Stamping On Retail Private Sector Upset At Move By Postal Service

Packing and shipping services such as Mail Boxes Etc. and Pak Mail are proliferating in shopping centers across the country. Now, there’s a new competitor popping up: the U.S. Postal Service.

The Postal Service is aggressively opening new outlets that are not just post offices but also retail stores, in what is becoming something of a turf battle between the private and public sectors.

“This is our effort to make it more like a retail environment, because people don’t have time,” said Karen Schultz, a Postal Service spokeswoman for South Florida.

Not everyone sees it that way.

“Our industry is concerned with what the post office is getting into, because it seems they are things our industry offers, and these are things that should be left to the private sector,” said Rachel Southworth, executive director of the Coalition Against Unfair Competition, a group of private mailers formed last year to protest the Postal Service’s foray into additional services.

In addition to the standard stamping, weighing and mailing, the new postal stores have self-service areas where packaging supplies, stationery, stamp memorabilia and even T-shirts are sold. The stores are opening in shopping centers, regional malls, busy urban streets and tourist destinations.

Throughout the country, the Postal Service has opened 420 of the postal stores.

And until Friday, the stores offered packaging services for customers, a service the Postal Service began testing in 1994, and which it suspended in response to protests from the private coalition.

The group last year argued before the Postal Rate Commission that the packaging service should be set to rate review procedures, because the postal service’s tax advantages allowed it to offer the service at rates lower than private competitors could afford.

“That was a service we felt was unfair competition,” said Evan Lasky, executive vice president of Pak Mail Centers of America in Aurora, Colo., one of the largest pack-and-ship businesses.

Observers said the U.S. Postal Service was responding to the proliferation of these private pack-and-ship stores, an industry led by Mail Boxes Etc., a San Diego-based company whose franchisees operate 3,300 stores throughout the country.

“They clearly have in sight taking back some of the parcel post business that the independents have taken,” said Stephen Bittel of Terranova, a Miami real estate management firm that recently negotiated leases for two U.S. postal stores.

Indeed, the inconvenience and lack of service at regular post offices fed the growth of businesses like Mail Boxes Etc. Founded in 1980, the company began by offering mail box rentals, but soon expanded into packaging and shipping as well as business support services, such as faxing and copying.

“We began by being the postal alternative,” said Bill Lange, marketing vice president for Mail Boxes Etc. “But we found customers would use us for a lot more. People were using us as a business address, so we added fax machines and copiers, and contracted with third parties for shipping.”

Packaging and shipping now generates the bread-and-butter revenues for companies like Mail Boxes Etc. The stores package any item the consumer needs to ship, and contracts with carriers such as United Parcel Service or Federal Express for shipment.