|
Contact: RJ Humphries
|
Earth Class Mail in EuropeMonday, June 23, 2008 | By: The Seattle Times Earth Class Mail, a small Seattle company with a big idea, tried for three years to get the U.S. Postal Service to listen to it. It had pioneered a system of sending postal mail over the Internet, a system it believed would cut costs and boost revenues at the government agency. It got nowhere. But as Earth Class pressed on alone, inquiries began flowing in from Europe, Canada, India and New Zealand. Last month, Chief Executive Ron Wiener was in Europe talking to the deregulated national postal services in France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The response, Wiener said by telephone from Geneva, was "overwhelming." He said one European national post has agreed to run a pilot study. "That is exciting, The first olive out of the jar is always the hard part," Wiener said. The 44-year-old CEO has taken on a monster of a job: changing consumer habits of a lifetime. For many people, it's a daily ritual to rip open envelopes and sort the junk mail from the letters over a wastebasket. How many will prefer to flip through the mail online instead? Wiener believes the number is in the millions. The startup veteran sold his private plane in 2004 in order to form the company, then called Document Command.... Continue reading here |
