Earth Class Mail go Swiss

Earth Class Mail announced that Swiss Post is licensing the company’s Internet-powered postal-mail delivery platform on a non-exclusive basis. Earth Class Mail announced that Swiss Post is licensing the company’s Internet-powered postal-mail delivery platform on a non-exclusive basis.

The integration to support the Swiss Post launch is under way and will be completed in the second quarter of this year, when customers around in the world will be able to sign up for mailing addresses in six European countries.

A rollout to 10 additional countries in Europe, Asia and North America is anticipated by the end of the year. Individuals and businesses can pre-register their interest in international addresses at www.earthclassmail.com/swiss-post.

Seattle-based Earth Class Mail launched its service commercially to consumers and businesses in the US in April 2006, with a goal of licensing its technology to national postal operators within five years.

“Swiss Post’s early adoption of our platform definitely accelerates our business plan by a few years,” said Ron Wiener, CEO of Earth Class Mail, “and it has generated interest from numerous other countries eager to leverage the Internet to generate new customers and incremental revenue, reduce operating expenses, and in the future, potentially satisfy their Universal Service Obligation by electronic means.”

“We’re eager to provide such a useful service under the world-famous Swiss Post brand,” said Benoit Stroelin, general manager of Swiss Post Box, the newly formed unit responsible for introducing the service. “We think we can do very well in all the countries we enter, but we also believe in the ‘network effect’ and are encouraging our peer postal operators to also consider this in their own countries now.”

“Paper-mail volumes are still being substituted by the Internet,” said Cameron Powell, Earth Class Mail senior VP of strategic development, “and major postal operators like USPS are incurring multi-billion-dollar losses. But some, like Swiss Post, are making early moves to electronic lines of business to offset declines in volume and revenue from traditional mail delivery. Not surprisingly, these innovators are among the most profitable operators, and generally the ones taking a seat next to us on the leading edge.”

Earth Class Mail is in talks with several potential partners in the US and expects to strike a similar deal in its home country by the end of this year. As part of the company’s accelerated timeline, it may also transfer its own US retail operations to a partner with the brand presence and nationwide footprint to add more customer-usable remote addresses and greater mail-processing capacity. The current US operation, which includes retail stores and mail-processing locations in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Beaverton, Oregon, has validated the Earth Class Mail platform, which currently supports consumer, small business, enterprise, government, and military users in over 175 countries who receive the mail at one of 23 US addresses. The company will continue to make its platform available to enterprise channel partners who specialize in outsourced mailroom services and document management.

“With Swiss Post’s deployment now under way, we believe it is time to focus on leveraging powerful national partners around the world,” said Wiener. “We’re taking our platform global. This is an acceleration of our strategy and a redeployment of resources, but our headcount remains at an all-time high of approximately 115 and revenues are growing consistently month over month.”