Packaging with Purpose: Phill Box | Melinda Su-En Lee, Parcel Health

Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript is generated using speech-to-text technology and is intended to capture the essence of the conversation. However, please note that it may contain multiple spelling errors and inaccuracies. It should not be relied upon as an exact or comprehensive record of the discussion.

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Melinda, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today 

Melinda Su-En Lee: my name is Melinda Su-en Lee. I am the CEO and Co-founder of Parcel Health, and at Parcel Health, we develop sustainable medication packaging for pharmacies.

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's a nice tight elevator pitch.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Thank you.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who would want sustainable packaging? Would it be the pharmacy? Because they're trying to look progressive and that kind of stuff.

Who wants sustainable stuff?

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. When I started this company, I thought, maybe me and a couple of friends would care about sustainable packaging that nobody else would really care about sustainable packaging. 'cause plastic really bothered me. But in my time working, in pharmacies, I realized that a lot of patients care about sustainable packaging.

People often came in and complained about the plastic pill bottles they were receiving. And so I found out that, on one hand there are pharmacists like myself who really cared about what we were dispensing. But on the other [00:01:00] hand , for a lot of patients, they also cared about what they were receiving.

Mike Koelzer, Host: With packaging like that. And we're gonna get more into the fill box.

 It replaces the pill bottle, but with packaging like that, you're not offending anybody because nobody usually says I love plastic. They might for Reasons they don't wanna run over with their car all this kind of stuff or traveling reasons and things.

But nobody usually says, I really want to use plastic because I love what plastic does for the world, kind of thing. So you don't lose anything there 

Melinda Su-En Lee: I think for sustainable packaging, when we went into designing the fill box, which is, one of our flagship products at Parcel Health, Is really re-imagining what the future of packaging would look like. I knew that it would have to be built on the foundations of sustainability, but it could not be only sustainable.

Like we had to sort of rethink what that would mean. But one of the things that we thought about when we were redesigning [00:02:00] when we were rethinking and reimagining what the future of prescription packaging would look like was the opening mechanism, right?

Like, how would we be able to, how can we develop something that would be simultaneously child resistant, but still easy for the elderly to use? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Which is even hard when you can use plastic. I mean, that's always a battle between easy enough for the elderly and hard enough for the kids.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I mean, I've met a lot of elderly patients who, I mean, they can always try to opt out of the child resistant cap, but you know, in a lot of large chain pharmacies that just gets dispensed still and they would just sort of keep it in their they capita with the cap off, right? That's just how

They kept it.

 We did a lot of these user interviews where a lot of elderly patients were just keeping it uncapped. And so there's one pillar where we're talking about ease of use for elderly, but still keeping that safety. And the other component of it is just medication communication. If you think about every single product you own in your home, one [00:03:00] look right at it, you can see what it is.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Even if it's a coffee can, if it's, cereal, you look at it and you know what it is with medication containers to just even see what medication it is, you have to pick it up. Or even for who it is, you have to pick it up. You gotta like, Bring it closer and turn it just to see what it is, who it's for, and how often to take it.

And to me, that was really frustrating because it was one of, it is one of the items in your household that should be the clearest to see as to who medication this is, what medication it is, and how to take it. So those were the things that we, priority, right? It had to be sustainable, it had to be more accessible, and third, it had to be much clearer and easier to communicate what is in this box.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And that would be because it's square, 

it's 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. It's square, it's flat. One of the difficulties with a cylindrical bottle is that no matter how you look at it, there's only one surface [00:04:00] area. There's only one plane. So you, no matter what, you're gonna have to curve around it. Versus if you think about a box in a lot of different types of packaging, when it's a box, they can put the name of their product on one face and then, some small information at the front.

But then if you turn it around, you can have the nutrition label right on the other end. So it's much clearer. And I think for a lot of patients, what they care about is what medication, how to take it, and who it's for. Those are the three things that patients care about. And it should be on one surface, flat surface area, and all the other information like who the manufacturer is, you know who dispensed it, which pharmacy, that information only we care about, right?

We pharmacists, that's information we care about. That's what we are, federally, required to put on there. That needs to just go to the side.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Quite often I think when we're thinking of solutions, we don't think about that disruption really. It's kind of the old thing about when nobody woke up years ago, back [00:05:00] in the seventies and said, I want a little thing I can hold in my hand that has 10,000 songs on it.

So, part of me is saying, ow, just turn the damn bottle in your hand. But wait a minute. If we could start over. If we could do this without any preconditions. Yeah, let's get a flat bottle that's right there.

So when you're going up in the cupboard, you don't have to look around a 360 view kind of thing.

Melinda Su-En Lee: It should be just much clearer and easier, and the font needs to be able to be larger. I think that's something that a lot of pharmacies also struggle with, because if you wanna have a larger font in your label, you have to go up in size on your bottle. And if you go up in size, you're gonna create more plastic.

And those larger bottle sizes are expensive, right? And so, how do you sort of create that accessibility without necessarily needing to take up more space or use up more resources and having a square, surface area just really answers that very easily. We're not asking people to buy a new app.

We're not asking people to [00:06:00] change their fulfillment system. We're just saying, Hey, if your label is printed and had three little panels on it, that is going to improve how your patients experience medication taking in that one month period.

When their medications are dispensed. So really looking at design as a way to improve accessibility rather than relying so much on super high tech AI technology that a lot of our patients just don't have the bandwidth to adopt.

Mike Koelzer, Host: There's so much talk about compliance and stuff, and. A lot of people talk about remembering, remember it, and I've got some tablets I take at night and they're just in my backpack and in a little old guy, don't forget to take your medicine circle, with the things in it.

But there's so many times where my alarm goes off, or I think about it and I don't feel like taking it, it's not a memory thing. I just don't feel like getting my lazy ass off the couch and going over and doing it, and I just skip [00:07:00] it. Now that's not good.

Melinda Su-En Lee: I'm gonna probably sound a little woowoo for saying this, but part of our vision is also making medication, taking a little bit more joyful, a little bit less stigmatized, right? If you think about how bleach is packaged, if you think about your tide pods that's literally poison.

And those things are packaged so much more beautifully than life-saving medication. And so it's sometimes hard to tell a patient, and we have a lot of patients who try really ineffective medications ineffective, supplements or essential oils.

But when you look at the packaging for those items, they're packaged so beautifully, right? They make it seem safe. They make it seem like this is part of wellness. And then you look at something that's packaged in an orange plastic pill bottle, it looks worse than how we package poison. So it can be hard for patients who are, in their everyday consumer life, consuming things.

Everything is packaged beautifully, that communicates safety and wellness and health and vigor. And then they come to the pharmacy and they pick [00:08:00] up an item that even though we, as pharmacists know, is very evidence-based, it's going to increase their lifespan and improve their quality of life.

But then you put it in this bright orange plastic pill bottle, slap it with a label that has such a tiny font size, you can't read what it is. You can barely read what the side effects are because they're jammed to the side with those little stickers, it can be hard for patients to create that sense of trust with this item that they have to put in their mouth every single day.

A lot of patients don't have that issue when it comes to vitamins, right? Lots of people take vitamins daily, religiously. They talk about it and there's this. Di Otomy in, in how we talk about medications, how we package medications, how as pharmacists we view medication packaging versus how a lot of other pharmaceutical companies or vitamin supplements companies that have, figured out that, if you package things beautifully and label it appropriately, patients are going to have a much better relationship with that [00:09:00] product.

And so bringing sort of that, a little bit of that into

pharmacy. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I guess Apple was a leader on this Google follow, not too far behind. And now most things that you're getting on Amazon, it's all the same damn picture, for a 

earpiece or something. There's 80 companies that are buying it from Alibaba or something like that. But they're all doing that. This stuff comes in, it's got a nice little, plastic tab that you pull out. It opens kind of like an engagement ring, and this slides out and stuff.

 And I buy those I like better than the companies that come in a little one ounce glad bag that goes together. I like it. And I've looked up despite them all being equal, I've looked up some on Amazon for those companies that I don't know what the hell company it is, but I know it comes in a cool box and I'll purchase it.

I just feel better about

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, it just communicates trust, right? If you care about your product, you're going to [00:10:00] package it well, right? And if you don't care about the product and if it's a low value product that's just, just whatever, you're gonna just put it in a little Ziploc bag and send it on its way. 

And for independent pharmacies that want to really communicate that, when you come to my pharmacy, you are better taken care of. The medications that I'm sourcing are from Mistrusted Source but they don't provide any differentiations in terms of packaging that can get lost in the messaging.

'cause you can talk about it all day on social media, but the item that your patients take home and store in their home is still the same packaging that the big chain pharmacies that don't care about them also package it

And so having beautiful, sustainable packaging can really provide that differentiation and really communicate that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, have you changed your tune at all after you've had some feedback and things and maybe you were going for this age group and it's oh, we were selling this to the elderly, but actually we have to impress the [00:11:00] 50 year old daughters of these people because of this and that.

And have you had to change your, I guess marketing would encompass it. Have you had to change your message with the same product, but a little bit different flare to what you're saying? Or has it sort of been the same since the beginning?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, we definitely changed it. And part of it's from our internal studies, right? So, we did studies with adults over the age of 65 and had them survey, do they like the orange pill bottle or do they like the fill box opening mechanism? Overwhelmingly adults, older adults prefer our opening mechanism.

And so that was sort of the marketing message when going to the pharmacy hey, guess what? Your elderly patients are going to like it, blah, blah, blah. But we found that in practice, in reality, elderly patients struggled with change. So even though it was better for them, it was a huge ask for them to be like, you've been getting your medications in a plastic pill bottle the same way for the last 10 years and now we're gonna suit you over.

That can be extremely jarring to elderly patients. And so we [00:12:00] found that there's a sort of like a it's, it is contradictory that on one hand it may, it's better for them, it's easier for them to use when we survey them, but on the other hand, they don't like change. So they are likely not the right population to be receiving this product.

And so in the marketing from our end talking to pharmacies is that this is a product that's going to work very well for your 30 to 55 year old patients. These are folks that are on commercial insurance. This is their first, second, third chronic medication. They're aging into the system.

They're used to beautiful packaging, and now this is, they're coming into your pharmacy, right? And a lot of these patients care about small, independent businesses. And so how do you stand out to them, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Unless that crowd has already bought an Apple Watch or, a Google Pixel or something like that with the fancy packaging, unless they appreciate that beauty,

[00:13:00] They might take a front to it. Like, how the hell do I use this? It's just got three damn pictures on it. What does that mean? What are the words?

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. 

Yeah. And it's completely understandable, right? For these patients who are older, they struggle a lot getting through the healthcare system right there, insurance, Medicare, there's a lot that happens before they get to the, their prescriptions being dispensed.

So I completely empathize with them wanting that to be predictable, right? They've figured out a system, even though they keep the cap open in their cabinet, they've struggled with it. They have a system that works. It's completely understandable for them to want to stick to that. Yeah.

 To the system that has worked for them.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, I'm jumping the gun here, but let's say that this goes so well that you get sick of it and you sell it off. You sell off the fill box because your company's not named. Fill Box is named Parcel 

Health. 

When I think of parcels I am thinking of packaging, Like parcel post.

I don't even know what the hell that means, but I'm thinking [00:14:00] packaging. What other areas did you leave open by not naming your company, just this product?

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's a great question, Mike. Part of the reason we started our company was really thinking about how a lot of products designed and built for health are really built for functionality. So if you think about durable medical equipment, pill bottles are all built just for function, right?

And they're not sustainable. They're poorly designed and a lot of people, as they age can really, will really resist picking up good equipment that can help improve the safety in their home. But they sort of refuse that. And so the vision for personal health has always been to develop a sort of product that can welcome you into aging in a way that you look forward to.

Because, if you told me I needed to install one of those seats in my toilet so that I didn't have to fall through, I completely understand why a lot of [00:15:00] elderly folks resist that. Because it is an eyesore. And it just really ages you. And so thinking about the future of healthcare, what products would sort of receive me, right? Like you were talking earlier about the iPhones and the headphones. Yeah, there are products out there that can do the exact same thing, but when we're using it, we want it to sort of fit our preferences.

