Post Office Gets Rap for Canceled Women’s Seminar

Entrepreneur Group was supposed to have held an Entrepreneurial Woman Seminar day in late January. But the event was canceled without explanation just three days before the scheduled date--and after several out-of-town exhibitors had already traveled to California.

The company has finally given a reason for the cancellation: It is blaming a post office snafu.

Many of the 23,000 pieces of mail to arrive 10 days before the event were lost, said Jim Fitzpatrick, publisher of Entrepreneur magazine. The flyers were intended to bolster attendance. Only about 100 people had signed up for the seminar, Fitzpatrick said. The organizers had hoped at least to match last year’s attendance of about 600.

“We seeded the (mailing) list with our own names so we would know when the pieces arrived, and they never did,” he said.

He said the Postal Service has refunded full mailing costs.

Repeated phone calls to the U.S. Post Office in Santa Ana, where the material was taken for mailing, were not returned.

The conference was to have been the second Entrepreneurial Woman Seminar. Last year’s conference drew more than 600 participants who attended workshops on business management, taxes, advertising strategies and other topics of interest to women entrepreneurs.