The loved and occasionally loathed packaging shell, commonly called clamshell, is a product with a lot of positive as well as negative reviews. Manufacturers and store owners appreciate the perfectly protected shell around precious products.  Customers reach for that new flashdrive, phone charger or other shelled item appreciating the fact that it sits where it is supposed to, untampered with.  However, the appreciation of knowing it’ll make it home safely sometimes fades to the frustration experienced when trying to open it.

So why does packaging that sometimes leaves you frustrated continue to find it’s way onto our shelves? The simple answer is because it looks nice and it works.  Does a shoplifter really want to experience all of that? Of course not, simply put, these shells reduce theft while at the same time showing customers the benefits of the product they are about to purchase.

Additionally, your product was also able to make the journey from one area of the world to your house or business without injury which is something that isn’t always easily attainable in other packaging designs.

For more information or to purchase packaging products, please visit our website:

Sunrise Packaging

You may have out grown your trapper keeper days, but it’s unlikely that you’ll outgrow the need for a 3-ring binder.   It keeps you organized, efficient, and did I mention eco-friendly? That’s right, this little contraption is so much more that you imagined.

The way you organize often depends on how you think.  To some it makes sense to place things alphabetically. To others it makes sense to organize according to time, project, client, or subject matter.  Luckily any system that works for you will work for the binder.   Within your system of organization you can further organize by using tabs or separating sheets.  You can also attach cd holders to store masses of information.  You may be thinking, “I know a binder’s organizational uses.”  Fair enough, but do you know all of the ways it can make you eco-friendly?

We’ll start with recycling. Many of the dividers and CD holders are being made of recycled material.  Additionally, they’re being made of material that can be recycled.  The binders themselves are also being made of recyclable material, whether it be from recycled plastics or papers.   For example, take our eco-binders.  They are made from 75% post-consumer recycled material and are functional as well as dirt and grime resistant. Additionally, you can reuse binders from one project to the next making them an efficient way to stay organized.

For more information visit our store at:

Sunrise Store

With the ever increasing popularity of USB flash drives, also known as jump drives or thumb drives, companies are coming up with more and more creative designs for these devices. Here are some that we found at Gadget4all:

Care for a flash memory shot?

This one is a mp3 player, voice recorder, AND a flash memory stick:

Like to eat/cook? There are plenty of creative food designs:

Don’t go without protecting these valuable devices. When you need to package all of your creative USB flash drives, give Sunrise a call. We can help create a custom package to go with your unique devices that can help prevent them from being lost/damaged.

(All pictures from gadget4all.com)

Barnes & Noble announced that the have opened the world’s largest eBookstore.  The eBookstore has over 700,000 titles and they anticipate having over 1,000,000 titles by 2010.

Electronic book readers do not need to purchase a separate device to read the ebooks, Barnes & Noble offers a free eReader download in teh eBookstore that is compatible with Blackberries, iPhones/iPods, and PCs/Macs.

eBooks are a great resource for travel since readers do not need to carry separate books.

The summer is coming to an end and school will be starting soon…How did the time pass so fast?

The following is a list of tips and hits to make the back-to-school transition easier.

• Start going to bed earlier and getting up earlier to getting used to the schedule.
• Stock up on the variety of breakfast foods.  Don’t forget that breakfast is the most important meal.
• If your child is new to the school visit the school before the first day to become familiar with where everything is.
• Check out Green Seal’s list of green office supplies.

We keep seeing proof that the trend of Blu-Ray technology is here to stay.  As the popularity grows, sales will go up and prices will go down.  This will allow the Blu-Ray technology to continue to penetrate the market.

According to High-Def Digest, 3.1 million Blu-Ray discs have sold in the UK since the start of the year…that’s about a 231 percent increase in sales!  Their DVD sales, on the other hand, only went down slightly by about 9.5 percent.

This week, Best Buy discounted a house brand Blu-Ray player, the Insignia Blu-Ray disc player with 1080p output to only $99.99.  Wal-Mart is also offering a deal under $100 with their Magnavox NB530MGX Blu-Ray player for only $98 as a permanent “rollback” from the previous $168 price.  At the same time, online retailer, Amazon, is offering a sale on Blu-Ray discs starting at $14.99 each.  According to NPD Group Inc., Blu-Ray player sales have increased  by 72 percent in the first quarter of 2009 in comparison to the first quarter of 2008.

With the growing Blu-Ray popularity and the increase in sales, we are starting to see the prices drop for Blu-Ray players and Blu-Ray discs.  As this happens, Blu-Ray is starting to become more affordable and available for most everyone.

I saw this series of Star Wars MIMOBOT designer flash drives by Mimoco and just had to show you.

