Earth Day Redux

April 24, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail | Leave a Comment 

By Jeff Wenker, Earth Class Mail

PR guy here. I joined the company not two months ago and they’ve put me in charge of this blog thing. Since you’ll see me post here a lot, let me tell you a bit about myself, or look here. I’ve been writing about technology and doing PR since 1992, which seems like a long time ago – it was before EDI became e-commerce, before email was pervasive, and certainly before blogs. I remember when we used to mail press releases – in envelopes! We actually made copies, folded them into thirds, enclosed them in another piece of paper, and put them into mailboxes (you know, those blue clunky things on street corners). Things change.

Here we are, more than a quarter of the way through 2008 and the marketing mavens now say we must communicate directly with our customers, that mass media as we knew it is gone, that everyone can publish at any time anywhere and if we want our business to thrive we have to reevaluate things like press releases. Mavens can be pretty smart sometimes. Read more

Aloha to Aloha

April 11, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail | Leave a Comment 

By Ellen Enrico, Earth Class Mail

With Aloha Airlines’ recent announcement that it’s ending passenger service (and the hauling of a considerable amount of postal mail) to and between the Hawaiian Islands, how will postal-mail delivery be affected in Hawaii?

There was speculation that mail service might be slowed as a result. Ron Wiener, our CEO, who’s very interested in both aviation and mail, came to me, a native Hawaiian, to ask about mail delivery in Hawaii. Was I ever concerned about or did I ever notice slow delivery of mail to the islands? Read more

Startupalooza a High-Tech Hit

April 8, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail | 2 Comments 

By Joanna Kane, Earth Class Mail

On Saturday, March 29th, Earth Class Mail was honored to participate in an event created for the Portland, OR, tech start-up community called Startupalooza. The afternoon consisted of featured start-up presentations, a “Technopreneur” panel, and new product demos.

The crowd in attendance ranged from those with decade-long entrepreneurial careers to wide-eyed observers hoping to absorb tips and tools to get their new ideas off the ground. The energy in the room was palpable, conversations were animated, and new ideas were being generated as fast as they were being shared. If I had to pick one theme for the day, it would be the common interest in making life easier through technology, coupled with making technology accessible for anybody and everybody.

Earth Class Mail’s own Nate DiNiro acquainted the group with our company’s services, and the response was certainly favorable. Many in the audience had already heard of us through recent publicity and media coverage or the successful “Start-Up Junkies“ series on cable channel MOJO HD. Our service’s focus on the conservation of natural resources was definitely of interest. Attendees wanted to know how we reduce our carbon footprint and manage to recycle almost 70% more paper mail than the average consumer does. These questions came as no surprise to us, considering that Portland is known for its advancements and trendsetting in environmentally friendly products and sustainable living. Read more

How Long Will Postal Mail Stick Around?

February 21, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail | Leave a Comment 

By Ron Wiener, CEO, Earth Class Mail

Reporters, investors, and other people I meet often ask me, “How long do you think it will it be before postal mail goes away altogether?” Now, I’m in the alternative postal-mail delivery business. I’m also a technologist who built his first computer in high school 26 years ago. Not surprisingly, I may be somewhat biased in my response.

The postmaster general of the U.S. Postal Service, answering this question in front of Congress, or the CEO of Pitney Bowes, answering this question in front of Wall Street analysts, might also be somewhat biased in those situations. In light of pressure from labor unions and millions of postal workers, the paper- and printing-industry lobbyists, the direct-marketing industry, and decades of calcified tradition and habit, I don’t envy these officials’ public-facing responsibilities.

The long-term future of postal mail is a question that the founders of Earth Class Mail in fact had to answer for ourselves before we sunk millions of dollars into launching a business that ostensibly relies upon the continued existence of postal mail.

For a long time my favorite quip response to this question was, “There’ll be a paperless office when we’ll have a paperless toilet.” That quip served me well until an experienced world traveler pointed out to me that paperless toilets now exist in Japan. I’m now looking into buying one so that I can reduce my carbon footprint and never buy toilet paper again.

The forces of change can arrive in the form of blazing electrons, like the Internet, or glaciers that might move only a few inches per year. Many people say that postal organizations are more likely to embrace change on a geological time scale. Read more

The Inconvenient Truth about Unwanted-Mail Removal Services

February 3, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail | 3 Comments 

By Ron Wiener, CEO, Earth Class Mail Corp.

Just about everyone complains that he or she gets too much “junk mail.” And everyone’s definition of the term varies by personal interests. One person’s junk mail is another’s beloved Sunday night bedtime-reading companion. The outdoorsman’s cherished Cabela’s catalog is junk mail to his wife, whose Pottery Barn catalog is junk mail to her husband.

