Strategy: Colour Me Canadian

Doing business in Canada can be expensive. Canada Post Borderfree can facilitate Canadian orders for U.S. catalogers by managing customs and duty issues as well as handling delivery and returns of packages. Postage and list costs are higher in Canada. For example, a catalog that costs 24 cents to mail in the United States (after postal discounts) will cost about 55 cents to mail in Canada. Canada Post, the privately held, government-sanctioned Canadian postal system, does offer some volume discounts for mailing into Canada, albeit mostly for direct mail pieces. List costs run about 20 percent to 50 percent higher in Canada as well. Much of the additional costs can be offset by higher response rates.