In the age of phones, tablets, and screens, Mail Order Mystery has found a way to keep kids engaged offline while encouraging them to read, learn, and explore on their own. The Toronto-based business has been designing, fabricating, and delivering ‘mysteries’ to children by mail since 2015.

Each mystery involves a series of mail-delivered letters and packages that are personalized for each child so that kids are the heroes of their own stories.

Suzanne Matczuk
Owner of Mail Order Mystery

"I really think that it comes down to telling a story that draws kids in enough that they want to know what happens next and all of the little objects, the pirate maps, the little necklaces with the cipher codes etched into them - those are things that add to the magic."

Owner and creator Suzanne Matczuk believes that the key to keeping the kids engaged is storytelling. "At the center of all of the mysteries are narratives and the challenge is to make those narratives strong enough that kids are going to want to stay with them."

For some kids the mysteries can even spark a new love of reading. "I think the customer email that meant the most to me," Suzanne recalls "was the mom who told me that she had a kid who basically learned to read with the fairy tale book that comes at the end of the mystery.

It's a little hardcover book that tells the story of everything that's happened. There are little envelopes glued into the book with wax seals, with letters to the kids. And she said her kid carried that book around with him everywhere, took it to school, took it home and read it over and over again until he could read well. Can it get any better than that? I don't think so."

One thing that keeps everyone at Mail Order Mystery on their toes is making sure that the mysteries are correctly assembled and sent in the right order.

"In some ways if you disappoint them, it's really the end of the world. If the letters end up out of order and the kids get confused, it compromises the experience and magic is ruined. Hearts are broken."

Even though the error rate in the mysteries is extremely low, and it’s very rare for a child not to receive all the correct pieces to their personalized puzzles, Suzanne does not want to settle for anything less than a perfect record. "I understand that people make mistakes and we try to have a really transparent, open culture around making mistakes. No one likes to feel like they're being blamed."

And even though it might be uncomfortable, the team always tries to bring mistakes out in the open and make sure they can be solved for next time. "Is the problem in the way we're keeping our inventory? Do we need to physically separate items? Is this about a chaotic work environment where you could make this mistake? So we always try to look objectively and work together to put in in new quality controls to try to stop mistakes before they go out."

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In 2018 Mail Order Mystery started using CyberStockroom to track and manage their inventory. "We had a hard time finding inventory software that suited our needs," Suzanne explains "because there were a lot of them that were really for giant companies with big warehouses and they were overcomplicated. We love CyberStockroom because it's so streamlined and simple and easy to train anyone how to use it. And that was a huge problem - getting people to use the software."

Since then CyberStockroom has become an important part of the process of assembling the mysteries.

"We have an inventory computer that sits in the room where people fabricate, where they're making the pirate maps and putting the things in bags and stuff. And then everything that they do has a quality control step. And then it's checked in to CyberStockroom and then it's put away on the shelf. So we use it constantly for that. We also use it for retracing our steps if there is some kind of problem."

Recently Mail Order Mystery has been experiencing a specific recurring inventory problem (Watch Suzanne explain the problem in the video below). Solving this problem required a way to fully retrace the entire history of every piece in the fabrication process.

Other customers had also requested this feature in CyberStockroom and it was released in June 2021. "I reached out a little while ago about the searchability in CyberStockroom. And it's not a feature that I just hoped for - it's a life saver! I'm actually able to do the kind of detective work that I did manually just by trying to retrace our steps, scrolling through activity history, just by typing in ‘necklace gold bag’.

I could see all the times it was checked in, or I could see the date it was checked out, whose fulfilling table it went to, how many mysteries went out since that time so we could isolate the time frame of the problem, and who did it. And then it's like what happened? What were the circumstances that led to causing this mistake?"

Despite the 2020 global pandemic and an ensuing host of problems with the mail system, Mail Order Mystery has been able to quickly adapt the way it rolls out its product across Canada and the United States. "It was a huge scramble," Suzanne recalls "to try to pack up all the remaining installments of everyone's mysteries and just get them out the door so that the kids got them and didn't have the mystery put on hold indefinitely."

Now that the security measures are beginning to lift across the country, things are getting back to normal and the future looks bright. If you have a child in your life (age 6-13) take a few minutes to explore these beautiful mysteries and consider giving them the gift of adventure!