Postal Service Unit Gets Firms’ Stamp of Approval

Not too long ago, Larry Pasternack was a typical American business owner with a typical attitude about the post office: He hated it.

Now the Irvine electronics manufacturer is leading cheers for the U.S. Postal Service, but he’s not shy about his onetime distaste for the operation. “You were treated like a nuisance when you went in with a question or a problem,” he said.

Pasternack does all of his selling by direct mail. What he and other business mailers want from the postal service is advice on how to get their advertising delivered as quickly and cheaply as possible without spending days in line, shuttling from clerk to clerk.

These days, the agency is delivering all that and more, company owners said.

Pasternack said that advice from postal specialists has enabled him to more than double his mail volume without increasing his costs. His bill for 1.7 million catalogs last year, in fact, was $3,700 less than he paid in 1992 to send 839,000 catalogs. And the books he sent last year had twice the pages of the ’92 catalogs.

“It’s helped my business grow 30% a year,” he said. “How can I complain about that?”

What happened was the result of a fairly simple change at the post office. Postal officials decided to group all of the business mail specialists together in a business center unit and to set up such centers in every major postal region.

The goal is to help companies take advantage of every discount and assistance program the agency has, with an emphasis these days on the burgeoning field of international direct mail.

“We used to wait for people to come and see us. Now we’re out there consulting with customers and marketing our services,” said Bridget Williams, one of the two specialists assigned to the Orange County business service center when it was formed late in 1991.

The center, now with nine full-time employees, is in the Santa Ana regional post office on Sunflower Avenue. Companies with sufficient mail volume to use it receive such free services as mail design and international mail consulting.

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It’s not altruism that drives the centers, though. The postal service has invested billions of dollars in labor-saving automated mail-processing equipment. It wants corporate customers, who account for more than 90% of postal volume nationwide, to prepare their mail properly so that it can be handled by the new equipment.

Many companies still do not know that the Santa Ana center is there. Only about 4,000 of the county’s nearly 70,000 businesses sought assistance last year.

But by July, they will be lining up. That’s when a series of nationwide changes in postal classifications and rates for first-class and third-class mail start. July also is when a number of local ZIP Codes will be changed.

The ZIP changes will force many businesses to obtain new mailing lists for Orange County addresses. Orange County businesses in areas with new ZIPs also will have to change their stationery and the bar-coded return address printed on their return mail cards and envelopes.

Pasternack didn’t even know he had an account representative until a post office clerk in Irvine told him about the new business center in 1993. Now, “I can’t do business without her,” he said of business specialist Debbie Butler.

“She’s always there--every time the regulations change, any time we have a problem,” he said. “They even come here to our offices if it’s necessary to get something done.”

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Pasternack Enterprises makes several thousand types of high-tech electronic connectors for scientific and telecommunications uses. Its wares are displayed in an ever-growing catalog--its only sales vehicle--that it sends to corporate customers at lower bulk-mail rates.

Butler showed Pasternack and his employees how they could cut mailing costs more. Recently, she brought a team of specialists to sort, sack and tag 10,000 catalogs so the company could be certified for discounts under a new automated handling program.

The business center also has helped Pasternack obtain domestic mail-handling discounts for sorting and putting bar-coded return addresses on his catalogs so they can be handled by automated postal scanners.

Eliminating staples and changing the colors on the catalog cover to improve scanning accuracy earned additional discounts.

It sounds pretty prosaic, but to a direct-mail business that sends out millions of pieces a year, cutting costs by even half a penny a catalog is like hitting a grand slam home run.

Pasternack Enterprises has slashed its average mailing cost by 22 cents per catalog since 1992, despite a 60% increase in the basic postage rate.

In the same period, the company’s catalog has doubled to 80 pages and its mailing volume has more than doubled. This year alone, with about 2 million catalogs scheduled to go out, the lower mailing cost is worth about $440,000 to Pasternack Enterprises.

Much of the savings has come from rapidly shrinking costs for overseas mailings, an increasingly important part of Pasternack’s business. Three years ago, the company spent $1.07 each to send 71,000 catalogs to foreign addresses. This year, the average is down to 45 cents each while the foreign mailing list has grown fivefold.

Pasternack says the postal workers showed him one trick that not only cut mail costs but pared thousands of dollars from his printing costs as well.

They suggested that he print and distribute a half-size version of his catalog overseas and enclose an international return mail card--a new postal product for businesses--for potential customers who want to get the full-size catalog. When Pasternack’s mail room gets the card, a regular catalog and order form go out by air mail the next day.

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Overseas direct mail, though a small market, is a growth business. The post office would like more companies such as Pasternack Enterprises to send their catalogs and direct-mail advertising to other countries.

International direct-mail marketing accounted for $1.25 billion in revenue for the postal service in 1995, a 33% increase from 1990. Altogether, direct mail generated $12.7 billion for the postal service last year.

Until late 1993, the postal service had little to offer overseas mailers. Companies that wanted to bolster foreign direct-mail sales either used an outside contractor to ship catalogs overseas or paid full freight at the post office.

Now Land’s End, Victoria’s Secret and other big direct-mail retailers send their catalogs all over the world, and the postal service has a series of programs designed to help them and other bulk shippers cut costs.

“The postal service clearly is working with mailers to increase its service and volumes in the international scene,” said Jerry Ceresale, an executive at Direct Marketing Assn. in New York.

The postal business centers also can help companies with smaller mailing loads, such as Irvine consultant Jean Dreyer’s one-person operation, get some of the same benefits as the giants.

Dreyer, who sends medical information to pharmaceutical buyers throughout Europe, says the postal business center has made it easy for her to keep up with confusing and rapidly changing regulations in a world where boundaries keep shifting.

“It all gets much weirder when you get into international mail,” said Teresa Anne Bell, senior account representative at the Santa Ana postal business center.

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Reference material in her office includes a 900-page book devoted to the foibles and quirks of mailing overseas, where political, economic and religious factors all can come into play.

Pasternack doesn’t have catalog pictures of scantily clad lingerie models to offend postal censors in China. But there are lots of other rules that affect his overseas mailings, and he says the post office has improved his ability to get his catalogs into distant countries and, more important, get orders back from overseas buyers.

“It all comes down to costs,” Pasternack said, “and any time the post office can show me how to cut costs and effectively help subsidize my business, that’s OK by me.”

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Teaming Up With Business

The Santa Ana regional post office’s business center unit helps businesses trim thousands of dollars in mailing costs. Some of the services offered:

* Consultations: Account representatives determine fastest, least expensive way to mail documents and packages; keep clients informed of rate and rule changes.

* Special pickups: Can call before 3 p.m. for special pickups; costs $4.95 plus postage for an unlimited amount.

* Corporate accounts: Allows express mail payments on a monthly basis.

* Mailing list cleanup/address change: Standardize address format and correct ZIP code errors as well as update mailing lists using Postal Service’s national change-of-address service.

* Merchandise return service: Provides prepaid return postage stickers to send to customers who want to return merchandise for exchange or repair.

* Automation advice: Helps convert to bar-coded mailings to speed processing and reduce rates.

* International business reply mail: Will bill mailer a flat fee per piece returned from foreign countries.

* International shipment consolidation: Will help companies qualify for bulk shipping rates by allowing those with small shipments to combine with other companies shipping to same country.

Source: U.S. Postal Service; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times