Understanding Postal: Caught in the Postal Downstream

Will catalogs “save” the Postal Service? The ACMA has made tremendous progress with Donahoe and his team by demonstrating catalogs’ vitality in the mailstream and educating the USPS brass on the intricacies of the catalog business.

That said, catalog mailers have other reasons to be on guard this year. The exigency postal rate case — which was filed in 2010 by the USPS and then rejected by the PRC — reared its ugly head again late last year. Donahoe has repeatedly insisted that the case, designed to help the USPS catch up from volume and revenue losses stemming from the 2008 recession and online migration, is basically the USPS’s insurance policy. As such, he’s told mailers to only budget for the Jan. 22 consumer price index-capped rate hike and nothing else … for now.