WashU graduate’s beverage sleeve business finds success in St. Louis

Once a college class project, WashU grad David Dresner’s Sleeve a Message now serves around 2,000 retail customers.

David Dresner’s business plan began as a class project during his time at WashU. “I was excited about it,” he said of the plan. “I just didn’t know it was going to happen so fast.” After college, Dresner decided to settle in St. Louis and launched Sleeve a Message right after graduation, crediting the subsidized office and manufacturing space available at area business incubators like T-Rex and STL VentureWorks. Since then, the company has taken off and now serves thousands of customers from its headquarters here.

Sleeve a Message creates customized beverage sleeves. The company found its niche by having no minimum order size, allowing it to serve small shops and businesses that require small or one-time orders. To operate this way, Dresner partnered with a packaging company that created customized machinery, allowing him to churn out 200,000 cardboard sleeves each day.

What’s next for this ambitious entrepreneur? The answer: Crispy Edge, a gourmet pot-sticker company that Dresner hopes will be up and running by the end of 2017. As he puts it, “I like having lots of irons in the fire.”

Learn more about Dresner and his entrepreneurial journey here.

(Source: WashU Fuse Entrepreneurship Blog)