US Postal Service is Grabbing Market Share Away From Express Couriers

This week I joined the Postal Customer Council for a presentation on the “International Misconceptions of the USPS,” which was presented by my friend, Kenyatta Adams.

While I was aware of changes USPS had been making in terms of increasing international shipments, I was unaware that it has 48% of the U.S. export market and grew 17% between 2011 and 2013.

What’s behind this?  E-Commerce of course, and the increase in wearing apparel sales which typically make for the ideal small and lightweight package.

At the pace the US Postal Service is moving, for small packages going outbound (exports) and inbound (imports) – I’ll explain that in a moment – there will be a lot of “moving and shaking” to keep an eye out for.

Imports have become streamlined thanks to their “Global Direct Entry (GDE) – Inbound” service.  Working with private international logistics providers, they can transport parcels from various foreign countries providing all logistics and brokerage activities.  The package is then handed off to USPS.

The caveat of course, is that shipments involving a certification or other form, such as a Fish and Wildlife declaration form (think, fur products, or a watch with a mother-of-pearl dial) cannot be sent through this type of service, and not all countries are yet a part of this GDE service.  But hey, it’s new and over time, more and more countries will be a part of it.  Currently, there are about 30 participating countries.

The top 3 highlights I learned about are:

1) USPS has International Tracking (yes, they do!), having rolled out “E-DELCON” last year

2) All returns are free for undeliverable packages in international shipping

3) Their service “METROPOST” is a same-day-delivery service in Manhattan and Brooklyn, USPS just has to receive it by 1 pm - this is great news for those of us in NYC!

With their competitive pricing in the 1 ounce to 70 pound packaging niche, not to mention their convenient flat rate envelopes and boxes, which I use, it is definitely not the USPS that it once was.

Questions or comments?

Post below or email me at clark.deanna@gmail.com

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I’m a Small Business. Does This Law Apply to Me Too?

My startups and smaller clients love to ask me this question. 

The answer to “Does size matter?” is for the most part pretty consistent, which is, “It depends!”

 It depends because even though there may be definitions of what a small business is, when the government puts out a new regulation, or an amendment to one, it may reason that because such new changes will have a limited impact on small businesses, that providing an exception for small businesses to compliance with the new rules is unnecessary.

Let’s take the recent amendments to the regulations for the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act (“the Rules”) as an example.

Under the Small Business Size Standards issued by the Small Business Administration, textile apparel manufacturers qualify as small businesses if they have 500 or fewer employees. 

Clothing wholesalers qualify as small businesses if they have 100 or fewer employees.

 The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) staff estimated that approximately 22,218 textile fiber product manufacturers and importers are covered by the disclosure requirements of these amended Rules.

While the FTC figured that a substantial number of these entities likely qualify as small businesses, it concluded that the amendments would not have a significant impact on small businesses because they do not impose any significant new obligations on them.

The FTC therefore, did not propose any specific small entity exception or other significant alternatives as it did not find it necessary to minimize the compliance burden, if any, on small entities while achieving the intended purposes of the amendments.

What do you think? Should smaller businesses be subject to less rigorous compliance requirements?

Post below or email me at clark.deanna@gmail.com

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