Mike Koelzer, Host: There's gonna be a lot of things that people aren't gonna want to get into things for

Melinda Su-En Lee: And selfishly for me, it's just as I age, what products do I want to buy to help me age more gracefully? And that would also help others age gracefully and safely instead of sort of creating this resistance to it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I don't know how you would put lipstick on this pig though, of adult diapers and things like

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh yeah, that's a great example. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who knows if there's some idea out

there, 

maybe fashion diapers 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah, so there's this brand that I really like what they're doing. I mean, [00:16:00] they'd recently gotten into some controversy for some of the products that they have, but this brand called Thinks and they basically created these, really well-designed products that are for the elderly, but also for women who had just given birth.

They're essentially adult diapers, but they're just made to look just like a pair of underwear, a beautiful, trendy pair of underwear that can really sort of take away that stigma of needing to wear a product like that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Because here's what I'm thinking, Melinda,

Think about a Speedo bathing suit. All 

right? Now you'd think trendy is smaller and whatever. I don't have to get into the details. You can picture a 

Speedo in your head but the trendy came in with, trunks down to your knees, and the pockets and the stripes and things like that.

So, maybe the adult diapers have to get bigger. They gotta get bigger. to get trendy. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: I mean, women wear certain underwear that makes their butts look bigger, right? Everybody wants those big butts and and so [00:17:00] without going down this rabbit hole, but just there a lot of products that are designed to be more accessible that can 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Sure. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: of using.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And look how and a lot of it's just marketing. I mean, look how Kim Kardashian, basically, she's got a girdle, do 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is? Girdle.

Melinda Su-En Lee: No, I do not want it. 

I did accidentally say that instead of the griddle, that the pan, I think the griddle is something you 

make pancakes on. Yes. I accidentally said that the other way once. So I said I wanted 

Mike Koelzer, Host: someone catch you on it and preach to you like 

you don't know what a girdle is? All right. A girdle was just an old lady thing. It was basically Spanx. And was it skins? Is that what it is?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Skims, that's the Kim Kardashian brand. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and she had to change that word. She had a, it was a, 

different, 

Melinda Su-En Lee: it Komodo at first.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And that was a

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's like a Japanese traditional Japanese wear, and 

her brand had nothing to do

with Japanese culture. 

Yes. Yeah. It was a poor use of words.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So a girdle was an old lady thing. [00:18:00] They'd pull it up and jump into it and stuff. And this is just a rebranding of that basically.

That's without even changing it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. Compression socks. I mean, compression socks

 These days there's so many cool compression socks. Even with bidets, right? Bidets for a long time, I think in the US bidets looked awful. Awful. But you use less toilet paper when you have a bidet.

But now they're like really trendy, awesome looking bidets. And those are just like really simple design changes, right? Like instead of making it just white, just adding a little bit of color can really de-stigmatize it, have it in an older person's home and people are like, oh, that is so cool, right?

That is so cool. Or even the Apple Watch, people hate life alerts because it kind of ages them, right? Like when you wear a little necklace, like nobody wants to walk around thinking that very few people like walking around with something like that. But when you think about it, the Apple Watch has a sort of fall alert.

An older person or somebody who needs it, they're not gonna feel like their life is being limited by wearing the Apple Watch.[00:19:00] 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm already getting into some of that, Melinda there'll be times where inside I feel young, but I'm starting to age and sometimes I think people might think about me. I. Like, I think about old farts,

Melinda Su-En Lee: I know 

As a society, we stigmatize old age so much. 

So, so much. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well here's one here, like a cane. I would not want to use a 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: were in the cane manufacturing, I would come at it from a couple different angles. I'd come at it from, it's a walking stick , but it's shorter, so it's a cool walking stick and shows people out with their grandkids at the park and things like that.

Or I would come from at the angle of it being kind of a weapon 

Melinda Su-En Lee: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it's like a weapon stick and you can jam open this with it, and if needed, you can hit someone over the head with it

But it's just rethinking it and [00:20:00] maybe making it more normal so you feel like you're part of the crowd still.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I mean like people who go hiking use hiking poles, right? And those are cool, like when you go hiking with Those 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Ooh, you, yeah, you look like you're a super outdoorsy person when you walk around with those. But yeah, I mean, designing things that are not just so focused on old people or aging or like a disease state, but thinking about how this product could be used for people who have other illnesses or other, like weapons, right?

That is something that everybody would use, would carry around. Just think about accessible design. And something I read recently about how we always want safety for others. Like when we think about children in a parent relationship, we always want safety for our parents, but we want freedom for ourselves.

And so like when children and parents have these tough conversations of should you go to a nursing home? Should you go to assisted living? The child is always gonna say, I want you to be safe. But when it's you in that position, you are always gonna say, I prefer autonomy, I prefer freedom.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'll take [00:21:00] a chance of stubbing my toe or 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: wanna

Melinda Su-En Lee: I wanna be able to go down the street when I want to. I want to go to hang out with my friends and think about that and realize that like safety's. Is important. But for a lot of folks like me and you who are aging, we're all aging well, we're all gonna die.

Products that we bring into our lives that we're willing to integrate into our lives has to be something that gives us more autonomy,

Mike Koelzer, Host: You're not aging, Melinda. You didn't know what a damn girdle is.

Melinda Su-En Lee: I think. I think that may be more of the time for the word I think that word just not as

commonly used. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Here's where I get in trouble too, is my kids laugh at me when I say rouge.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Is that a, is that lipstick?

Mike Koelzer, Host: No, it was 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh,

Mike Koelzer, Host: uh, 

Melinda Su-En Lee: blush. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: blush. It was blushing. It would come out and you'd wipe it on there, but my kids don't like me when I call it rouge.

I don't say it that often. It's not like I 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. yeah, yeah.

That is a great name for a brand though. That should be a brand, you,

Mike Koelzer, Host: back. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. No.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm not sure if this makes me old, but [00:22:00] I have pepper spray now because one of my friends came in the store and he packs the heat, as they say, and I said, are you packing the heat?

He's no, I got it in the car. And we were talking about it. He said, I carry it everywhere. 

And I have nothing against guns, but I don't want to own one. So I got on line and I got pepper spray. I got it in my car, and I took it to the pharmacy, and I actually did drills on it. I pick it up and I can put my finger on it, but why not?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I carry pepper spray around

and You Oh yeah. I carry pepper spray around and I have pink pepper spray. I mean, I could've gotten a cheaper one that's uglier, but I got a pink pepper spray because it's something I gotta carry around all the time. if it falls outta my bag, I kinda wanna be able to like, conceal it.

Just like, oh, sorry. Just put it on, it looks like lipstick, right? I just thought

when it's pink in color. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And then some have it on the key chain. Then my friend, we were at dinner and he pulled out his reading glasses. But they were in like a little 

Mike Koelzer, Host: change purse and they all folded out kind of thing. But I'm thinking, how many things can you have?

I mean, pretty soon my key [00:23:00] chain would look like a big rosary 

Melinda Su-En Lee: I mean, I got rid of my house door. I don't have a key for it. It's just 

a, it's a, little 

keypad because I forget my keys because I forget my keys all the time. But that sort of has freed up my key chain to hook a lot of

different other things on it. 

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think maybe even in the future, calling it a key chain would be almost like a.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, it's kinda like the glove box on a car. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: No, I think I call it like that, no, I do call it the glove box. Yeah. What did they call, did they store gloves in it?

Mike Koelzer, Host: They used to keep gloves in it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Okay. Because

Mike Koelzer, Host: Just because you needed a spot to put your 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Now that you mention it, it might've been that people had driving gloves and they

'em in there. I always thought about regular gloves

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. 

Wanting 

down the window. Do you remember whining down the window?

I had a car. Yeah. My brother, he's 17 so he's 13 years younger than me. He's never needed to wind down a window. And so he was sitting in my old, my dad bought me a really old car[00:24:00] when I was in Malaysia and my dad's like wind down the window and he had never wound down a window before, so he went to the knob and he just spun the knob hoping that the window would come down.

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's great. He's funny. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. He's what do you mean? He's like, how do I get this? He's, my dad's just turned it.

And he's like, he likes turning the little knob.

Mike Koelzer, Host: in some of those phrases we still use, hey, roll down the window. Usually say roll it down. You don't say put it down 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. Press the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: press a button 

to have it go down. 

 What was your biggest misconception when you started this? 

Melinda Su-En Lee: my biggest misconception is that being environmentally friendly was enough. That was my biggest conception. So when I started this product and I was like, when I, as I mentioned earlier with all this stuff, I'm like, oh, it's gonna be cool. And, but you know, but I just need to go in and I just need to show them it's compostable, it's recyclable.

People are gonna get it just like that. And that's not true. People care about sustainability. They'll open the door and they'll listen to you about sustainability, but that's not the reason why people will give you [00:25:00] money for it. A lot of our customers, they'll be like, yeah, that's really cool. I care about the earth, I care about sustainability 

but the part that gets them to be willing to invest or over the money to buy this product, to invest in it is completely different from sustainability. And that, it's so silly of me to have gone and think having that misconception because it's the same thing. It's the same way that I react to a lot of products that our market is sustainable, right?

If you think about cars Or solar panels or whatever, yeah, there's, it's sustainable. It is great for the planet, but it needs to have something else, right? Like with electric cars, yeah, it's gonna save me money on gas, but it's gotta be cool or it's gotta have good mileage, right? Or it's gotta be able to do all these other cool things.

Same thing with solar panels. 

So I thought that sustainability was enough to convince people to purchase a product, to try the product, but you really need more than that. People will listen to you, they'll open a door, they'll listen to your pitch, they'll talk to you about sustainability. [00:26:00] But the part that gets people to turn over their money, to open their purse and said, okay, instead of buying this other thing, I'm gonna buy your thing.

It has to be more than sustainability. And I realized that in my own experience, that is the same, right? I don't just buy an electric car because it's more sustainable for the environment. 

I buy an electric car because it comes with all these other awesome features, being able to save on gas. Being able to reverse, use my car as a battery to reverse charge my house.

Things like that. Same thing with solar panels, right? People don't just install it for the environment. They install it because it's going to help them save on electric bills. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: We bought some of my daughters into that and we got this laundry. Sheets or something. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh, I know what you're talking 

Mike Koelzer, Host: they're kind 

a gelatin. It's supposed to be washing detergent, but they come almost like Kleenexes.

 They don't pop up like that. They come just like in a stack of 

sheets, like napkins sort of, the sustainability and the green and stuff is fine, but they do have to work. 

 You'd throw one of those in the laundry, but it didn't [00:27:00] work. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh 

Mike Koelzer, Host: stuff has to work first. I

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes. And they have to work better. I almost find that sustainable products, they cannot work less than, because think about like paper straws,

right? Yeah. Everybody hates paper straws. when we were developing our product, I was like, I don't wanna be the paper straw too. Plastic straws.

It's actually gotta be better. I want it to actually be better than what exists today. Because that's how you create lasting change,

Mike Koelzer, Host: Part of the problem with the paper straws as they come, like in plastic wrappers. So that'd be like you guys selling these prescription bottles like in a Tupperware box or something 

like that, 

Melinda Su-En Lee: They get so soggy after use and nobody looks forward to it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It feels like you're sucking on a piece of 

chalk. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. And sometimes you can almost taste the paper. yeah. Yeah. So we cannot beat that, right? Like people are willing to pay a little bit more. People are willing to change their habits a little bit for sustainability, but it really cannot be worse than its predecessor.

And that's, That sort of what, the [00:28:00] plastic free movement sort of has to always grapple with is that whatever you design, 

it's gotta be better than plastic.

Mike Koelzer, Host: In our pharmacy, I made some changes years ago that a certain population liked. I don't make many stances at the pharmacy, but it's something I took a little bit of a stand on and people say, well, you're gonna lose some business for it, but you're gonna get a lot of people that really respect that are doing this and that.

And it's nah. They'll say it, and they'll maybe come to us if they're two miles away from us but they're not driving that far away. So it's gotta be equivalent, but it's gotta tip the scale.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes. Yes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, that sort of had to be a little bit of a kick in the teeth to, I know that wasn't the only part of your product, but it was a front selling point, so you had to sit there and say, I thought this was a big part of it.

Now I gotta make something else. The bigger part of it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. Absolutely. I think with a lot of sustainability initiatives for a lot of large [00:29:00] corporations and a lot of businesses, it can sometimes be a feast for famine. That's what I was told. It's that like, when it is a priority, you might get a huge interest, but when it is not a priority, nobody's going to spend money on 

this. 

And so understanding that's how it works and it helps that I really care about this. Understanding that's how it works to really start thinking about how else can we provide value to the customer. And yeah, we may lead with sustainability, but we're gonna have to close the business.

