That's the Ticket Forget about setting new standards—Bryna Blum has created a class all her own. "We've been known as 'The Travel Agents' General Store,'" she says, describing her distributorship, WCBS/ E.H. Bickett & Co., Palm Desert, Calif. "It started as a joke, and it stuck." Customers stick with the distributorship—Blum has kept many clients for decades. She doesn't begin a sales pitch by discussing envelopes. "No client has ever called us and asked, 'Do you do envelopes?'" she says. Instead, she touts them as integral parts of overall marketing strategies. Travel agencies are an ideal market for promotional envelopes, Blum says. The industry has become more consolidated, competitive, specialized, cost-conscious and computer-savvy in the past few years. "Even smaller companies have picked up whole new images and names," she says. "You really need to know your product, and you need to sell it better than anyone else. From the first piece of paper and marketing material that your clients see, it has to be obvious that you're different." For example, one of her clients made zebra stripes part of its brand image, so she created a #10 envelope with a short window and zebra stripes printed down the left side of the envelope face. Another travel agency specializes in travel arrangements for attorneys. Named one of the top 50 travel companies in the country, it wanted a new image to enhance its competitive position. The company changed its name and sought Blum for marketing materials. Originally, the company's ticket jackets were dark-green ink on text-weight, natural-white paper. For its new design (dark blue with a swirl pattern), Blum and a graphic designer agreed that changing the paper to cover-weight, white gloss and printing the new logo in blue ink would be "just the ticket." The travel agency's previous envelope included a stub on which travel managers could staple tickets. Its new envelope has a 6 x 2 3/4-inch window that reveals the client's mailing and distribution fields. The company's new logo is a whimsical paper airplane in varying shades of blue. "The graphics are gorgeous with lots of movement and energy," she says. "It's 1-color, but there are so many screens on there that it looks multicolored." This high-end envelope can catch even a wealthy attorney's eye. "You don't last in this business unless you can deliver way more than product," Blum says. Have a solution? Click here to be featured as an E-Weekly Solution of the Week