Where online and traditional business meets

While the bulk of the online debate has been around how the major retailers harness or reject our online shopping needs, the biggest impact on shoppers is the choice offered by niche, cottage industry retailers and small specialists. And these small online retailers reach out to their online shoppers via a very traditional logistics solution: the post office.

Several friends of mine have pure online or mixed online and store front businesses. There is no one I know who has a store and doesn’t have a website. If they do just have a store, then 20 minutes conversation is usually all it takes to have them planning to open a website. Having a store without a website is like having a smartphone without access to email or Facebook. You just wouldn’t do it.

Without exception, many small business owners receive some of the material they need as input into their product offering via the postal service; whether that postal service is here in Australia, New Zealand or the US. There is a picture on my iPhone of my brother and I standing outside the US Postal Service Office in Grosse Tete, Louisiana, as Mrs Moore had asked me to post an order to one of her US customers. You can’t possibly visit a town whose name translates as ‘Big Head’ and not take a photo.

Judy lives in Queensland and has just purchased an online children’s clothing store and her individual orders go out via the local post office. Steph runs a cool clothing store in the CBD and pops out to the post office to mail the online orders that have just come in from her website. She picks them from the shelf, rings them through the till, wraps them and posts them. They very rarely courier them because it is more expensive and more time-consuming than using the post office.

So here’s the thing. I was surprised to hear that two post offices near my home are closing. I know that all the postal services around the world are under cost pressure, however, a whole new customer sector is opening up to the marketing departments within those national post office businesses. This micro and small business sector are high users of the wide and unique infrastructure offered by post office networks. They just need to be marketed to. Maybe communication via the internet and dedicated online services portal for small business would be a good approach.

In his role as CEO of CROSSMARK, Kevin Moore looks at the world of retailing from grocery to pharmacy, bottle shops to car dealers, corner store to department stores. In this insightful blog, Kevin covers retail news, ideas, companies and emerging opportunities in Australia, NZ, the US and Europe. His international career in sales and marketing has seen him responsible for business in over 40 countries, which has earned him grey hair and a wealth of expertise in international retailers and brands. CROSSMARK Asia Pacific is Australasia’s largest provider of retail marketing services, consulting to and servicing some of Australasia’s biggest retailers and manufacturers.