Talking about something else. We're gonna have to talk about

workflow and Right. We're gonna have to talk about workflow improvement. We're gonna have to talk about marketing budgets, so as an example for us, what has worked for us in the past year that we found is that helping people understand that this is the ultimate marketing tool, right?

There is nothing that you will be able to spend money on that's going to sit on your patient's countertop every single day, and that they're gonna interact with once or twice a day.

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:30:00] Melinda, if someone told you the best way to ever advertise something, can you imagine telling a company, well, you can imagine it, but you say they're gonna pick this thing up one to four times a day they're gonna stare at it and they're gonna do that every day for the rest of their lives, kind of thing.

I 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. There is nothing else that could provide that sort of r o i for marketing 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I can't think of one that would be, maybe your phone. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: and that's why people pay so much money for social media advertising, right? People are paying per impression. Think about for a company's marketing budget to appear in front of a person's feet every single day for 30 days, 

How much did that cost, right? And realizing that was a much more compelling value proposition was really crucial for us.

And it is the absolute truth, right? Part of why we wanted to go into innovating medication packaging was also realizing that this was a [00:31:00] product that someone is going to interact with very often. And it's also gonna be a product that when they interact with, they're going to remember that they have a disease, right?

They, that they have a chronic illness. And so how can you make that interaction be a little bit more pleasurable, right? Rather than oh, I gotta take my medication because I have diabetes. Be like, I'm taking this medication because this is part of what's going to make it easier for me to live with diabetes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, before we get to the end of the show, I think we should share with people what this is. It's a fill box. It replaces the plastic 

vials, but 

it's a box shape.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Correct. It's a box shape. And we do, full printing on it so that it is basically your patients almost immersed in your branding when they use a product. It's food safe, it's water resistant, and pharmacies fill it just like they fill their orange plastic pill bottles. The fill box is square. It is water resistant. It's humidity resistant for up to three hours.

Mike Koelzer, Host: No, it's not square.

Melinda Su-En Lee: it's [00:32:00] rectangular, it's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm 

Melinda Su-En Lee: even now. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: rhombus. I don't even know what 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Abus, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's just funny to say

Melinda Su-En Lee: it's not a rhombus, 

It's like a pit. No, I

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's like a, It's like a building.

It's like a, It's like a, a train car stood on end

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah,

Mike Koelzer, Host: Is it more square than I'm thinking? I'm thinking it's taller than

Melinda Su-En Lee: It's not a perfect square. So like the shape is a square, so it has four sides and then it goes 

Mike Koelzer, Host: taller than wide.

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes, it is taller than it is

wide. And 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's simple. I mean, it looks like a, it looks like a carton a

Milk Carton. A 

milk carton. yes. Yeah, it looks like a milk carton, but for your pills.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think people can picture that. What's the actual take of the medicine? Is it kind of like a matchbox where the bottom, spreads apart, then you take it out from down there 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. So it's just like a matchbox. And in our early designs we had it like a matchbox where [00:33:00] the, if you think of a mastro and you open it the hole for where the matches come out of is gigantic. But we wanted to sort of make the medications come out in a more controlled pore, and so we have a smaller hole that's at the edge of the carton to make it easier to dispense 1, 2, 3 pills.

Mike Koelzer, Host: We used to have people come in and they'd try to sell us ads on the pharmacy bags. I think my dad sold it at one time. But you'd have stuff on there a tattoo parlor or something like 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh my gosh, yes, about those. Yeah. No,

I just learned about this last week where people would put funeral homes on 

the RX bag, and I was like, that is so terrifying. Can you imagine dispensing to your patients like, well, if this medication doesn't work, there's another number here you can call.

Mike Koelzer, Host: My dad didn't even let us take the antibiotics, he'd take three times a day until gone. And my dad would say don't put it there until it's gone in there. 'cause it makes it sound like they're dying. We'd have to wait until [00:34:00] finished. But you're right, it had a car seat on it and dinner mats and restaurants and things.

 Melinda, with that said I know we've talked about Gian stuff, and I don't think you're going this route, but would anybody else put their marketing on it for a pharmacy or would it always be the pharmacy doing their services? As far as marketing goes?

Melinda Su-En Lee: So our focus is to really have the pharmacy be the one that sort of controls that packaging, because that is the, this again is the thing that you're gonna dispense your patient that's going to sit on their shelf every single day. What do you wanna associate yourself with? With that said, I think that public health messages would work very well for it.

So for example like vaccine campaigns or campaigns for exercising more. I think things like that can be sponsored for the box that the pharmacy where it would be sort of mutually beneficial, where the pharmacy is promoting a health message, but that would probably be the limit of what we would allow on a packaging.

I think it's kind of [00:35:00] cheesy

to sort of put, you know, vitamins or something else on it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda. What does your typical day look like?

And what I mean is how many people do you see? Where is the business out of this kind of thing?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. So I have an office. So once or twice a week I am able to go into the office. I work with my employees. We do a lot of different adjustments to the box, making sure it's manufactured more efficiently. But on other days I do marketing. I do a lot, you know, social media, planning, marketing.

Other days I talk to our C F O and we talk about, our budget 

and fundraising and investor relations. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: How many people are involved

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. So full-time it's me and my co-founder. If you interact with in any form parts of health, you're either interacting

with me or my co-founder. Yeah. And then we have about seven part-time employees. Some of them are exclusively assembly technicians where they put together the boxes.

Others are sort of doing more of our research or [00:36:00] outreach or marketing.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who designed who made the decision? I take it. You guys did, but who was involved with the cut of the cardboard, like we need this many millimeters 

here and so on. Who designed it?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. It was primarily my co-founder and our, also our creative director who's on our team. So, there are folks who, both of them are experts in paper carton manufacturing and design and are very intimately aware of design principles. And we experiment with all sorts of different paper mage, paper ties, paper manufacturers, coatings to really arrive at the fill box.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Was there any thoughts of variations? Not that you should, but were there thoughts of variations of little tweaks here or there?

And then you said, ah let's keep it, the same.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh, absolutely a million. We've got so many, we've talked about going, using a round, cylindrical tube, right? So just mimicking the orange pill bottle as much as possible. So, using a paper tube we talked about, so right now we have the fill box with four sides. [00:37:00] So it's a square carton.

But we have talked about making it eight sided or six sided. And part of the reason for that is to accommodate different dispensing holes. So, could we have different dispensing holes and different sides so the patient can sort of choose which hole they want to use. For example we've thought about having a very thin and tall carton that looks more like a tic-tac box.

So, lots of different shapes. And the really cool thing is because we use paper where it's, ours is a paper-based product, we can do a lot of different cool things to To, accommodate needs for medication packaging.

Mike Koelzer, Host: To make the older people feel at home, you should make a good old cigarette carton

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's a great idea. Yeah. A little like

open 

it and then 

you pull a little medication out.

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, and then before the people open it, they do 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Hmm. yeah, 

yeah, 

yeah, 

just two days ago I went to watch Barbie the movie. Have you watched Barbie?

Mike Koelzer, Host: I have not seen it. My kids went, but I haven't seen it

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, great movie. Yeah, and bought [00:38:00] candy and there's a candy box. So people, we were shaking the little candy box and you can poke your hand. Obviously it's not child resistant and once you open it, you can't reclose it. But you know, people are very familiar with this form factor. They're very familiar with paper.

And paper. Also instantly communicates that it is sustainable, that you can recycle it or compost it, 

versus a lot of other materials out there that you might have to do a lot more education just to

get the same point across. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: People call us, we don't have it. Do you have the pill package thing where you do this or that? Or can you spread the pills out for

this elderly person and stuff? Yeah. I imagine that's crossed your mind about doing a seven day something or other.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes, we've been wanting to make what are those for Christmas, like 25 days following up to Christmas. There's a name for that thing. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: A calendar. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: advent calendars we've been 

I want to make it. Yes, we've been wanting to make advent calendars for the medication box because again, people are very familiar with advent calendars every [00:39:00] day you open it and people are so excited to open advent calendars.

Right? And so sort of replicating that sort of joy, especially, especially if it's like building up to a holiday season. So advent calendars are one of them. One thing that we are developing is a, actually a better secondary box for 

 

Melinda Su-En Lee: those pill pouches because a lot of pharmacies have come to tell us that.

They can dispense the roll of medication in those plastic film pouches, but when you put it in a patient's house, they're kind of struggling with it. There's no hinge, so you're just kind of struggling to pull that packet out. The box is square, it's very flimsy, but it doesn't have a hinge for the roll to roll on.

And so, these are things that just if we just slow down a little bit and we just think about it from a design perspective or like how to make it easier for patients, it's a very simple problem for us to solve.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, explain the safety mechanism on

this. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes. So the safety mechanism we develop is a three step mechanism. So instead of a [00:40:00] push twist motion where you need two hands to push and twist and you're, and you need strength our mechanism, which is what our submitted patent is around, is instead it's a, you push the inner box in, press a button, and then you pull it open.

And this motion doesn't require strength, like wrist strength. It also doesn't require wrist mobility, which a lot of elderly people struggle with. And so developing a mechanism that only requires your thumbs and your index finger is just a lot more accessible for a lot of people. Not just elderly folks, just folks in general who have limited hand dexterity.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And is it like a tab that gets in the way or what's the physicalness of 

that? 

What's 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. So, right inside the mechanism there is a little tab, so if you don't push the inner shell in, it doesn't get unlocked. And so it's there, there's another piece of cardboard inside that sort of prevents the lock from opening. But when you push the inner box up, that sort of puts it in an unlocked position, and when you press the button, it allows the whole box to slide out.[00:41:00] 

Mike Koelzer, Host: This is all paper.

Is it all one piece?

Melinda Su-En Lee: It is two pieces of

paper 

Mike Koelzer, Host: because one's the bottom Is the locking thing you mentioned that's either part of the top and the bottom. That's 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm.

Mike Koelzer, Host: pasting things or anything.

Melinda Su-En Lee: No. Yeah, we engineer. So it's all one piece. It just makes manufacturing easier, assembly on our end, easier. And so it's two pieces that fit together that creates that lock.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It kind of starting to sound a little bit like origami, like there should 

be like a, what do you call that? Like a swan or 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes. Mike. On days where previously, when we were at the beginning of our journey of my journey building this company, there were days where I would lay on the floor and I'm like, what am I doing with my life? I'm a trained pharmacist and I'm out here selling an origami box. So yes that is something. Yeah it is using just how paper behaves.

And paper's a really fascinating material. It is [00:42:00] rigid, but flexible, and it's sort of, it has a little bounce to it. So we, you, we take advantage of how springy paper is when you bend it in a certain

way to

Work with the lock. It's very unique as a material compared to a lot of other materials, and it's also really the only 

material that can rival the price of plastic out there.

Very few materials in the world can rival the price of

plastic. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Paper or plastic, they asked that.

Right. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And they probably wouldn't ask it unless it was fairly close.

They would just grab it in the grocery store.

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda. So we have all 

Then what's the sales strategy?

What has that been?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. Something that we learned is, so at the beginning, if you had seen our earlier designs were heavily branded with a parcel health branding,

Mike Koelzer, Host: I remember that from a little bit ago. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes. 

That was an awful strategy. Because we were selling these products to pharmacies, and pharmacies would be like, why would I be pushing my patients to use a product that didn't have my brand on it?

Which is completely [00:43:00] understandable. Like you don't buy an Apple product and open, and the packaging is this other packaging companies 

brand name on it. So that was a huge mistake on our part. And

so 

now, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Wait a minute though. There's a lot of things though the iPhone and so on that I don't have. Oh my gosh.

an Android guy. I'm an Android guy. 

Oh, 

my whole family's iPhone. 

And I'm Android.

Melinda Su-En Lee: You gotta get on the Apple train.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Here's why I don't do it. Melinda, years ago 

Now, you don't even know what a girdle is, so you're not gonna follow this at all. But years ago, Apple had iTunes, which is when the iPod came out, but not the phone.

They had the iTunes and you would then buy your songs 

99 cents or whatever. But then, You'd want to share those with your family because you bought 'em. You're not sharing a service. You actually own the song 

for a buck and you wanna share it. So then they had the [00:44:00] password and then they had four of their passwords for your family.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh,

Mike Koelzer, Host: It was really clunky. Alright, so time goes on and I'm like, screw that.

