Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Kurkowski.
Hi Alex, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Hi, my name is Alex Kurkowski. In 2018, I started attending Rice University as an MBA candidate. Already equipped with a career, and now maintaining a new MBA workload proved to be a tall task. I noticed that all my free time started to slip away, and so did a lot of my relationships with friends and family. To keep in touch, I started sending them mail art stories. Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the postal service. I would draw pictures in story form and snail-mail them out to loved ones piece by piece over time. Imagine a comic or any book with images being taken apart page by page and then those pages snail-mailed out one by one throughout weeks or even months! For my friends and family, it was always a way to stay connected and create fun, personalized stories so that they could look forward to checking their mailboxes every day. My family and friends always enjoyed these stories because they were always goofy, consistently sent over time, and they were always drawn as the main characters in their own personalized “mailbox movie.”
For example, I sent the first two to my brother and mother when I started attending Rice University. The story about my brother was based on a running joke we shared about a trip to see the Kansas City Chiefs training camp in Wisconsin; my then-teenage brother asked tight end (Tony Gonzalez) to autograph his ball while fake crying about having come all the way from Houston to get his signature. The one to my mom referenced one of her nicknames: “Queen Mamadala,” a playoff of Queen Amidala from Star Wars.
What?
After telling a few friends at school that I was sending art stories through snail mail to friends and family, they suggested I turn my hobby into a business, so I decided to start Tellinga. Tellinga (like telling a story) is a Houston, TX-based startup that tells your story through the use of mail art. Story recipients receive illustrated stories about themselves based on unique preferences. It can be fun, dramatic, thoughtful… anything!
Here’s how it works:
1. Select an artist
2. Add a story description and upload a photo
3. Your artist will draw your story on 5″ x 7″ postcards and mail the recipient one card EVERY WEEK until the package ends
A few days later, the designated recipient of the story will start receiving unique hand-drawn postcard illustrations every week in their mailbox until the package ends. Every card shipped helps raise funds to fight Alzheimer’s disease, support breast cancer research, or help treat those impacted with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Why?
Tellinga started for four reasons:
1. We live in such a digital world these days as we are always emailing, text messaging and following each other’s social media accounts. Things such as traditional snail mail have somewhat been forgotten and those that still frequently check the mailbox are often disappointed by the number of bills or junk mail. Tellinga offers a way to tap back into the tangible and traditional by providing a product that you can touch and feel on a deeper level rather than staring at another screen. It provides that old level of eagerness and anticipation of looking forward to checking your mailbox every day. It is the same exciting feeling of when you were mailing letters with a pen pal or loved one growing up, looking forward to that new edition of your favorite magazine, or the expectation of receiving a greeting card from a loved one. The goal is to provide an extremely personalized gift that brightens a loved one’s day by delivering little hand-drawn story surprises in their mailboxes. It gives people the chance to be a character of their own mailbox story sent out piece by piece.
2. Greeting cards for lack of a better word, suck. They are templated without any real personalization or meaning. Messages are usually generic, lame, and flat out cheesy. Greeting cards also provide zero additional benefits. Sure, maybe you put one up on your fridge for a week, but nobody truly enjoys it. When people usually receive a greeting card, they fake a smile, say “thank you,” and toss it out when nobody is looking contributing to the world’s paper pollution epidemic. Why? It’s because there is zero additional use because of its lack of meaning and feeling. Lastly, you only receive greeting cards one time in one occurrence or situation. I honestly don’t know how greeting cards have survived this long. Tellinga is the perfect solution to these problems. Tellinga offers 100% personalization/customization allowing the customer to have whatever they want. Messages are told in story form, which is more heartfelt and personal than standardized templates. Tellinga cards are created on 5″x 7″ premium 32 pt thick greeting card-sized postcards with cool red edges, and provide additional uses including framing, putting on your refrigerator, set as the profile picture on your social media pages, and you can even create your own reusable storybook for your coffee table or book collection. Lastly, you receive Tellinga hand-drawn cards over time to enjoy multiple times rather than just the one and done occurrence. Tellinga is truly where greeting cards meet storybooks meet snail mail!
3. Tellinga delivers a new platform for young and eager artists to express themselves artistically while pursuing a path of personal and economic prosperity. Currently employing 25 talented artists from across the nation, Tellinga provides younger artists a chance to demonstrate their hard-earned art degrees by sending 100% hand-drawn storybook greeting cards as unique gifts by snail mail.
4. As an independently owned business, we have the freedom to support causes we believe in and to impact the world in a positive way. Giving back is important to us and we want to share that passion with you. Through the use of Semi-Postal or fundraising stamps on every card shipped, we’ve been able to help raise funds to fight Alzheimer’s disease, support breast cancer research, and help treat those impacted with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Thank you for helping us do our part to improve the planet and support the people who live on it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, and it’s still extremely rocky. I regret not understanding the power of SEO and website optimization. When I started Tellinga, I had no clue how to build a website but I learned over 3-4 months of rigorous self-taught training. I also did not know how to use keywords or the power of backlinks so once again, after building the website, I had to go back and spend 3-4 long months of learning the trade. I would like to attribute a lot of success in listening to YouTube videos as I work and drive, so use my time efficiently.
As you know, we’re big fans of Tellinga. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Originally a boutique arthouse that creates bespoke illustrations and episodic drawings sent to recipients through direct mail, we have recently decided to add social media-style advertising into our physical mail stories to give advertisers a new and meaningful way to reach their customers. Using collected customer data received as part of the normal ordering process – along with customer interests and demographics – we can target original, artist-drawn ads to specific customer interests: disrupting, reshaping, and bringing onscreen social media-style ads into customers’ physical home mailboxes.
Quote: “Traditional advertising through direct mail has severely declined because it’s too impersonal and easily ignored. Advertising always works best when it reaches deep – becomes a personal and moving experience. It’s just that simple. And that’s precisely what we are already doing: telling personal stories that fold-in the recipient as part of the show. We like to think of our art as an ongoing television show delivered to your weekly mailbox, with you as the star – kind of like getting to be Jon Snow in ‘Game of Thrones.’ Now, we’re going to do the same thing with direct mail advertising – and it will change everything about the mailed-advert business.”
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Tellinga (like telling a story), a company that creates handcrafted mail art that tells a story, has been launched to provide long-distance relationship gifts for couples separated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The artistic movement focused on sending artwork through the postal service, known as mail art, or postal art, is having a surge in popularity amid the pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected long-distance relationships between couples and friends across the planet. The launch of Tellinga is helping individuals stay connected through unique and personalized storytelling art.
Tellinga was founded to offer a way to tap into the tangible and traditional with a product that customers can feel and touch on a deeper level than can be achieved by looking at another screen. In the past three years, the company has developed a reputation for helping customers reaffirm their love over long distances–a need exacerbated by the current pandemic.
Pricing:
- Stories starting from $19.99
- Invites starting from $3
- Custom portraits starting from $24.99
Contact Info:
- Email: artist@tellinga.com
- Website: https://www.tellinga.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tellingastories/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TellingaStories
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tellingastories
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsv8eEjKeqypJcAKpCTSojA
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@tellinga?lang=en
Image Credits
Brooke Villegas
