Customized stamps may lick Postal Service's finance woes
WASHINGTON -- It may be the ultimate in narcissism. Forget about personalized license plates, credit cards, or T-shirts. Now you can have your face immortalized on a postage stamp.
The US Postal Service gave the go-ahead last month for
Customers can upload their chosen picture on the company's website and customize it with banners or framing. Stamps.com will take care of the rest.
''We have had an excellent response so far," said Ken McBride, the company's chief executive. ''In the first three weeks of operation alone, we took orders for 40,000 sheets."
Just about anything except sexually explicit, political, or copyrighted images can be used, according to McBride.
So far, about 40 percent of requests have included shots of babies and children; 25 percent, adults or families; and 10 percent, pets, with the remainder a miscellany of business logos, landscape images, and wedding photos.
''We rejected about 1,000 images in the first three weeks. Most of those involved sexual explicitness, nudity or violence," said McBride.
''We've had some really compelling images, too, like those commemorating fallen soldiers and Marines," he said. ''A few have been a little on the odd side, such as a picture of a chair or someone's foot."
The novelty of gracing the top right corner of an envelope commands a premium, however. The stamps cost $16.99 for a sheet of 20, or about 85 cents for a first-class stamp that now costs 37 cents.
The Postal Service receives the value of standard first-class postage, while Stamps.com receives the rest but bears all production, handling, and shipping costs.
The idea is not new, acknowledged Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan. Personalized stamps were first used by the Australian postal service and have since been adopted by several countries including Britain, Canada, Switzerland, and Ireland. The program's trial period in the United States will run until the end of September, McKiernan said.
''We're monitoring the situation as it progresses and we will evaluate all aspects of the test run when it concludes," he said.
The pilot program comes at a crucial juncture for the Postal Service. The agency has been dogged by three years of declining mail use, static revenue, and spiraling costs -- all of which have contributed to billions of dollars in cumulative losses. 