I'm going to Android because that's just a Google password for everything, So we've got these phones that float around the family somehow. And my youngest son wasn't old enough to get his own iPhone password and instead of faking his age, I wanted to set a good example. So then all of a sudden, like my brother is messaging me some.

Off-color jokes that 50 and 60 year old guys tell each other . pretty soon my son says, Hey Uncle Pete, this is Drew. Because he thought he was going to 

1. It's clunky. All 

these passwords all 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: that's that's why 

I'm with Android. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Interesting.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright, so my point is, Melinda,

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: when you [00:45:00] have an iPhone, you want it to say iPhone because the brand is known.

So I think Parcel Health could put a stamp similar to a good housekeeping thing on it. But I guess the problem is it's not known enough 

that it's gonna pull attention to it.

It would just really pull attention away from the pharmacy.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I mean, thinking about who is the purchaser of the product, right? And so knowing that like the people who are actually our true customers are pharmacies, and for them marketing is, something that really differentiates themselves from their competition, right? Like pharmacies are, pharmacies have a hard time competing on price, and so they really think it's marketing and pharmacies spend time and money developing their brand and they want their brand on it.

And recognizing that our strategy in the past six to eight months has been developing these. Fully customized designs for pharmacies to really allow the patient to bring that brand back to their home and keep it there. And when it's done very [00:46:00] beautifully, patients leave it out and about and, it sort of advertises the pharmacy to other members of the family.

And so realizing that has been really important to us. And of course, we still put our brand on it, like in the little corner that says parcel health. It doesn't mean anything if you don't know who parcel health is. And when you're a small startup like ours, like our own internal marketing budget, we have to be really smart about who we market to and how much time we want to spend 

direct to.

Consumer marketing is just so incredibly expensive today. If you don't have that expertise or that edge, any money you spend on social media marketing, you might as well just flush it down the toilet.

Mike Koelzer, Host: You think well, gosh, we're not gonna advertise this to plumbers and this and that, but even going to pharmacists is way too wide.

You might even go to the pharmacy.

Kind of partner or something, and 

they might not even be the person. 

So you really gotta narrow that down to the decision maker.

Melinda Su-En Lee: And decision makers spend time thinking about their own brands [00:47:00] quite a bit, What your pharmacy stands for, what it means when your patient sees, your logo or your storefront. And so recognizing that and saying, that's what the pharmacy cares about, that is what we're going to place on the

box, We're here to help pharmacies build that relationship with their patients. We don't really wanna get in the way. And so, I mean, we spend a lot of time helping these pharmacies design these boxes. So it stands out because this box is not a billboard. It's not flat, it's three D.

It's a three D box. And so it's a, it's on one hand, it's challenging to convert a flat two D logo into something three D. But on the other hand, it provides a really awesome opportunity when it's done right, to really make it a lot more immersive.

Mike Koelzer, Host: On your LinkedIn? I guess I like the packages because of that four 

panel thing, the logo can wrap, you could have, I'm just making this up, but you could have one of those pharmacy snakes, going around it, it's not just one side of it.

So that's a cool pathway than just one side.[00:48:00] 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing we've also recognized is that a lot of pharmacies are also doing really cool things other than dispensing

medications, Pharmacies are either helping patients administer injectables or, they have vaccines, or sometimes they start doing a little bit more clinical work, being able to sort of advertise that in a very simple way, right?

Just some of our pharmacies are gonna start adding a little QR code that says, scan to make an appointment, right? And that's something your patients are gonna see every single day. When they open their box, they're like, well, maybe if they came down with the flu, they could interact with that very quickly and very easily.

That's really important though, for the pharmacy, right? Because you can add so many services and create a link on your website, but that doesn't mean your patient's gonna realize that's what you're offering now.

And how do you communicate that? You can print flyers, you can talk to them, but it's very different from being there when they actually need you at the moment when they're like, oh yeah, I should just book my vaccine appointment.

And so providing that as well is super helpful. And then, those four panels you talked about, that's all [00:49:00] surface area, that's all marketing real estate that we can take advantage of that just traditionally has not been available.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And I imagine not only traditionally available, but let's say you had this package. 10 years ago, that's a different story of individualizing it. I mean, you'd have to take it to a designer and have ink, what do you 

call that? Screen print. I don't even, you know 

Melinda Su-En Lee: right? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you for changing colors and all that?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know it's still expensive, but it's come down dramatically.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. And even software, we can, we can make design edits really quickly, right? Send it to the pharmacy, get them approved and send it back. And these days a lot of pharmacies also recognize the value of branding. So they already have logos and colors ready to go. But 10 years ago that may not 

have been present, right?

They might not have a website, they may not have a prominent logo. They might not have any social media assets. This product could not exist 10 years ago just from a manufacturing and just like [00:50:00] efficiency standpoint. But in today's world where everything is so colorful 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: engaging, 

it's become sort of a necessity.

Mike Koelzer, Host: 

Have you ever seen the YouTube video where it says, count the people that are throwing the white ball to each other? Do you ever 

see that? 

Melinda Su-En Lee: And then does the gorilla go by

in the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: A gorilla goes by and for our listeners they say, count how many times these five people are throwing this ball. And you count and you're like, okay, 14.

And then when it's done, they say, did you see the gorilla doing the moonwalk in the background, or not even in the background? Did you 

see the gorilla doing the moonwalk? And you say, no and you watch it again. And sure enough, there's this 

Melinda Su-En Lee: it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: through. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: terrifying when you see it.

'cause

you're like, makes you question your reality.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It shows you, even if you think you've got the advertisement, oh, they're gonna see this because it's right on X, whatever it is.

Of course they're gonna see it and know it and read. And 

it's like you can watch a [00:51:00] video, not even see the damn gorilla. So 

why do you think people are, 

accepting this into their mind? And who knows, maybe they don't do it on the box either. But the point is sometimes it needs to be seen over and over again, and when 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: see it after 20 days, they 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

I mean, in pharmacy we talk a lot about the right dose, right time, right patient. And sometimes a lot of those things have to align right? For the patient to really get it. And so there, there are few things that you can't really control, right? Timing.

You try to, right from like a, from someone who's spending money in marketing, you try to control the timing. You try to show up in social media when the patient's a little bit more relaxed, maybe they'll see it maybe on Facebook when they're interacting with their family. But a lot of that you can't really time.

And so something that's a little bit more physical helps. And, there's sort of a resurgence in physical marketing too, right? 

People are finding that, when they send mailers 

out because people don't get mail as much anymore, they might keep it around a little bit more than just toss it straight into the recycling bin.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, I just [00:52:00] did that things are easier now talking about print and so on. I just sent to our top 300 doctors who we have the most deliveries from. I gave them a plain old postcard. 

 And it's easier now on, let's say Vistaprint. You go in and you give 'em the list and it does the bulk mailing and all that stuff.

It's a lot easier than it was even five, 10 years ago. But that's my thing. Precisely. It's like things are so overloaded. That sometimes now just getting mailed to somebody is good. Again, 

 To the right person. And here's my trick, Melinda, the best way to get everybody in the office to see it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: You put a doctor on there. doesn't work there,

right?

Melinda Su-En Lee: then they're like, oh, who is this

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who is this 

doctor? We got this card from such a pharmacy. Is this an intern of yours? Nope. Is this an intern? They show everybody and pretty soon they call you. They're like, this doctor's not here. And 20 people have 

Melinda Su-En Lee: have seen [00:53:00] it.

Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: done that, but I think it's a 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: idea.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Slightly related to that is just billboards, billboard advertisement is so cheap now because nobody does it anymore. Most brands have shifted their marketing budget to digital advertising, but for the same reason digital advertising is so congested right now.

Like I am so tired of ads. If some, if a brand is spending money like attacking my screen with ads, I almost get annoyed at them right?

Versus, there's not a lot of people out there competing for billboards. And so Billboard marketing has become, a, has become a sort of a really affordable way for a lot of startups who sort of establish their name.

And it's also why we see really bad billboards 

now. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, you know this Melinda, but Some of these billboards now because they're all digital. You go right on your phone and you can get, thirty seconds every

10 minutes or whatever on a billboard.

That's the exit of your pharmacy or something like 

Melinda Su-En Lee: right 

Yeah. 

Right in Times Square. It's a great business model for them because people want to [00:54:00] be photographed there. It's sort of really cool. But yeah, like thinking about marketing, about you gotta be a little creative sometimes. You can't really go where the masses are going because consumers get tired if you do the same thing over and over.

Mike Koelzer, Host: If you don't filter out stuff, There's a million things that you would see.

Your brain filters out everything. 'cause , you don't have that much bandwidth up there.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I read books about marketing now, understanding that sort of our value proposition these days. And the average user needs to see your ad if they don't know your product at all. And this is the first time they need to see it at least 50 times on social media before they take an action to interact with it 

50 times per user.

That's a lot of money when you think about how expensive it is to advertise 

on Instagram and Facebook these days. And so if you are not a big brand with a really creative and smart marketing, director or head of marketing, who knows, how to make 

Melinda Su-En Lee: someone slow down and look at your ad for 50 times, that r o i is going to be really bad

 [00:55:00] and. 

I think even today, if you think about it, like I think back in the 2000's, there were a lot of D t C brands, right? A lot of direct to consumer brands in a sense of they don't have a physical presence that were built, like a lot of cosmetic brands, shoe brands, clothing brands. And that was when nobody really was in digital marketing and they could capitalize on that.

But today that strategy is so overused that d T C is a really hard strategy for a lot of startups or a lot of brands. You have to be a little bit more creative and think like yourself, think about physical marketing again where people are not really, overloading on that end.

Even like in pharmacy, right? In the 2000 tens there were so many of these pharmacies that we're trying, that were doing direct to consumer, and now we see a lot of copycats, but

Mike Koelzer, Host: They're not getting the response anymore.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, people are so tired of D T C brands. There's a lot of brands that are actually in trouble today because that strategy is overused, and they have to go into retail stores. [00:56:00] And I imagine that this trend is very similar in pharmacy as well, right? Like late 2010s. There were a lot of online pharmacies, and if you aren't His or Hers or some of the other earlier brands, any of the copycats that came after them, patients are just completely tuned out.

If you think about Amazon Pharmacy, 

right? They're so late to the game,

they can't grab as much market.

Mike Koelzer, Host: see some of these pharmacy delivery apps come up on the phone. they're getting like a billion dollars in funding or 

whatever is 

I think. So one of em buffered like a billion bucks or something, and if they could have talked to me, I could have told them this was late in the game and 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: are doing this and you're not that advanced and 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think some of these investors have money to throw around.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh yeah. It is wild. I think that's something that I went to pharmacy school, so I didn't learn anything about VC funding. And then now that I'm in this space, it's shocking how much money there is and how much money goes to really bad companies 

that are led by people who are not in health.

[00:57:00] I think that is 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yes, absolutely, for sure. 

 Melinda, fascinating conversation. Some of these are hard to stop because you and I could talk for hours. Now getting into the VC stuff 

and that, it's fascinating. What I wanna tell the listeners is you're listening to someone here who has a very good handle on marketing in the new age. And this same person, Melinda, is putting a product in your customer's hand that they're going to see maybe 120 times a month, just one box. And so, pay attention to what she's saying. Dig just a little bit deeper. See if it's right for you. Melinda, what is the website they're gonna go to,

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yep. They will go to parcel health.co and that's spelled P a r c e L health.co. A little trivia, I guess a little random effect. We tried to buy.com, but the person holding the.com [00:58:00] domain wanted to sell it for me for $10,000 and I said, no, we're gonna stick with dot C. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda. It doesn't matter anymore . It doesn't matter with Google. People are going on and they're putting parcel health in Google. You could have really any suffix on that and it wouldn't matter at all.

You might have something that looks a little bit off. Well, people have a bad connotation now of.net. Dot net always seemed like the little sibling kind of thing. But now with the new ones, People don't 

care. And rarely are people gonna put your whole website in.

They're just 

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's so true. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Facebook, when they launched Threads , the competitor to Twitter, it's dot net 'cause they couldn't buy.com. So when I saw that, I was like, yeah, you know what? I think we're past the.com age where 

 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it doesn't matter. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: business, you need a.com.

But 

Mike Koelzer, Host: No. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: we're parcel health.co.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Dot co. Mm-hmm. 

