Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

This week, Structural Graphics is featuring a puzzle piece mailer that it created for Google to introduce Google Earth Pro.

Half of the Senate on Thursday called for a one-year hold on the U.S. Postal Service’s plans to close mail-processing plants, saying the move should come as part of any legislation to avoid another government shutdown.

Fifty senators signed a bipartisan letter to top members of the House and Senate appropriations committees opposing USPS plans for closing up to 82 plants and eliminating up to 15,000 jobs starting next year.

"At a time when our middle class is disappearing, the loss of 15,000 good-paying Postal Service jobs will harm our local communities and economies," the lawmakers wrote.

This week, Structural Graphics is featuring a dimensional print campaign it produced for Sprint to help promote two new technology solutions to their prospective customers and partners.

The rise of online purchasing is boosting the partnership between United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service—and fueling their rivalry as well.

“During the quarter, a retail customer upgraded its catalog distribution to UPS Ground from the U.S. mail, contributing to our ground growth,” CFO Kurt Koehn said during the company’s quarterly earnings call. He didn’t name names, but only a large customer could cause meaningful growth in the company’s $6.2 billion quarterly revenue for domestic ground shipments.

The big shipping company is also wary of the Postal Service trying to steal market share with its recent proposal to slash prices

Because USPS has to deliver to every home six days a week, it can deliver a package to that home cheaper than FedEx, which only delivers to that home when it receives enough profit to do so. Maybe that’s why FedEx earned more than $2 billion in profit last year while USPS lost nearly $5 billion.

Like UPS, FedEx complained that secrecy surrounding USPS’s “Competitive Products” makes it impossible to prove that USPS’s proposal is contrary to law.

UPS and FedEx also agree that USPS’s Competitive Products should bear more than 5.5 percent of the agency’s institutional costs now that they represent

Staples Inc. said it will end a pilot program with the U.S. Postal Service to set up mini-post offices in the company's retail outlets, after several protests outside the stores.

Postal workers have protested the program for months, objecting to expanding post office services to Staples stores, staffed with non-union workers.

The news comes days after the American Postal Workers Union won the support of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) after it approved a resolution to boycott Staples.

Postal stakeholders were gratified to see four nominees put up last week to fill out a skeleton crew on the Postal Board of Governors. Mailers might have a change of heart, however, after Monday's vetting of the candidates by a Senate committee revealed them to be ready to hand full rate-setting authority to the U.S. Postal Service.

The Direct Marketing Association questioned the notion of removing regulatory oversight from a government-run monopoly. "Mailers would be vulnerable to the whims of the governors," commented Peggy Hudson, DMA's SVP of government affairs. "The PRC plays a very important role in the mailing community."

In the future, according to a report released in May by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG), "the convergence between the increasing amount of actionable data, the ubiquity of network connectivity to integrate and share this data, and the rapid development of analytics may open up a new world of opportunities for postal operators—the "Internet of Postal Things."

The possibility of equipping the postal network (vehicles, mailboxes, mail pieces and parcels, sorting centers, etc.) with low-cost sensors will exponentially expand the capability of postal operators to collect valuable data. This new rich data sources could help

The U.S. Postal Service assessed Southern California Edison $7.6 million in penalties for not keeping its address lists up to date and Sears $1.1 million for allegedly violating the rules governing how folded self-mailers should be sealed, according to the lawsuits.

The two companies filed appeals of the USPS decisions on June 18 with the U.S. District Court in Washington. Both are represented by Venable LLP, a major Washington, DC law firm.

This week, Structural Graphics is featuring one of its most dynamic designs: the Popper. Nationwide Insurance is known for being "on your side" when it comes to insurance and financial planning. As such, it wanted to clearly communicate the features and benefits of its retirement plan to insurance agents.