They make a variety of different character-based designer USB flash drives, such as series of Star Wars, Halo, Domo, and Happy Tree Friends.  The Star Wars series is a popular one and features various characters from the movie.

This set is perfect for every Star Wars fan.  And these aren’t just empty USB flash drives that have cute designs.  They are also programmed with exclusive digital content, such as wallpapers, screensavers, icons, and avatars.  Not only that, but they also play sounds from the Star Wars movie when the drive is inserted or ejected from the computer.  They offer these USB flash drives in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB capacities.

If you collect these or any other series, be sure to store them in a durable case that can hold multiple drives.  Then they can be protected, kept together, and have their value displayed for all to see.  You could even make your own cover artwork for a case with a clear overlay.  Most importantly, if you are collecting a valuable series like this, you want to keep the drives together and protect them from any damage.

When rock legends come together to form a new band, the packaging must be bold and original to represent the excitement of the new collaboration.  Chickenfoot did just that.  Their new band formation includes guitar hero Joe Satriani, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith, and former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and frontman Sammy Hagar.

David Bellm from Packaging Digest pointed out the innovative design by Todd Gallopo for Chickenfoot’s debut album.  The design for this album features new thermal ink developed and patented by Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI), a special effect inks and coatings manufacturer.  This ink causes the album cover to change with heat, which could be simply just touching it with your hand.  When heat is applied, pictures are revealed on the front cover, as well as song titles on the back.  Chickenfoot’s self-titled debut album was released earlier this month by Redline Entertainment.

Custom CD packaging can help boost CD sales over iTunes or illegal downloading, because the physical album becomes more of a collector’s item that fans would love to have and are willing to pay for.  Make your album a “must-have” for every fan with the Permavue One turned edge case that has your artwork printed on the cover.  Or there are always stock jewel cases that you can personalize with your own creative artwork.

According to the New York Times, many studio companies are now using DVD cases that are smaller and lighter in weight to reduce their environmental impact, as well as save on costs.

Warner Home Video, the largest distributor of DVD entertainment, just started releasing all of its new and library titles in cases with 20 percent less plastic.  Some feature a thin layer of plastic, while others have cutouts in the walls.  One of the main forces is to lessen the load on the environment; it will reduce Warner’s home entertainment division’s carbon emissions by 31 percent.  Not only do these improvements help the environment, but they also cut costs for companies by using less raw materials and by spending less on shipping.  Companies are looking to save money wherever they can, especially in this struggling economy.

Warner is not the only studio making changes in DVD packaging.  Just last month, Sony Pictures Entertainment released their own 20 percent reduced DVD cases.  Walt Disney Company is also coming up with their own green home entertainment ideas.  And don’t forget that Disney, Century Fox, and Sony were the ones to really push the shift to Blu-Ray discs, in which cases have a 30 percent smaller impact on the environment.

Using lighter DVD packaging helps the environment by reducing waste and carbon emissions, while still storing and protecting your DVDs.  And don’t forget about the money you’ll be saving on raw materials and shipping!  Lighter DVD packaging could include DVD cases with cutouts in the walls, Blu-Ray cases, slim DVD cases, c-shells or square-shells.

If you’re like me, you love to read books, but can’t ever seem to find the time to do it.  That is why audiobooks are so handy and have growing popularity.  You can listen to them while driving, walking, or wherever you take your CD player or mp3 player/iPod.

But the costs add up for audiobooks, especially if you go through a lot of them quickly.  For one title alone, it can cost around $15-25 in the iTunes store.  This is where Booksfree comes in.  They offer a rental service that is much like what Netflix does with DVDs.  For a monthly service fee, you can continually rent audiobooks from a huge selection without having to worry about late fees.  And you don’t have to pay extra for shipping, each audiobook you receive in the mail comes with a prepaid envelope for you to send it back in.

The amount of your monthly service fee will depend on the membership plan that you sign up for.  Prices are higher if you choose to be able to rent more than one audiobook at a time, or if you prefer the CD membership over the mp3-CD membership.  But you can get a plan for as little as $13.49/month.  If you typically buy at least one audiobook each month, you would be saving money with this membership.

This rental service is both good and bad for authors and publishers.  They get paid for the number of books sold, not by how many times they are rented. But this is not any different than a library offering titles, and it helps them gain exposure for more possible customers in the future.  A rental service is great is you plan to go through a lot of audiobooks, but we hope that they are using extremely durable cases if they are continually being rented and sent back and forth in the mail.  And if you like to keep your wide collection of audiobooks on display and available at all times, you may just want to stick with buying audiobooks and being able to keep them as your own.