Thank you. Very cool. Keep it up.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. Thank you.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright, Melinda, [00:59:00] we'll keep in touch. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Melinda, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today 

Melinda Su-En Lee: my name is Melinda Su-en Lee. I am the CEO and Co-founder of Parcel Health, and at Parcel Health, we develop sustainable medication packaging for pharmacies.

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's a nice tight elevator pitch.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Thank you.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who would want sustainable packaging? Would it be the pharmacy? Because they're trying to look progressive and that kind of stuff.

Who wants sustainable stuff?

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. When I started this company, I thought, maybe me and a couple of friends would care about sustainable packaging that nobody else would really care about sustainable packaging. 'cause plastic really bothered me. But in my time working, in pharmacies, I realized that a lot of patients care about sustainable packaging.

People often came in and complained about the plastic pill bottles they were receiving. And so I found out that, on one hand there are pharmacists like myself who really cared about what we were dispensing. But on the other [00:01:00] hand , for a lot of patients, they also cared about what they were receiving.

Mike Koelzer, Host: With packaging like that. And we're gonna get more into the fill box.

 It replaces the pill bottle, but with packaging like that, you're not offending anybody because nobody usually says I love plastic. They might for Reasons they don't wanna run over with their car all this kind of stuff or traveling reasons and things.

But nobody usually says, I really want to use plastic because I love what plastic does for the world, kind of thing. So you don't lose anything there 

Melinda Su-En Lee: I think for sustainable packaging, when we went into designing the fill box, which is, one of our flagship products at Parcel Health, Is really re-imagining what the future of packaging would look like. I knew that it would have to be built on the foundations of sustainability, but it could not be only sustainable.

Like we had to sort of rethink what that would mean. But one of the things that we thought about when we were redesigning [00:02:00] when we were rethinking and reimagining what the future of prescription packaging would look like was the opening mechanism, right?

Like, how would we be able to, how can we develop something that would be simultaneously child resistant, but still easy for the elderly to use? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Which is even hard when you can use plastic. I mean, that's always a battle between easy enough for the elderly and hard enough for the kids.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I mean, I've met a lot of elderly patients who, I mean, they can always try to opt out of the child resistant cap, but you know, in a lot of large chain pharmacies that just gets dispensed still and they would just sort of keep it in their they capita with the cap off, right? That's just how

They kept it.

 We did a lot of these user interviews where a lot of elderly patients were just keeping it uncapped. And so there's one pillar where we're talking about ease of use for elderly, but still keeping that safety. And the other component of it is just medication communication. If you think about every single product you own in your home, one [00:03:00] look right at it, you can see what it is.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Even if it's a coffee can, if it's, cereal, you look at it and you know what it is with medication containers to just even see what medication it is, you have to pick it up. Or even for who it is, you have to pick it up. You gotta like, Bring it closer and turn it just to see what it is, who it's for, and how often to take it.

And to me, that was really frustrating because it was one of, it is one of the items in your household that should be the clearest to see as to who medication this is, what medication it is, and how to take it. So those were the things that we, priority, right? It had to be sustainable, it had to be more accessible, and third, it had to be much clearer and easier to communicate what is in this box.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And that would be because it's square, 

it's 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. It's square, it's flat. One of the difficulties with a cylindrical bottle is that no matter how you look at it, there's only one surface [00:04:00] area. There's only one plane. So you, no matter what, you're gonna have to curve around it. Versus if you think about a box in a lot of different types of packaging, when it's a box, they can put the name of their product on one face and then, some small information at the front.

But then if you turn it around, you can have the nutrition label right on the other end. So it's much clearer. And I think for a lot of patients, what they care about is what medication, how to take it, and who it's for. Those are the three things that patients care about. And it should be on one surface, flat surface area, and all the other information like who the manufacturer is, you know who dispensed it, which pharmacy, that information only we care about, right?

We pharmacists, that's information we care about. That's what we are, federally, required to put on there. That needs to just go to the side.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Quite often I think when we're thinking of solutions, we don't think about that disruption really. It's kind of the old thing about when nobody woke up years ago, back [00:05:00] in the seventies and said, I want a little thing I can hold in my hand that has 10,000 songs on it.

So, part of me is saying, ow, just turn the damn bottle in your hand. But wait a minute. If we could start over. If we could do this without any preconditions. Yeah, let's get a flat bottle that's right there.

So when you're going up in the cupboard, you don't have to look around a 360 view kind of thing.

Melinda Su-En Lee: It should be just much clearer and easier, and the font needs to be able to be larger. I think that's something that a lot of pharmacies also struggle with, because if you wanna have a larger font in your label, you have to go up in size on your bottle. And if you go up in size, you're gonna create more plastic.

And those larger bottle sizes are expensive, right? And so, how do you sort of create that accessibility without necessarily needing to take up more space or use up more resources and having a square, surface area just really answers that very easily. We're not asking people to buy a new app.

We're not asking people to [00:06:00] change their fulfillment system. We're just saying, Hey, if your label is printed and had three little panels on it, that is going to improve how your patients experience medication taking in that one month period.

When their medications are dispensed. So really looking at design as a way to improve accessibility rather than relying so much on super high tech AI technology that a lot of our patients just don't have the bandwidth to adopt.

Mike Koelzer, Host: There's so much talk about compliance and stuff, and. A lot of people talk about remembering, remember it, and I've got some tablets I take at night and they're just in my backpack and in a little old guy, don't forget to take your medicine circle, with the things in it.

But there's so many times where my alarm goes off, or I think about it and I don't feel like taking it, it's not a memory thing. I just don't feel like getting my lazy ass off the couch and going over and doing it, and I just skip [00:07:00] it. Now that's not good.

Melinda Su-En Lee: I'm gonna probably sound a little woowoo for saying this, but part of our vision is also making medication, taking a little bit more joyful, a little bit less stigmatized, right? If you think about how bleach is packaged, if you think about your tide pods that's literally poison.

And those things are packaged so much more beautifully than life-saving medication. And so it's sometimes hard to tell a patient, and we have a lot of patients who try really ineffective medications ineffective, supplements or essential oils.

But when you look at the packaging for those items, they're packaged so beautifully, right? They make it seem safe. They make it seem like this is part of wellness. And then you look at something that's packaged in an orange plastic pill bottle, it looks worse than how we package poison. So it can be hard for patients who are, in their everyday consumer life, consuming things.

Everything is packaged beautifully, that communicates safety and wellness and health and vigor. And then they come to the pharmacy and they pick [00:08:00] up an item that even though we, as pharmacists know, is very evidence-based, it's going to increase their lifespan and improve their quality of life.

But then you put it in this bright orange plastic pill bottle, slap it with a label that has such a tiny font size, you can't read what it is. You can barely read what the side effects are because they're jammed to the side with those little stickers, it can be hard for patients to create that sense of trust with this item that they have to put in their mouth every single day.

A lot of patients don't have that issue when it comes to vitamins, right? Lots of people take vitamins daily, religiously. They talk about it and there's this. Di Otomy in, in how we talk about medications, how we package medications, how as pharmacists we view medication packaging versus how a lot of other pharmaceutical companies or vitamin supplements companies that have, figured out that, if you package things beautifully and label it appropriately, patients are going to have a much better relationship with that [00:09:00] product.

And so bringing sort of that, a little bit of that into

pharmacy. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I guess Apple was a leader on this Google follow, not too far behind. And now most things that you're getting on Amazon, it's all the same damn picture, for a 

earpiece or something. There's 80 companies that are buying it from Alibaba or something like that. But they're all doing that. This stuff comes in, it's got a nice little, plastic tab that you pull out. It opens kind of like an engagement ring, and this slides out and stuff.

 And I buy those I like better than the companies that come in a little one ounce glad bag that goes together. I like it. And I've looked up despite them all being equal, I've looked up some on Amazon for those companies that I don't know what the hell company it is, but I know it comes in a cool box and I'll purchase it.

I just feel better about

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, it just communicates trust, right? If you care about your product, you're going to [00:10:00] package it well, right? And if you don't care about the product and if it's a low value product that's just, just whatever, you're gonna just put it in a little Ziploc bag and send it on its way. 

And for independent pharmacies that want to really communicate that, when you come to my pharmacy, you are better taken care of. The medications that I'm sourcing are from Mistrusted Source but they don't provide any differentiations in terms of packaging that can get lost in the messaging.

'cause you can talk about it all day on social media, but the item that your patients take home and store in their home is still the same packaging that the big chain pharmacies that don't care about them also package it

And so having beautiful, sustainable packaging can really provide that differentiation and really communicate that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, have you changed your tune at all after you've had some feedback and things and maybe you were going for this age group and it's oh, we were selling this to the elderly, but actually we have to impress the [00:11:00] 50 year old daughters of these people because of this and that.

And have you had to change your, I guess marketing would encompass it. Have you had to change your message with the same product, but a little bit different flare to what you're saying? Or has it sort of been the same since the beginning?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, we definitely changed it. And part of it's from our internal studies, right? So, we did studies with adults over the age of 65 and had them survey, do they like the orange pill bottle or do they like the fill box opening mechanism? Overwhelmingly adults, older adults prefer our opening mechanism.

And so that was sort of the marketing message when going to the pharmacy hey, guess what? Your elderly patients are going to like it, blah, blah, blah. But we found that in practice, in reality, elderly patients struggled with change. So even though it was better for them, it was a huge ask for them to be like, you've been getting your medications in a plastic pill bottle the same way for the last 10 years and now we're gonna suit you over.

That can be extremely jarring to elderly patients. And so we [00:12:00] found that there's a sort of like a it's, it is contradictory that on one hand it may, it's better for them, it's easier for them to use when we survey them, but on the other hand, they don't like change. So they are likely not the right population to be receiving this product.

And so in the marketing from our end talking to pharmacies is that this is a product that's going to work very well for your 30 to 55 year old patients. These are folks that are on commercial insurance. This is their first, second, third chronic medication. They're aging into the system.

They're used to beautiful packaging, and now this is, they're coming into your pharmacy, right? And a lot of these patients care about small, independent businesses. And so how do you stand out to them, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Unless that crowd has already bought an Apple Watch or, a Google Pixel or something like that with the fancy packaging, unless they appreciate that beauty,

[00:13:00] They might take a front to it. Like, how the hell do I use this? It's just got three damn pictures on it. What does that mean? What are the words?

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. 

Yeah. And it's completely understandable, right? For these patients who are older, they struggle a lot getting through the healthcare system right there, insurance, Medicare, there's a lot that happens before they get to the, their prescriptions being dispensed.

So I completely empathize with them wanting that to be predictable, right? They've figured out a system, even though they keep the cap open in their cabinet, they've struggled with it. They have a system that works. It's completely understandable for them to want to stick to that. Yeah.

 To the system that has worked for them.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, I'm jumping the gun here, but let's say that this goes so well that you get sick of it and you sell it off. You sell off the fill box because your company's not named. Fill Box is named Parcel 

Health. 

When I think of parcels I am thinking of packaging, Like parcel post.

I don't even know what the hell that means, but I'm thinking [00:14:00] packaging. What other areas did you leave open by not naming your company, just this product?

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's a great question, Mike. Part of the reason we started our company was really thinking about how a lot of products designed and built for health are really built for functionality. So if you think about durable medical equipment, pill bottles are all built just for function, right?

And they're not sustainable. They're poorly designed and a lot of people, as they age can really, will really resist picking up good equipment that can help improve the safety in their home. But they sort of refuse that. And so the vision for personal health has always been to develop a sort of product that can welcome you into aging in a way that you look forward to.

Because, if you told me I needed to install one of those seats in my toilet so that I didn't have to fall through, I completely understand why a lot of [00:15:00] elderly folks resist that. Because it is an eyesore. And it just really ages you. And so thinking about the future of healthcare, what products would sort of receive me, right? Like you were talking earlier about the iPhones and the headphones. Yeah, there are products out there that can do the exact same thing, but when we're using it, we want it to sort of fit our preferences.

Mike Koelzer, Host: There's gonna be a lot of things that people aren't gonna want to get into things for

Melinda Su-En Lee: And selfishly for me, it's just as I age, what products do I want to buy to help me age more gracefully? And that would also help others age gracefully and safely instead of sort of creating this resistance to it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I don't know how you would put lipstick on this pig though, of adult diapers and things like

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh yeah, that's a great example. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who knows if there's some idea out

there, 

maybe fashion diapers 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah, so there's this brand that I really like what they're doing. I mean, [00:16:00] they'd recently gotten into some controversy for some of the products that they have, but this brand called Thinks and they basically created these, really well-designed products that are for the elderly, but also for women who had just given birth.