The definition of junk mail is simple: Poorly targeted, unsolicited advertising mail is “junk” – to the unwitting recipient, to the shareholders of the company that sent it, and, most of all, to the environment. Various studies show that only 20-30% of junk mail gets recycled – most of it winds up in our landfills.

The problem is now more palpable than ever, as two recent trends have shown. First, U.S. residential mailboxes are now so oversaturated with competing pleadings for disposable income that marketers complain of ever-declining response rates, against a backdrop of ever-increasing postage rates. This economically lethal combination has led thousands of catalog companies and direct marketers to either go bankrupt or shift their advertising dollars to online channels instead.

Second, tens of millions of dollars of venture capital have flowed into a rapidly burgeoning junk-mail removal industry, whose companies include Greendimes.com, ProQuo.com, 41pounds.com, CatalogChoice.com, among others.

Every time one of these websites gets coverage on CNN or ABC News, the printing and postal industries reach for the defibrillator. Consumers have been signing up for these services by the millions, including the industry’s own “Mail Preference Service” operated by the Direct Marketing Association. Read more

The sky’s the limit: Why pilots make great start-up employees, and why so many are entrepreneurs

January 24, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | 2 Comments 

By Ron Wiener, CEO, Earth Class Mail

Start-Up JunkiesI’ve been flying airplanes since 1984, and it is the greatest passion in my life outside of my own family and my addiction to start-up companies. For some pilots it’s about boring holes in the sky. For others it’s about just getting from Point A to Point B more efficiently. For me, it has always been about associating with ordinary people who have chosen to do an extraordinary thing – getting their pilot’s license, and beginning their never-ending quest of improving their skills and racking up their extraordinary experiences.

In this brotherhood of aviation I’ve met Fortune 500 CEOs and musicians, generals and housewives, astronauts and college students – all of whom share a common passion and were able to focus and achieve something special that 99.5% of the rest of the population hasn’t or isn’t even interested in attempting.

One can find many parallels between the kinds of people who fly airplanes and the kinds of people who succeed in entrepreneurship. But my first observation about these two populations is that aviation, like entrepreneurship, takes people from different walks of life, different educational and work experiences, even different cultures, and puts them all on a level playing field. It has always been amazing to me to watch a high-powered CEO taking lessons from a 20-year-old certified flight instructor (CFI) and bowing to her superior knowledge and experience, cowering at her admonitions and begging for her praise for any maneuver well done. What you do or have done in your business, medical, legal or other career, or in school, will have little bearing on what you’re about to do when you first start learning to fly airplanes. Anyone with more hours, more pilot ratings, more experience flying than you have under your belt is your de facto mentor in the air, and valued comrade on the ground. Read more

Top 10 tips for funding a start-up company

January 23, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | 4 Comments 

By Ron Wiener, CEO, Earth Class Mail Corporation

Start-up JunkiesRon Wiener, who has launched five start-up companies, is a member of Keiretsu Forum – the world’s largest formally organized group of angel investors – and has been active in non-profit entrepreneurial support organizations and a frequent speaker and writer on subjects relating to entrepreneurship and venture capital since 1991. The first episode of “Start-Up Junkies” follows Ron as he makes key presentations to angel and venture-capital investors, so we thought it would be especially appropriate for his blog this week to provide advice on raising investment funding.

Raising money for a startup can take an inordinate amount of the founders’ time and limited capital, so leveraging angel networks is a great way to go to make the process go quicker so you can get back to running your company. I’ve raised angel and venture capital for 10 ventures now, including five that I founded and ran as the first CEO (i.e., the one who needed to bring in the most difficult and expensive money the company will ever raise). After pitching deals to literally thousands of angel and institutional investors over the years, I’ve found that you can often do best by combining the momentum from angel groups with the momentum from unaffiliated angel investors to get the job done quickest. Here are a few tips that might help you as you undertake this task. Read more

Welcome to our ‘Start-Up Junkies’ blog!

January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | 10 Comments 

Start-Up JunkiesThe MOJO HD high-def documentary series “Start-Up Junkies” debuted on Thursday, Jan. 24. And since we’re the company that’s exclusively featured in the series’ first season, we’re in a unique position to provide you with content to help you enjoy the series even more.

As the series progresses, we’ll be posting blog entries on this page that include behind-the-scenes anecdotes, advice for fellow start-up junkies, background info on the topics and events covered in the show, a chance to interact with Earth Class Mail executives and employees, and much more. Our blog writers will include CEO Ron Wiener and other members of the management team and employees who played major roles in the opening season.

(NOTE: If you don’t have an HDTV set or your cable operator doesn’t carry MOJO HD, you can watch the episodes online in streaming video at the “Start-Up Junkies” website.)

Visit this site early and often as “Start-Up Junkies” unfolds over the next eight weeks. We welcome your comments about the show, our company and its service.

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