By Foster Steinbeck
It’s no accident that the company’s name, Sandboxx, is spelled with two x’s.
After serving in the Marine Corps and working in hedge funds, Sandboxx Co-founder and CEO Sam Meek was pondering what he should name the company — a start-up designed to build features and content for the U.S. Armed Forces members in their military career — in 2012, alongside other co-founders.
Meek said the name stood out at him because — as the company was being designed to help recruits early on in their careers — as he realized enrolling in basic training, albeit vastly different in rigor and purpose, was similar to children learning in a toy sandbox. Meek created the company’s name by adding an extra “x” to the word sandbox to symbolize both of those training environments.
“We started asking people what [does] a sandbox mean to you. Most people that haven’t been in the military will say, ‘It’s the place that I learned how to share the Tonka truck and play in the sand, and learn a lot about myself and my early childhood values, and how I interacted with others,’” Meek said.
“You go from that first sandbox, when you’re a young kid, learning how to play and share, and then go to the second sandbox in the military, where again you learn how to play and share,” he later said. “It’s just the stakes are a little different.”
What began out of a house on Greenwich’s Deerfield Drive, the military communications company now has its office near the Pentagon. It has delivered nearly 4.5 million letters to recruits in basic training — the company’s primary service. Out of the 250,000 recruits who enter basic training every year, Meek said, over 60% will use Sandboxx’s services and other products.
However, the company adjusted its business focus in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on short-term revenue growth and experimental products instead of long-term engagement of feature development. Thanks to its efforts, the company hasn’t furloughed any employees since implementing a remote workplace model.
“I guess the biggest issue is that we just miss being around each other because we’ve got such a great culture, and the team is really, really tight,” Meek said.
Switching tactics
During the first business quarter of 2020, Meek said Sandboxx’s revenue increased by 71% as families and loved ones, unable to attend basic training graduation ceremonies, sent more letters and gift cards (the latter through a partnership between Sandboxx and a military resale provider, called the Exchange) to their recruits.
However, the company’s sales decreased in the second quarter as the Department of Defense began to send fewer recruits to basic training thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Meek said.
In response, Sandboxx launched an experimental store online, offering apparel, gifts and letter stationery kits for recruits in basic training and their loved ones to help generate more revenue.
Sandboxx also created “The Dispatch,” a weekly newsletter to provide military news, educational readings, and coverage of current events and entertainment news, which is available through the store.
The store also sells a subscription to the “Daily Drive,” a motivational care package featuring motivational quotes from the bible or famous historical figures with accompanying photos of friends and family.
The store has been incredibly effective at generating revenue, Meek said, adding the monthly store revenue has increased close to 1900% since its inception, from $2,000 per month to nearly $40,000 per month currently. Meek said its profitability came from meeting customer’s needs for military products, some of whom couldn’t attend their loved one’s basic training graduation ceremony.
The business also offers travel agency services and updates on recruits’ schedules during basic training. Sandboxx also publishes an array of news coverage and blog posts about military affairs, lifestyle, history, and career information.
However, Meek said the lion’s share of the company’s businesses comes from sending delivering letters. Customers write out a letter on their phone or computer, attach a picture and then Sandboxx prints the letter and ships it with next day delivery. Customers can track their letters. Once received, recruits also receive accompanying stationery and a pre-addressed return envelope with a letter to write back to the sender.
Sandboxx delivers anywhere between 5,000 to 15,000 letters a day, Meek said.
Tim Gindrup used Sandboxx to send letters every day to his youngest son while he attended basic training at Fort Jackson and to his eldest son at Lackland Air Force Base beforehand. Gindrup said he liked the company’s ease-of-use, ubiquity across platforms and next-day delivery service.
“I never had a problem with them at all,” Gindrup said. “If you know a letter doesn’t show the right status or whatever, you can click on the little help icon. And sometimes it’s immediate, sometimes you have to wait an hour or so, but they always get back to you.”
Annette Foulkes used Sandboxx to deliver letters to her son while he attended basic training at Parris Island. Foulkes said she appreciated Sandboxx’s notifications about her son’s schedule in basic training as well as their news articles and blog posts.
“As a parent, trying to get as much information as they could, but didn’t get as much as they should have, Sandboxx gave me an idea of what to expect, [and of] what my son was going through,” Foulkes said.
Building Sandboxx
Meek enrolled in the U.S. Marine Corps immediately after high school in 2002, following the 9/11 attacks. He served on two tours in Iraq in 2004 and 2006 and eventually became a Sergeant of Marines the following year before an injury — severe, non-combat burns on his arms — prompted him to leave the Corps.
Meek began a career on Wall Street later that year, eventually becoming the Vice President of Business Development for the hedge fund WR Platform Advisors in late 2009. Meek first got his start after meeting a company executive while caddying at a country club in Westchester, New York.
When it was based out of Greenwich in its earlier years, Meek said the company struggled to raise funds as a start-up, and he and other long-time employees sometimes didn’t receive a paycheck to keep other employees paid. At one point, Meek asked his mother to invest in the company to help keep its doors open.
However, Meek said Sandboxx greatly benefitted from its proximity to Greenwich’s business advisors and wealthy investors. Meek said his time in the Marines — with its emphasis on accomplishing a given mission through sheer grit and creative problem-solving — prepared him well for launching Sandboxx.
“I attribute a lot of the [entrepreneurial] success that I’ve had because of my time in the Marine Corps, and being able to see how other leaders persevere and did the most with the least amount of resources,” Meek said.
In the future, Meek said Sandboxx is looking to expand its operations to encompass recruits’ second year of service by helping recruits manage their military careers and update them on pertinent military information, such as the proper way to wear ribbons on their uniforms.
“I miss the Marine Corps every day. The Marine Corps has a very special place in my heart,” Meek said. “The reason why I feel like I still get to scratch that itch of service and being in the Marine Corps is because of Sandboxx. My purpose is still driven around service and service to our nation.”
