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Postmaster General Potter Looks For Innovative Solutions

After nine years on the job, Postmaster General John E. Potter believes he has less than six months to convince Congress and the nation of the urgent need to retool the U.S. Postal Service for the 21st century, Ed O'Keefe reports.

A large part of Potter's mission is to change the service's business model by dropping Saturday deliveries, replacing post offices with outposts in suburban supermarkets and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs through attrition. But he's also looking for people within the service to come up with the next big idea.

"It wasn't somebody in engineering who thought of Netflix. It was somebody that thought they could take a DVD and put it in the mail," he says. "Amazon.com wasn't a thought of by someone in the Postal Service."

Among partnerships with corporate America already in the works are new ads for Wal-Mart's mail-order pharmacy featuring the Postal Service and upcoming ads for "Toy Story 3" that incorporate the Postal Service. Hallmark also plans to sell greeting cards that include envelopes with prepaid postage.

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1 comment about "Postmaster General Potter Looks For Innovative Solutions ".
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  1. Pam Rodely from conklin, May 11, 2010 at 3:49 p.m.

    I would like to know if the Postal Service has ever entertained the Idea of having a federal Lottery that would operate from everyone's local Post Office. It would certainly be an incentive to visit the facility where other items would be for sale along with the mailing and shipping supplies that are already for sale. The quick stops are making money from this incentive and it would certainly be a better answer to some of the Postals woes than raising the price of postage or doing a major downsize of employees and faclities. It would not be a cure all but would seem to be a way to make some needed revenue.

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