When is the last time you received a postcard? Do you remember the feeling you got finding it in the post?
As part of our Boost My Business initiative Fiona Alston spoke to Adrian McCusker about his company Post A Selfie which sends that feeling all around the world.
"You might have a good day at work but then you come home and find three or four bills sitting waiting for you," explains McCusker. "It can be ongoing."
This was an all too familiar feeling for McCusker who, with a background in construction, knows too well of the hardship faced by many from the last recession.
"It was relentless, there was just no getting away from it," he says.
And then, one evening everything changed. A simple smile sent through the post became the beginning of a new enterprise for McCusker.
"It was in 2016, I come home one evening, I remember it well because it was a particularly wet day, and the usual bills were waiting on the table, but there was a postcard. And a friend of mine had gone to France and had sent me a postcard," says McCusker.
"I remember the smile it brought me," he said. "The bills were literally dropped on the floor unopened as I showed the postcard to my wife, my son and my daughter."
"And then that post card moved from the table to the windowsill, and then it moved from the windowsill to the fridge because, even though we grew up with postcards, it was a long time since I'd ever sent a postcard, never mind received one," he says.
That postcard still remains in the McCusker household as the catalyst to Post A Selfie.
As McCusker wondered why people don't send postcards anymore, he put it down to digital photos. It's so easy to store them in your phone but who is ever going to see them?
Post A Selfie is an app which creates a postcard from a photo taken from your phone’s photo gallery.
In a few easy steps you can create your postcard, along with personal message, for McClusker to print and send from Co. Clare to anywhere in the world.
"We spoke to Storm Technology in Galway and we explained to them what we wanted to build. They were very helpful and very informative, and they wanted to make it an as easy as possible process," McCusker explains.
"We launched in 2018. First of all on the Google Play platform and then after another few months we also got on the Apple platform - it's available as a free download on both."
"It's a very simple to use because if I can do it anyone can do it – I’m not very technically savvy," he adds.
Within three or four easy steps, and a charge of €3.99 per postcard, you can send McCusker down to his local post office to send your postcard, anywhere in the world, complete with Irish stamp.
"We’ve had people in America, South America and South Africa on holidays. One postcard was done from the top of Table Mountain in South Africa, and it was sent to Florida," he says.
During the lockdown period tourist numbers dropped but Post A Selfie had a significant uptake with Irish people sending selfies to the relatives they couldn’t visit, even new born baby photos and birthday celebrations were sent.
"We noticed a lot of younger people were sending postcards to their grandparents, uncles and aunts due to the travel restrictions," says McCusker.
"We're in the business of sending smiles. When we go to the post box, we are sending smiles all over the world," he adds.
