British postal service Royal Mail has aggressively sought U.S. catalog business for years — with limited success. But since expanding its services during the past few years to include mail processing and freight consolidation, Royal Mail has signed on more U.S. catalogers.
Royal Mail’s services include taking catalogers’ books from their U.S. printers’ facilities, batch-processing and consolidating them, and handling other details such as customs clearance. Royal Mail also polybags the catalogs, as required by U.K. regulations. Catalogs arrive in U.K. customers’ hands within a week, says Jim McCabe, head of Royal Mail’s U.S. operations in New York. In the past, McCabe says, Royal Mail’s delivery from U.S. printers’ loading docks to U.K. customers’ mailboxes took up to four weeks.
In comparison, users of the U.S. Postal Service’s international bulk mail service, International Surface Air Lift (ISAL), are responsible for processing and transporting the catalogs to USPS bulk mail centers (BMCs). ISAL delivery typically takes seven to 14 days for bulk-mailed catalogs, says USPS international product manager Barry Burns. Catalogs are then transferred to local postal carriers for delivery in the U.K.
Speaking of costs
Although costs depend on size, weight, shape, and other factors, Royal Mail claims its cost for U.K. catalog delivery can be less than half that of ISAL, or about $0.50 per lightweight book mailed. But Burns contends that most mailers can reduce ISAL rates by about 15% by consolidating with other catalogers’ mailings and drop-shipping into the six USPS international service centers in the U.S.
Women’s apparel cataloger Peruvian Connection used a U.S-based service bureau to prepare its overseas bulk mailings until Royal Mail added its mail processing service three years ago, says chief operating officer/vice president of finance John Vesbach. For the Tonganoxie, KS-based mailer, whose $1.5 million in U.K. sales make up 20% of its business, Royal Mail’s deliverability and rates aren’t noticeably different from the previous service levels. “But we like not having to deal with a third party,” Vesbach says.
Northern Tool & Equipment began mailing a business-to-business book into the U.K. in January 2000. The $347.8 million hybrid cataloger, which will mail more than 3 million books into the U.K. next year, says Royal Mail is providing it with QAS software. Similar to the USPS’s National Change of Address system, QAS helped “tweak the accuracy of our U.K. addresses,” says Jay Berlin, Northern’s vice president of marketing.