Live from the MeritDirect Co-op: ACMA Head Calls for Postal Activism

C. Hamilton Davison, the executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association, was up against a tough audience.

He asked catalogers at MeritDirect’s Business Mailers Co-op yesterday how many spend 60% of their time thinking about the U.S. Postal Service.

Not a single hand was raised, although postage ranks as one of the top ten expenses for catalog mailers.

Nor did anyone respond when Davison asked if they spent 50% and 40% of their time on the USPS. It wasn’t until he got down to 10% that a few hands went up.

No wonder Davison thinks that the top risk to the catalog business may be “cataloger apathy.”

Here’s more evidence that catalog people have their heads in the sand. A recent flats symposium held by MTAC drew over 300 executives, yet only three of them were catalogers. And they took the worst hit in the recent rate hike.

How bad?

Davison cited a company that spends $26 million a year on mail, sending all of its catalogs and packages via the USPS.

“It got handed an 18% increase in catalog rates and a 50% increase in package rates,” he said.

It was all part of a pitch for the ACMA. MeritDirect provided a forum for it during its annual event.

What’s the mission of this group?

It plans to intervene in rule and rate making, influence Congress and document the economy strength of the catalog industry, as shown by sales and the number of employees.

That takes money. (One representative purportedly told Davison, “You have to write some checks.”)

Catalogs and other flats are important to the USPS, Davison continued. Roughly 53.2 billion flats were mailed last year out of a total postal mail volume of 213 billion pieces. And of all the flats sent, 75% were Standard A — mostly catalogs, according to statistics presented by Tom Murray, vice president of strategies for Arandell Corp.

But flats mailers were “punished” during the last recent rate case. And they have nowhere to go, given the postal monopoly.

Davison conceded that PMG Jack Potter has turned the USPS from an “ossified bureaucracy” into a service-oriented organization. But it has an expensive work force, and that’s won’t change despite the passage of last year’s postal reform bill.

“Many of us wanted something in it that would control labor costs, but the reality is that nobody thought any of the politicians had the cajones to get that through,” Davison said.

Instead, the bill contained a rate cap tied to the Consumer Price Index. But even that won’t save catalogers from future draconian hikes.

“Unfortunately, that cap applies to the class level, not to the sub-class level,” Davison explained. “Obviously, it’s clear that sub-classes can be differentiated and some can go up a lot more than others.”

Davison’s solution? To have a credible and properly funded association in Washington that’s out bird-dogging issues in the postal environment.”

He continued that there’s “a compelling and pressing need for participation in postal policy from this group. What are you waiting for?”

Like we said, it was a pitch.