They're essentially adult diapers, but they're just made to look just like a pair of underwear, a beautiful, trendy pair of underwear that can really sort of take away that stigma of needing to wear a product like that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Because here's what I'm thinking, Melinda,

Think about a Speedo bathing suit. All 

right? Now you'd think trendy is smaller and whatever. I don't have to get into the details. You can picture a 

Speedo in your head but the trendy came in with, trunks down to your knees, and the pockets and the stripes and things like that.

So, maybe the adult diapers have to get bigger. They gotta get bigger. to get trendy. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: I mean, women wear certain underwear that makes their butts look bigger, right? Everybody wants those big butts and and so [00:17:00] without going down this rabbit hole, but just there a lot of products that are designed to be more accessible that can 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Sure. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: of using.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And look how and a lot of it's just marketing. I mean, look how Kim Kardashian, basically, she's got a girdle, do 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: is? Girdle.

Melinda Su-En Lee: No, I do not want it. 

I did accidentally say that instead of the griddle, that the pan, I think the griddle is something you 

make pancakes on. Yes. I accidentally said that the other way once. So I said I wanted 

Mike Koelzer, Host: someone catch you on it and preach to you like 

you don't know what a girdle is? All right. A girdle was just an old lady thing. It was basically Spanx. And was it skins? Is that what it is?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Skims, that's the Kim Kardashian brand. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: and she had to change that word. She had a, it was a, 

different, 

Melinda Su-En Lee: it Komodo at first.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And that was a

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's like a Japanese traditional Japanese wear, and 

her brand had nothing to do

with Japanese culture. 

Yes. Yeah. It was a poor use of words.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So a girdle was an old lady thing. [00:18:00] They'd pull it up and jump into it and stuff. And this is just a rebranding of that basically.

That's without even changing it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. Compression socks. I mean, compression socks

 These days there's so many cool compression socks. Even with bidets, right? Bidets for a long time, I think in the US bidets looked awful. Awful. But you use less toilet paper when you have a bidet.

But now they're like really trendy, awesome looking bidets. And those are just like really simple design changes, right? Like instead of making it just white, just adding a little bit of color can really de-stigmatize it, have it in an older person's home and people are like, oh, that is so cool, right?

That is so cool. Or even the Apple Watch, people hate life alerts because it kind of ages them, right? Like when you wear a little necklace, like nobody wants to walk around thinking that very few people like walking around with something like that. But when you think about it, the Apple Watch has a sort of fall alert.

An older person or somebody who needs it, they're not gonna feel like their life is being limited by wearing the Apple Watch.[00:19:00] 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm already getting into some of that, Melinda there'll be times where inside I feel young, but I'm starting to age and sometimes I think people might think about me. I. Like, I think about old farts,

Melinda Su-En Lee: I know 

As a society, we stigmatize old age so much. 

So, so much. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well here's one here, like a cane. I would not want to use a 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: were in the cane manufacturing, I would come at it from a couple different angles. I'd come at it from, it's a walking stick , but it's shorter, so it's a cool walking stick and shows people out with their grandkids at the park and things like that.

Or I would come from at the angle of it being kind of a weapon 

Melinda Su-En Lee: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it's like a weapon stick and you can jam open this with it, and if needed, you can hit someone over the head with it

But it's just rethinking it and [00:20:00] maybe making it more normal so you feel like you're part of the crowd still.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I mean like people who go hiking use hiking poles, right? And those are cool, like when you go hiking with Those 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Ooh, you, yeah, you look like you're a super outdoorsy person when you walk around with those. But yeah, I mean, designing things that are not just so focused on old people or aging or like a disease state, but thinking about how this product could be used for people who have other illnesses or other, like weapons, right?

That is something that everybody would use, would carry around. Just think about accessible design. And something I read recently about how we always want safety for others. Like when we think about children in a parent relationship, we always want safety for our parents, but we want freedom for ourselves.

And so like when children and parents have these tough conversations of should you go to a nursing home? Should you go to assisted living? The child is always gonna say, I want you to be safe. But when it's you in that position, you are always gonna say, I prefer autonomy, I prefer freedom.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'll take [00:21:00] a chance of stubbing my toe or 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: wanna

Melinda Su-En Lee: I wanna be able to go down the street when I want to. I want to go to hang out with my friends and think about that and realize that like safety's. Is important. But for a lot of folks like me and you who are aging, we're all aging well, we're all gonna die.

Products that we bring into our lives that we're willing to integrate into our lives has to be something that gives us more autonomy,

Mike Koelzer, Host: You're not aging, Melinda. You didn't know what a damn girdle is.

Melinda Su-En Lee: I think. I think that may be more of the time for the word I think that word just not as

commonly used. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Here's where I get in trouble too, is my kids laugh at me when I say rouge.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Is that a, is that lipstick?

Mike Koelzer, Host: No, it was 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh,

Mike Koelzer, Host: uh, 

Melinda Su-En Lee: blush. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: blush. It was blushing. It would come out and you'd wipe it on there, but my kids don't like me when I call it rouge.

I don't say it that often. It's not like I 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. yeah, yeah.

That is a great name for a brand though. That should be a brand, you,

Mike Koelzer, Host: back. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. No.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm not sure if this makes me old, but [00:22:00] I have pepper spray now because one of my friends came in the store and he packs the heat, as they say, and I said, are you packing the heat?

He's no, I got it in the car. And we were talking about it. He said, I carry it everywhere. 

And I have nothing against guns, but I don't want to own one. So I got on line and I got pepper spray. I got it in my car, and I took it to the pharmacy, and I actually did drills on it. I pick it up and I can put my finger on it, but why not?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I carry pepper spray around

and You Oh yeah. I carry pepper spray around and I have pink pepper spray. I mean, I could've gotten a cheaper one that's uglier, but I got a pink pepper spray because it's something I gotta carry around all the time. if it falls outta my bag, I kinda wanna be able to like, conceal it.

Just like, oh, sorry. Just put it on, it looks like lipstick, right? I just thought

when it's pink in color. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And then some have it on the key chain. Then my friend, we were at dinner and he pulled out his reading glasses. But they were in like a little 

Mike Koelzer, Host: change purse and they all folded out kind of thing. But I'm thinking, how many things can you have?

I mean, pretty soon my key [00:23:00] chain would look like a big rosary 

Melinda Su-En Lee: I mean, I got rid of my house door. I don't have a key for it. It's just 

a, it's a, little 

keypad because I forget my keys because I forget my keys all the time. But that sort of has freed up my key chain to hook a lot of

different other things on it. 

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think maybe even in the future, calling it a key chain would be almost like a.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, it's kinda like the glove box on a car. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: No, I think I call it like that, no, I do call it the glove box. Yeah. What did they call, did they store gloves in it?

Mike Koelzer, Host: They used to keep gloves in it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Okay. Because

Mike Koelzer, Host: Just because you needed a spot to put your 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Now that you mention it, it might've been that people had driving gloves and they

'em in there. I always thought about regular gloves

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. 

Wanting 

down the window. Do you remember whining down the window?

I had a car. Yeah. My brother, he's 17 so he's 13 years younger than me. He's never needed to wind down a window. And so he was sitting in my old, my dad bought me a really old car[00:24:00] when I was in Malaysia and my dad's like wind down the window and he had never wound down a window before, so he went to the knob and he just spun the knob hoping that the window would come down.

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's great. He's funny. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. He's what do you mean? He's like, how do I get this? He's, my dad's just turned it.

And he's like, he likes turning the little knob.

Mike Koelzer, Host: in some of those phrases we still use, hey, roll down the window. Usually say roll it down. You don't say put it down 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. Press the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: press a button 

to have it go down. 

 What was your biggest misconception when you started this? 

Melinda Su-En Lee: my biggest misconception is that being environmentally friendly was enough. That was my biggest conception. So when I started this product and I was like, when I, as I mentioned earlier with all this stuff, I'm like, oh, it's gonna be cool. And, but you know, but I just need to go in and I just need to show them it's compostable, it's recyclable.

People are gonna get it just like that. And that's not true. People care about sustainability. They'll open the door and they'll listen to you about sustainability, but that's not the reason why people will give you [00:25:00] money for it. A lot of our customers, they'll be like, yeah, that's really cool. I care about the earth, I care about sustainability 

but the part that gets them to be willing to invest or over the money to buy this product, to invest in it is completely different from sustainability. And that, it's so silly of me to have gone and think having that misconception because it's the same thing. It's the same way that I react to a lot of products that our market is sustainable, right?

If you think about cars Or solar panels or whatever, yeah, there's, it's sustainable. It is great for the planet, but it needs to have something else, right? Like with electric cars, yeah, it's gonna save me money on gas, but it's gotta be cool or it's gotta have good mileage, right? Or it's gotta be able to do all these other cool things.

Same thing with solar panels. 

So I thought that sustainability was enough to convince people to purchase a product, to try the product, but you really need more than that. People will listen to you, they'll open a door, they'll listen to your pitch, they'll talk to you about sustainability. [00:26:00] But the part that gets people to turn over their money, to open their purse and said, okay, instead of buying this other thing, I'm gonna buy your thing.

It has to be more than sustainability. And I realized that in my own experience, that is the same, right? I don't just buy an electric car because it's more sustainable for the environment. 

I buy an electric car because it comes with all these other awesome features, being able to save on gas. Being able to reverse, use my car as a battery to reverse charge my house.

Things like that. Same thing with solar panels, right? People don't just install it for the environment. They install it because it's going to help them save on electric bills. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: We bought some of my daughters into that and we got this laundry. Sheets or something. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh, I know what you're talking 

Mike Koelzer, Host: they're kind 

a gelatin. It's supposed to be washing detergent, but they come almost like Kleenexes.

 They don't pop up like that. They come just like in a stack of 

sheets, like napkins sort of, the sustainability and the green and stuff is fine, but they do have to work. 

 You'd throw one of those in the laundry, but it didn't [00:27:00] work. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh 

Mike Koelzer, Host: stuff has to work first. I

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes. And they have to work better. I almost find that sustainable products, they cannot work less than, because think about like paper straws,

right? Yeah. Everybody hates paper straws. when we were developing our product, I was like, I don't wanna be the paper straw too. Plastic straws.

It's actually gotta be better. I want it to actually be better than what exists today. Because that's how you create lasting change,

Mike Koelzer, Host: Part of the problem with the paper straws as they come, like in plastic wrappers. So that'd be like you guys selling these prescription bottles like in a Tupperware box or something 

like that, 

Melinda Su-En Lee: They get so soggy after use and nobody looks forward to it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It feels like you're sucking on a piece of 

chalk. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. And sometimes you can almost taste the paper. yeah. Yeah. So we cannot beat that, right? Like people are willing to pay a little bit more. People are willing to change their habits a little bit for sustainability, but it really cannot be worse than its predecessor.

And that's, That sort of what, the [00:28:00] plastic free movement sort of has to always grapple with is that whatever you design, 

it's gotta be better than plastic.

Mike Koelzer, Host: In our pharmacy, I made some changes years ago that a certain population liked. I don't make many stances at the pharmacy, but it's something I took a little bit of a stand on and people say, well, you're gonna lose some business for it, but you're gonna get a lot of people that really respect that are doing this and that.

And it's nah. They'll say it, and they'll maybe come to us if they're two miles away from us but they're not driving that far away. So it's gotta be equivalent, but it's gotta tip the scale.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes. Yes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, that sort of had to be a little bit of a kick in the teeth to, I know that wasn't the only part of your product, but it was a front selling point, so you had to sit there and say, I thought this was a big part of it.

Now I gotta make something else. The bigger part of it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. Absolutely. I think with a lot of sustainability initiatives for a lot of large [00:29:00] corporations and a lot of businesses, it can sometimes be a feast for famine. That's what I was told. It's that like, when it is a priority, you might get a huge interest, but when it is not a priority, nobody's going to spend money on 

this. 

And so understanding that's how it works and it helps that I really care about this. Understanding that's how it works to really start thinking about how else can we provide value to the customer. And yeah, we may lead with sustainability, but we're gonna have to close the business.

Talking about something else. We're gonna have to talk about

workflow and Right. We're gonna have to talk about workflow improvement. We're gonna have to talk about marketing budgets, so as an example for us, what has worked for us in the past year that we found is that helping people understand that this is the ultimate marketing tool, right?

