Walk through the downtown streets of any city and you’re likely to hear the sound at least once — the inevitable bang of a newspaper single-copy box door, indicating that a sale has been made.

The metal boxes, with their clear fronts touting the local paper, have been a staple of the newspaper industry for years, but Bellatrix thinks it is time newspapers take a different approach to single-copy sales.

“It just makes more sense to provide a product at eye level that is easy to buy,” according to Bill Raven, vice president of business development for Bellatrix.

Bellatrix is introducing at Nexpo a new single-copy box designed to make the window copy easier to see and, most important, to make the task of buying a newspaper more user-friendly.

Bellatrix’s new Impact model is designed with the window copy on the top of the box, set at a 45-degree angle that Raven said is designed to mimic point-of-purchase displays found in the retail industry.

“It’s a better design,” Raven said. “We’ve tested it with [newspaper] customers, and they feel that it is a better display of the product and encourages them to buy the product more. They said they could walk up to it, they liked the handle on it, they liked the display of the paper, and it was more convenient and more user-friendly than the current product out there.”

The door opens from the top, and is not spring-loaded, but instead uses a counter balance to close.

“We use an electronic door release so there is no impact or banging or slamming,” Raven said, adding that a quiet clicking noise indicates when the door can be open, and an equally quiet click indicates when it is closed.

The use of electronics in the machine also allowed Bellatrix to move the coin deposit to an area easy for the customer to access. In older machines, the coin mechanism and the door release are dependent on each other, assuring that deposit slots will most likely be placed on the top of the machine.

Moving the copy window to the top also leaves the newspaper a considerably larger amount of promotional space, which is limited to a small area at the bottom of the box on older models.

Bellatrix has also rounded the edges on the box to make it safer, and uses a powder-coat paint it to help reduce the chance that the box will rust.

Bellatrix said that the company has not designed a modular box (one with multiple doors) and adds that Impact may help newspapers avoid having to use them in downtown areas, where modular boxes are starting to be required in some cities. Many publishers are against the consolidated boxes because they do not give the newspaper a separate identity.

“I think a lot of the reasons newspapers are being asked to consolidate into modular units is the disrepair and unsightliness of the equipment they do have out there. If their equipment was all clean and nice, I think there would be less pressure to remove it or change it. But it’s not; some of it is desperately ugly,” Raven said.