Gillian Robinson is co-founder of ZombieRunner in Palo Alto, an athletic gear shop with an e-commerce business that ships 40 or 50 packages a day. They pay for Endicia’s services, which allow them to integrate the company’s postal software with their customer ordering and tracking systems - the behind-the-scenes underpinning of modern commerce. postal truck, my little mind goes, ‘God, I’m kind of working for that group.’ “īut of course, it’s the shippers who are Endicia’s real customers. Postal Service, which is the biggest delivery network in the world, by far. “It’s an honor to do that,” Whitehouse says. He is, after all, a major retailer for postage sales. Rather than worry about the USPS dragging his business down, he sees the potential for his business to raise the postal service up. Given Endicia’s share of the shipping market, you can understand why Whitehouse looks at the postal service problems differently from the rest of us. mail with Endicia-generated postage affixed to them. About 350 million packages move through the U.S. It turns out the company sells 65 percent of all online postage. That item you bought on eBay ( EBAY) or through Amazon? Those running shoes you bought online? That exotic coffee coming by mail? Chances are something in your mailbox will come with a postage label from Endicia. Keep an eye on the packages that arrive at your house in the coming weeks. Instead, these valley plumbers offer arcane sounding services that they trumpet with an alphabet soup of CRM, HRIS, SCMS and SaaS.īut in fact, Endicia is hiding in plain sight. It is among a long list of valley enterprises that are overshadowed by big household names like Apple ( AAPL), Google ( GOOG), Facebook, Twitter - the companies that are in consumers’ faces every day. Today Endicia (known as DYMO Endicia since Newell Rubbermaid bought it in 2007) works deep in the plumbing of the economy. Which led to a lot of “what ifs” and “why don’t theys” and an evolving business plan for Whitehouse and Khechfe. “We noticed everything these facility people were doing was manual,” says Whitehouse, a mechanical engineer by training. It’s the drop in letter mail (down 37 percent since 2006) and growing pension requirements that are killing the post office. Shipping is a growing business for the post office (up 14 percent over the last two years), which is competing with delivery services like UPS and FedEx. That means that when an order comes in, the retailer can almost instantly print out one label with the customer’s address, the proper postage, bar codes for tracking and then wait for the daily postal pickup.Īnd packages, Whitehouse points out, might be the postal service’s savior. The post office gets the money from the postage sold and Endicia sells supplies and software services that integrate online retailers’ customer order systems and tracking systems with Endicia’s postage software. Now Endicia, their Silicon Valley company that you’ve never heard of, sells $1.6 billion in postage a year to companies and e-commerce sellers shipping packages by mail. Whitehouse and his co-founder Amine Khechfe are pioneers in the field of selling postage on the Internet. “There is a bright future for the postal service,” Whitehouse says. You know, the one that once prided itself on being undeterred by the elements, but which now is raising postal rates, contemplating ending Saturday mail delivery and losing many billions of dollars a year.īut Whitehouse, who favors flip flops, aloha shirts and Dr. His entire business and the livelihood of the 168 workers who toil away at its world headquarters on a quiet Palo Alto street depend on the mail service. Postal Service, you’d figure Harry Whitehouse would be the guy. Green Valley, AZ 85614īrowse our wide-ranging collection of auction catalogues previewing the rare stamps and lots being offered at upcoming sales.If anybody should be worried about the precarious position of the U.S. Your 200 different foreign plus SAES for my 200 different. LARGE SCOTT SPECIALITY 3-RING BINDER - TOP SELLER!
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