There is nothing that you will be able to spend money on that's going to sit on your patient's countertop every single day, and that they're gonna interact with once or twice a day.

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:30:00] Melinda, if someone told you the best way to ever advertise something, can you imagine telling a company, well, you can imagine it, but you say they're gonna pick this thing up one to four times a day they're gonna stare at it and they're gonna do that every day for the rest of their lives, kind of thing.

I 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. There is nothing else that could provide that sort of r o i for marketing 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I can't think of one that would be, maybe your phone. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: and that's why people pay so much money for social media advertising, right? People are paying per impression. Think about for a company's marketing budget to appear in front of a person's feet every single day for 30 days, 

How much did that cost, right? And realizing that was a much more compelling value proposition was really crucial for us.

And it is the absolute truth, right? Part of why we wanted to go into innovating medication packaging was also realizing that this was a [00:31:00] product that someone is going to interact with very often. And it's also gonna be a product that when they interact with, they're going to remember that they have a disease, right?

They, that they have a chronic illness. And so how can you make that interaction be a little bit more pleasurable, right? Rather than oh, I gotta take my medication because I have diabetes. Be like, I'm taking this medication because this is part of what's going to make it easier for me to live with diabetes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, before we get to the end of the show, I think we should share with people what this is. It's a fill box. It replaces the plastic 

vials, but 

it's a box shape.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Correct. It's a box shape. And we do, full printing on it so that it is basically your patients almost immersed in your branding when they use a product. It's food safe, it's water resistant, and pharmacies fill it just like they fill their orange plastic pill bottles. The fill box is square. It is water resistant. It's humidity resistant for up to three hours.

Mike Koelzer, Host: No, it's not square.

Melinda Su-En Lee: it's [00:32:00] rectangular, it's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm 

Melinda Su-En Lee: even now. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: rhombus. I don't even know what 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Abus, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's just funny to say

Melinda Su-En Lee: it's not a rhombus, 

It's like a pit. No, I

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's like a, It's like a building.

It's like a, It's like a, a train car stood on end

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah,

Mike Koelzer, Host: Is it more square than I'm thinking? I'm thinking it's taller than

Melinda Su-En Lee: It's not a perfect square. So like the shape is a square, so it has four sides and then it goes 

Mike Koelzer, Host: taller than wide.

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes, it is taller than it is

wide. And 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's simple. I mean, it looks like a, it looks like a carton a

Milk Carton. A 

milk carton. yes. Yeah, it looks like a milk carton, but for your pills.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think people can picture that. What's the actual take of the medicine? Is it kind of like a matchbox where the bottom, spreads apart, then you take it out from down there 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. So it's just like a matchbox. And in our early designs we had it like a matchbox where [00:33:00] the, if you think of a mastro and you open it the hole for where the matches come out of is gigantic. But we wanted to sort of make the medications come out in a more controlled pore, and so we have a smaller hole that's at the edge of the carton to make it easier to dispense 1, 2, 3 pills.

Mike Koelzer, Host: We used to have people come in and they'd try to sell us ads on the pharmacy bags. I think my dad sold it at one time. But you'd have stuff on there a tattoo parlor or something like 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh my gosh, yes, about those. Yeah. No,

I just learned about this last week where people would put funeral homes on 

the RX bag, and I was like, that is so terrifying. Can you imagine dispensing to your patients like, well, if this medication doesn't work, there's another number here you can call.

Mike Koelzer, Host: My dad didn't even let us take the antibiotics, he'd take three times a day until gone. And my dad would say don't put it there until it's gone in there. 'cause it makes it sound like they're dying. We'd have to wait until [00:34:00] finished. But you're right, it had a car seat on it and dinner mats and restaurants and things.

 Melinda, with that said I know we've talked about Gian stuff, and I don't think you're going this route, but would anybody else put their marketing on it for a pharmacy or would it always be the pharmacy doing their services? As far as marketing goes?

Melinda Su-En Lee: So our focus is to really have the pharmacy be the one that sort of controls that packaging, because that is the, this again is the thing that you're gonna dispense your patient that's going to sit on their shelf every single day. What do you wanna associate yourself with? With that said, I think that public health messages would work very well for it.

So for example like vaccine campaigns or campaigns for exercising more. I think things like that can be sponsored for the box that the pharmacy where it would be sort of mutually beneficial, where the pharmacy is promoting a health message, but that would probably be the limit of what we would allow on a packaging.

I think it's kind of [00:35:00] cheesy

to sort of put, you know, vitamins or something else on it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda. What does your typical day look like?

And what I mean is how many people do you see? Where is the business out of this kind of thing?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. So I have an office. So once or twice a week I am able to go into the office. I work with my employees. We do a lot of different adjustments to the box, making sure it's manufactured more efficiently. But on other days I do marketing. I do a lot, you know, social media, planning, marketing.

Other days I talk to our C F O and we talk about, our budget 

and fundraising and investor relations. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: How many people are involved

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah. So full-time it's me and my co-founder. If you interact with in any form parts of health, you're either interacting

with me or my co-founder. Yeah. And then we have about seven part-time employees. Some of them are exclusively assembly technicians where they put together the boxes.

Others are sort of doing more of our research or [00:36:00] outreach or marketing.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who designed who made the decision? I take it. You guys did, but who was involved with the cut of the cardboard, like we need this many millimeters 

here and so on. Who designed it?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. It was primarily my co-founder and our, also our creative director who's on our team. So, there are folks who, both of them are experts in paper carton manufacturing and design and are very intimately aware of design principles. And we experiment with all sorts of different paper mage, paper ties, paper manufacturers, coatings to really arrive at the fill box.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Was there any thoughts of variations? Not that you should, but were there thoughts of variations of little tweaks here or there?

And then you said, ah let's keep it, the same.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh, absolutely a million. We've got so many, we've talked about going, using a round, cylindrical tube, right? So just mimicking the orange pill bottle as much as possible. So, using a paper tube we talked about, so right now we have the fill box with four sides. [00:37:00] So it's a square carton.

But we have talked about making it eight sided or six sided. And part of the reason for that is to accommodate different dispensing holes. So, could we have different dispensing holes and different sides so the patient can sort of choose which hole they want to use. For example we've thought about having a very thin and tall carton that looks more like a tic-tac box.

So, lots of different shapes. And the really cool thing is because we use paper where it's, ours is a paper-based product, we can do a lot of different cool things to To, accommodate needs for medication packaging.

Mike Koelzer, Host: To make the older people feel at home, you should make a good old cigarette carton

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's a great idea. Yeah. A little like

open 

it and then 

you pull a little medication out.

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, and then before the people open it, they do 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Hmm. yeah, 

yeah, 

yeah, 

just two days ago I went to watch Barbie the movie. Have you watched Barbie?

Mike Koelzer, Host: I have not seen it. My kids went, but I haven't seen it

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, great movie. Yeah, and bought [00:38:00] candy and there's a candy box. So people, we were shaking the little candy box and you can poke your hand. Obviously it's not child resistant and once you open it, you can't reclose it. But you know, people are very familiar with this form factor. They're very familiar with paper.

And paper. Also instantly communicates that it is sustainable, that you can recycle it or compost it, 

versus a lot of other materials out there that you might have to do a lot more education just to

get the same point across. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: People call us, we don't have it. Do you have the pill package thing where you do this or that? Or can you spread the pills out for

this elderly person and stuff? Yeah. I imagine that's crossed your mind about doing a seven day something or other.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes, we've been wanting to make what are those for Christmas, like 25 days following up to Christmas. There's a name for that thing. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: A calendar. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: advent calendars we've been 

I want to make it. Yes, we've been wanting to make advent calendars for the medication box because again, people are very familiar with advent calendars every [00:39:00] day you open it and people are so excited to open advent calendars.

Right? And so sort of replicating that sort of joy, especially, especially if it's like building up to a holiday season. So advent calendars are one of them. One thing that we are developing is a, actually a better secondary box for 

 

Melinda Su-En Lee: those pill pouches because a lot of pharmacies have come to tell us that.

They can dispense the roll of medication in those plastic film pouches, but when you put it in a patient's house, they're kind of struggling with it. There's no hinge, so you're just kind of struggling to pull that packet out. The box is square, it's very flimsy, but it doesn't have a hinge for the roll to roll on.

And so, these are things that just if we just slow down a little bit and we just think about it from a design perspective or like how to make it easier for patients, it's a very simple problem for us to solve.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, explain the safety mechanism on

this. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes. So the safety mechanism we develop is a three step mechanism. So instead of a [00:40:00] push twist motion where you need two hands to push and twist and you're, and you need strength our mechanism, which is what our submitted patent is around, is instead it's a, you push the inner box in, press a button, and then you pull it open.

And this motion doesn't require strength, like wrist strength. It also doesn't require wrist mobility, which a lot of elderly people struggle with. And so developing a mechanism that only requires your thumbs and your index finger is just a lot more accessible for a lot of people. Not just elderly folks, just folks in general who have limited hand dexterity.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And is it like a tab that gets in the way or what's the physicalness of 

that? 

What's 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. So, right inside the mechanism there is a little tab, so if you don't push the inner shell in, it doesn't get unlocked. And so it's there, there's another piece of cardboard inside that sort of prevents the lock from opening. But when you push the inner box up, that sort of puts it in an unlocked position, and when you press the button, it allows the whole box to slide out.[00:41:00] 

Mike Koelzer, Host: This is all paper.

Is it all one piece?

Melinda Su-En Lee: It is two pieces of

paper 

Mike Koelzer, Host: because one's the bottom Is the locking thing you mentioned that's either part of the top and the bottom. That's 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm.

Mike Koelzer, Host: pasting things or anything.

Melinda Su-En Lee: No. Yeah, we engineer. So it's all one piece. It just makes manufacturing easier, assembly on our end, easier. And so it's two pieces that fit together that creates that lock.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It kind of starting to sound a little bit like origami, like there should 

be like a, what do you call that? Like a swan or 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes. Mike. On days where previously, when we were at the beginning of our journey of my journey building this company, there were days where I would lay on the floor and I'm like, what am I doing with my life? I'm a trained pharmacist and I'm out here selling an origami box. So yes that is something. Yeah it is using just how paper behaves.

And paper's a really fascinating material. It is [00:42:00] rigid, but flexible, and it's sort of, it has a little bounce to it. So we, you, we take advantage of how springy paper is when you bend it in a certain

way to

Work with the lock. It's very unique as a material compared to a lot of other materials, and it's also really the only 

material that can rival the price of plastic out there.

Very few materials in the world can rival the price of

plastic. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Paper or plastic, they asked that.

Right. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And they probably wouldn't ask it unless it was fairly close.

They would just grab it in the grocery store.

Melinda Su-En Lee: yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda. So we have all 

Then what's the sales strategy?

What has that been?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. Something that we learned is, so at the beginning, if you had seen our earlier designs were heavily branded with a parcel health branding,

Mike Koelzer, Host: I remember that from a little bit ago. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: yes. 

That was an awful strategy. Because we were selling these products to pharmacies, and pharmacies would be like, why would I be pushing my patients to use a product that didn't have my brand on it?

Which is completely [00:43:00] understandable. Like you don't buy an Apple product and open, and the packaging is this other packaging companies 

brand name on it. So that was a huge mistake on our part. And

so 

now, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Wait a minute though. There's a lot of things though the iPhone and so on that I don't have. Oh my gosh.

an Android guy. I'm an Android guy. 

Oh, 

my whole family's iPhone. 

And I'm Android.

Melinda Su-En Lee: You gotta get on the Apple train.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Here's why I don't do it. Melinda, years ago 

Now, you don't even know what a girdle is, so you're not gonna follow this at all. But years ago, Apple had iTunes, which is when the iPod came out, but not the phone.

They had the iTunes and you would then buy your songs 

99 cents or whatever. But then, You'd want to share those with your family because you bought 'em. You're not sharing a service. You actually own the song 

for a buck and you wanna share it. So then they had the [00:44:00] password and then they had four of their passwords for your family.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh,

Mike Koelzer, Host: It was really clunky. Alright, so time goes on and I'm like, screw that.

I'm going to Android because that's just a Google password for everything, So we've got these phones that float around the family somehow. And my youngest son wasn't old enough to get his own iPhone password and instead of faking his age, I wanted to set a good example. So then all of a sudden, like my brother is messaging me some.

