It’s a wrap

I used to wrap every paperback or hardcover book I owned in plastic.

At first, I did this rather crudely, cutting the plastic material to roughly the right size, and folding and securing a sheet onto the inside covers of the book with adhesive tape.

In university, a friend showed me the “right” way to do it. You had to strip off any excess plastic so that the finished product wasn’t bulky, and use transparent tape rolled into a double-sided loop or—if you were a real stickler—a drop of acetone to join the folded plastic surfaces together, so that nothing actually touched the book cover. Hardcover books were treated differently, too. The best approach was to wrap the sleeve and attach it to the hardcover volume, again, taking care that no adhesive material touched the book itself. At this point, the concern wasn’t simply to protect the books from dust. Wrapping books had become an art, albeit a minor one.

The same might be said about what they do at Gmask, mall-based kiosks that offer to wrap any gadget—a mobile phone, an mp3 player, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a camera or a notebook computer—in a thin, decorative film of vinyl that makes it resistant to scratches, liquid spills and the corrosive effects of sweat.
The most visible selling point at any Gmask store isn’t protection, however; it’s aesthetic self-expression. The dead giveaway is the name of the product, “Gmask Beauty Wrap,” which sounds a lot less like a technical service than something a salon or spa might offer.

With about 300 designs available, Gmask wraps are to your gadget what skins are to WinAmp. They let you personalize your device and dress it up according to your taste. An ordinary phone can put on jungle camouflage; a PDA can get an airbrushed finish; and a laptop computer can take on neon stripes.

For those who are interested only in the protection that the vinyl film offers, Gmask also has clear skins that retain the original look of the device. A different material can be applied to protect a notebook’s LCD screen, but keyboards and track pads are usually left uncovered.

“We also discourage people from wrapping the bottom of their notebooks because that gets quite hot,” says Eric Chao, marketing manager at the Gmask franchise here. “There are also certain phone models—like those with a rubberized surface—that are not suitable for wrapping.”

Chao says the vinyl sheets come from Japan, where people have been wrapping gadgets for years. The Gmask brand, however, comes from Singapore, where the service was launched in January 2005. The Philippine franchise opened its first branch at the Glorietta 2 mall in Makati earlier this May. They now have six local stores, all in Metro Manila malls. Of these, only the one in the Greenbelt 1 mall in Makati is equipped to wrap laptops.

Gmask charges P2,495 to wrap a laptop lid, and an extra P1,600 to cover the surface near the keyboard where you rest your wrists. The store charges P1,345 to cover PDAs and P995 for typical candy bar phones. A flip-type phone would cost more if you wanted the inside coated as well—the company charges P350 for each additional surface. It takes less than an hour to wrap a handheld device; laptops may take a bit longer.

Beyond aesthetics, Chao says, a Gmask can preserve the resale value of a device. Users can simply peel off the vinyl film without damaging or leaving any residue on the original finish, enabling them to sell gadgets that look like they’ve been hardly used.

Full disclosure: to see the results for myself, I took up Chao’s offer to wrap my iBook cover for free. Since I didn’t see myself using a floral pink notebook, I went for the clear skin.

Two girls at the Gmask kiosk in Greenbelt 1, Levvie and Loryle, did a meticulous job in about 40 minutes, reminding me a bit of auto shop workers applying tint to a car windshield—minus the soapy water.

Levvie and Loryle from the Gmask store in Greenbelt 1 prepare my iBook for wrapping. Levvie starts by cleaning the surface of the notebook lid, then peeling off the vinyl film from its backing sheet.

It takes two to slowly and carefully lay the plastic film onto the surface of the notebook cover without allowing any air bubbles to form.

The plastic film is trimmed. Some heat from a blower is applied to the edges and the sides are inspected.

Loryle carefully trims off excess film with an Exacto knife while Levvie uses what looks like a wooden spatula to flatten the material against the edges of the notebook lid. A final check and the notebook is done. The entire process took about 40 minutes.

The verdict: my iBook lid looks almost unchanged, but is now scratch-resistant. The only fly in the ointment was that two very thin fibers somehow got trapped between the lid and the vinyl film. This isn’t something you’d notice if your skin had a colorful design, but on a pristine white surface, Gmask ought to strive for perfection.

Since May, Chao says, Gmask has wrapped more than 2,000 gadgets in the Philippines, about 85 percent of which are phones. The rest is made up of PDAs, iPods, portable PlayStations, cameras and laptops.

The company seems well poised to benefit from the Filipino desire to protect and preserve our belongings by covering them. Before gadgets, there were kitchen appliances, stuffed toys and even furniture—and oh yes, books.