities to ensure the deceased receives the quality of service they wanted.

• There needs to be strong management of addresses of the recipients to ensure letters aren’t being set to old addresses.

• Inheritance tax consideration. We don’t want people stuffing money into enveloped to send to their relatives in a way of evading taxes.

• It’s a long term liability. Once you start this business you can’t easily stop it. You have a responsibility to send letters far into the future.

• It’s an emotive topic. Many people do not want to discuss the concept of their own mortality, let alone pay for a service they will never see.

The Opportunities:

• In a more digital world, the product may stand out to those who want the personal touch of a physical letter.

• Quite a unique product that has very emotive marketing potential.

• A product that would benefit from word of mouth easily as it’s a simple product to understand and explain to others

Monetization / Profitability:

The fundamental issue with a business like this is that the person buying the product/service isn’t the person benefitting from receiving the letters

When I came up with the idea it was because someone close to me wanted it to have been a product their family member had used. Whereas the ‘target demographic’ aren’t the ones who may imagine the peace of mind receiving those letters might give. This makes the opposition hard to sell, many people don’t like the idea of bothering, or interrupting, even bringing feelings of sadness to family members after they pass away.

However, receiving payment up-front but only paying when sending the letters does have it’s benefits in terms of cash flow. You only need to pay for the postage when an individual letter is sent. Meaning you can earn interest during this time. Obviously, the flip side of this is that at origination, sending a letter may have cost x, but by the time you send it the price of sending these may have risen considerably.

One other consideration that needs to be made with regards to cost is around how expensive it would be to safely manage all these letters. They would need to be stored likely in a fireproof area that is highly secure.

Rating and review:

Potential Profitability (3/5)

It could easily be a product that sells for a strong markup. The value for the customer is in the operations rather than the cost of letters and as such you could price with high margins. Overheads wouldn’t be huge but they would be very long term.

Ease of implementation (1/5)

Trust is key for a product like this. And it’s hard to build trust without having customers or potential customers hearing about the product from friends/family. It’s a topic many people do not like to discuss which make it something hard to market.

Scalability (3.5/5)

Any physical service like this has limitations on scalability. But it’s certainly something which could be scaled with effective, emotive marketing. And the costs are quite marginal when you have a secure way of storing the letters, and a system for sending them. Making one extra sale does not cost much.

Novelty (3.5/5)

The concept of sending leters after you die isn’t novel in itself. Many people leave behind hand-written notes or letters. But there doesn’t appear to be a company out there that only offers this service in it’s physical form.

Overall score (11/25)

I hope if nothing else that you found this an interesting read, even if you think the idea is awful. Again, another idea I won’t be going forward with but as always…on to the next one.