Off-color jokes that 50 and 60 year old guys tell each other . pretty soon my son says, Hey Uncle Pete, this is Drew. Because he thought he was going to 

1. It's clunky. All 

these passwords all 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: that's that's why 

I'm with Android. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Interesting.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright, so my point is, Melinda,

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: when you [00:45:00] have an iPhone, you want it to say iPhone because the brand is known.

So I think Parcel Health could put a stamp similar to a good housekeeping thing on it. But I guess the problem is it's not known enough 

that it's gonna pull attention to it.

It would just really pull attention away from the pharmacy.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I mean, thinking about who is the purchaser of the product, right? And so knowing that like the people who are actually our true customers are pharmacies, and for them marketing is, something that really differentiates themselves from their competition, right? Like pharmacies are, pharmacies have a hard time competing on price, and so they really think it's marketing and pharmacies spend time and money developing their brand and they want their brand on it.

And recognizing that our strategy in the past six to eight months has been developing these. Fully customized designs for pharmacies to really allow the patient to bring that brand back to their home and keep it there. And when it's done very [00:46:00] beautifully, patients leave it out and about and, it sort of advertises the pharmacy to other members of the family.

And so realizing that has been really important to us. And of course, we still put our brand on it, like in the little corner that says parcel health. It doesn't mean anything if you don't know who parcel health is. And when you're a small startup like ours, like our own internal marketing budget, we have to be really smart about who we market to and how much time we want to spend 

direct to.

Consumer marketing is just so incredibly expensive today. If you don't have that expertise or that edge, any money you spend on social media marketing, you might as well just flush it down the toilet.

Mike Koelzer, Host: You think well, gosh, we're not gonna advertise this to plumbers and this and that, but even going to pharmacists is way too wide.

You might even go to the pharmacy.

Kind of partner or something, and 

they might not even be the person. 

So you really gotta narrow that down to the decision maker.

Melinda Su-En Lee: And decision makers spend time thinking about their own brands [00:47:00] quite a bit, What your pharmacy stands for, what it means when your patient sees, your logo or your storefront. And so recognizing that and saying, that's what the pharmacy cares about, that is what we're going to place on the

box, We're here to help pharmacies build that relationship with their patients. We don't really wanna get in the way. And so, I mean, we spend a lot of time helping these pharmacies design these boxes. So it stands out because this box is not a billboard. It's not flat, it's three D.

It's a three D box. And so it's a, it's on one hand, it's challenging to convert a flat two D logo into something three D. But on the other hand, it provides a really awesome opportunity when it's done right, to really make it a lot more immersive.

Mike Koelzer, Host: On your LinkedIn? I guess I like the packages because of that four 

panel thing, the logo can wrap, you could have, I'm just making this up, but you could have one of those pharmacy snakes, going around it, it's not just one side of it.

So that's a cool pathway than just one side.[00:48:00] 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing we've also recognized is that a lot of pharmacies are also doing really cool things other than dispensing

medications, Pharmacies are either helping patients administer injectables or, they have vaccines, or sometimes they start doing a little bit more clinical work, being able to sort of advertise that in a very simple way, right?

Just some of our pharmacies are gonna start adding a little QR code that says, scan to make an appointment, right? And that's something your patients are gonna see every single day. When they open their box, they're like, well, maybe if they came down with the flu, they could interact with that very quickly and very easily.

That's really important though, for the pharmacy, right? Because you can add so many services and create a link on your website, but that doesn't mean your patient's gonna realize that's what you're offering now.

And how do you communicate that? You can print flyers, you can talk to them, but it's very different from being there when they actually need you at the moment when they're like, oh yeah, I should just book my vaccine appointment.

And so providing that as well is super helpful. And then, those four panels you talked about, that's all [00:49:00] surface area, that's all marketing real estate that we can take advantage of that just traditionally has not been available.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And I imagine not only traditionally available, but let's say you had this package. 10 years ago, that's a different story of individualizing it. I mean, you'd have to take it to a designer and have ink, what do you 

call that? Screen print. I don't even, you know 

Melinda Su-En Lee: right? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you for changing colors and all that?

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yes. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know it's still expensive, but it's come down dramatically.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. And even software, we can, we can make design edits really quickly, right? Send it to the pharmacy, get them approved and send it back. And these days a lot of pharmacies also recognize the value of branding. So they already have logos and colors ready to go. But 10 years ago that may not 

have been present, right?

They might not have a website, they may not have a prominent logo. They might not have any social media assets. This product could not exist 10 years ago just from a manufacturing and just like [00:50:00] efficiency standpoint. But in today's world where everything is so colorful 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: engaging, 

it's become sort of a necessity.

Mike Koelzer, Host: 

Have you ever seen the YouTube video where it says, count the people that are throwing the white ball to each other? Do you ever 

see that? 

Melinda Su-En Lee: And then does the gorilla go by

in the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: A gorilla goes by and for our listeners they say, count how many times these five people are throwing this ball. And you count and you're like, okay, 14.

And then when it's done, they say, did you see the gorilla doing the moonwalk in the background, or not even in the background? Did you 

see the gorilla doing the moonwalk? And you say, no and you watch it again. And sure enough, there's this 

Melinda Su-En Lee: it 

Mike Koelzer, Host: through. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: terrifying when you see it.

'cause

you're like, makes you question your reality.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It shows you, even if you think you've got the advertisement, oh, they're gonna see this because it's right on X, whatever it is.

Of course they're gonna see it and know it and read. And 

it's like you can watch a [00:51:00] video, not even see the damn gorilla. So 

why do you think people are, 

accepting this into their mind? And who knows, maybe they don't do it on the box either. But the point is sometimes it needs to be seen over and over again, and when 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: see it after 20 days, they 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Mm-hmm. 

I mean, in pharmacy we talk a lot about the right dose, right time, right patient. And sometimes a lot of those things have to align right? For the patient to really get it. And so there, there are few things that you can't really control, right? Timing.

You try to, right from like a, from someone who's spending money in marketing, you try to control the timing. You try to show up in social media when the patient's a little bit more relaxed, maybe they'll see it maybe on Facebook when they're interacting with their family. But a lot of that you can't really time.

And so something that's a little bit more physical helps. And, there's sort of a resurgence in physical marketing too, right? 

People are finding that, when they send mailers 

out because people don't get mail as much anymore, they might keep it around a little bit more than just toss it straight into the recycling bin.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda, I just [00:52:00] did that things are easier now talking about print and so on. I just sent to our top 300 doctors who we have the most deliveries from. I gave them a plain old postcard. 

 And it's easier now on, let's say Vistaprint. You go in and you give 'em the list and it does the bulk mailing and all that stuff.

It's a lot easier than it was even five, 10 years ago. But that's my thing. Precisely. It's like things are so overloaded. That sometimes now just getting mailed to somebody is good. Again, 

 To the right person. And here's my trick, Melinda, the best way to get everybody in the office to see it.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah.

Mike Koelzer, Host: You put a doctor on there. doesn't work there,

right?

Melinda Su-En Lee: then they're like, oh, who is this

Mike Koelzer, Host: Who is this 

doctor? We got this card from such a pharmacy. Is this an intern of yours? Nope. Is this an intern? They show everybody and pretty soon they call you. They're like, this doctor's not here. And 20 people have 

Melinda Su-En Lee: have seen [00:53:00] it.

Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: done that, but I think it's a 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: idea.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Slightly related to that is just billboards, billboard advertisement is so cheap now because nobody does it anymore. Most brands have shifted their marketing budget to digital advertising, but for the same reason digital advertising is so congested right now.

Like I am so tired of ads. If some, if a brand is spending money like attacking my screen with ads, I almost get annoyed at them right?

Versus, there's not a lot of people out there competing for billboards. And so Billboard marketing has become, a, has become a sort of a really affordable way for a lot of startups who sort of establish their name.

And it's also why we see really bad billboards 

now. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, you know this Melinda, but Some of these billboards now because they're all digital. You go right on your phone and you can get, thirty seconds every

10 minutes or whatever on a billboard.

That's the exit of your pharmacy or something like 

Melinda Su-En Lee: right 

Yeah. 

Right in Times Square. It's a great business model for them because people want to [00:54:00] be photographed there. It's sort of really cool. But yeah, like thinking about marketing, about you gotta be a little creative sometimes. You can't really go where the masses are going because consumers get tired if you do the same thing over and over.

Mike Koelzer, Host: If you don't filter out stuff, There's a million things that you would see.

Your brain filters out everything. 'cause , you don't have that much bandwidth up there.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, I read books about marketing now, understanding that sort of our value proposition these days. And the average user needs to see your ad if they don't know your product at all. And this is the first time they need to see it at least 50 times on social media before they take an action to interact with it 

50 times per user.

That's a lot of money when you think about how expensive it is to advertise 

on Instagram and Facebook these days. And so if you are not a big brand with a really creative and smart marketing, director or head of marketing, who knows, how to make 

Melinda Su-En Lee: someone slow down and look at your ad for 50 times, that r o i is going to be really bad

 [00:55:00] and. 

I think even today, if you think about it, like I think back in the 2000's, there were a lot of D t C brands, right? A lot of direct to consumer brands in a sense of they don't have a physical presence that were built, like a lot of cosmetic brands, shoe brands, clothing brands. And that was when nobody really was in digital marketing and they could capitalize on that.

But today that strategy is so overused that d T C is a really hard strategy for a lot of startups or a lot of brands. You have to be a little bit more creative and think like yourself, think about physical marketing again where people are not really, overloading on that end.

Even like in pharmacy, right? In the 2000 tens there were so many of these pharmacies that we're trying, that were doing direct to consumer, and now we see a lot of copycats, but

Mike Koelzer, Host: They're not getting the response anymore.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah, people are so tired of D T C brands. There's a lot of brands that are actually in trouble today because that strategy is overused, and they have to go into retail stores. [00:56:00] And I imagine that this trend is very similar in pharmacy as well, right? Like late 2010s. There were a lot of online pharmacies, and if you aren't His or Hers or some of the other earlier brands, any of the copycats that came after them, patients are just completely tuned out.

If you think about Amazon Pharmacy, 

right? They're so late to the game,

they can't grab as much market.

Mike Koelzer, Host: see some of these pharmacy delivery apps come up on the phone. they're getting like a billion dollars in funding or 

whatever is 

I think. So one of em buffered like a billion bucks or something, and if they could have talked to me, I could have told them this was late in the game and 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: are doing this and you're not that advanced and 

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think some of these investors have money to throw around.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Oh yeah. It is wild. I think that's something that I went to pharmacy school, so I didn't learn anything about VC funding. And then now that I'm in this space, it's shocking how much money there is and how much money goes to really bad companies 

that are led by people who are not in health.

[00:57:00] I think that is 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yes, absolutely, for sure. 

 Melinda, fascinating conversation. Some of these are hard to stop because you and I could talk for hours. Now getting into the VC stuff 

and that, it's fascinating. What I wanna tell the listeners is you're listening to someone here who has a very good handle on marketing in the new age. And this same person, Melinda, is putting a product in your customer's hand that they're going to see maybe 120 times a month, just one box. And so, pay attention to what she's saying. Dig just a little bit deeper. See if it's right for you. Melinda, what is the website they're gonna go to,

Melinda Su-En Lee: Yep. They will go to parcel health.co and that's spelled P a r c e L health.co. A little trivia, I guess a little random effect. We tried to buy.com, but the person holding the.com [00:58:00] domain wanted to sell it for me for $10,000 and I said, no, we're gonna stick with dot C. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Melinda. It doesn't matter anymore . It doesn't matter with Google. People are going on and they're putting parcel health in Google. You could have really any suffix on that and it wouldn't matter at all.

You might have something that looks a little bit off. Well, people have a bad connotation now of.net. Dot net always seemed like the little sibling kind of thing. But now with the new ones, People don't 

care. And rarely are people gonna put your whole website in.

They're just 

Melinda Su-En Lee: That's so true. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Facebook, when they launched Threads , the competitor to Twitter, it's dot net 'cause they couldn't buy.com. So when I saw that, I was like, yeah, you know what? I think we're past the.com age where 

Mike Koelzer, Host: it doesn't matter. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: business, you need a.com.

But 

Mike Koelzer, Host: No. 

Melinda Su-En Lee: we're parcel health.co.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Dot co. Mm-hmm. 

Thank you. Very cool. Keep it up.

Melinda Su-En Lee: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. Thank you.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright, Melinda, [00:59:00] we'll keep in touch.