Personal Postage
By Jack Rosenberger, Project Editor -- Graphic Arts Online, 11/1/2000
Last April, Canada Post, an agency within the Canadian government, unveiled its Picture Postage service, which allows a person to create his or her own domestic postage stamp. According to Canada Post officials, Picture Postage comprises a special two-part personalized postage package that consists of an ornate gilded frame bearing the word "Canada" and the number "46" (its domestic postage rate in cents), and a photo sticker bearing the customer's supplied image that fits inside the aforementioned frame.
To use the service, Picture Postage customers send their completed order form, photograph, and payment to Ashton Potter Canada, a Toronto-based security and postage printing company that handles the printing of the stamps.
Because Ashton Potter Canada--whose client roster includes some 65 postal authorities, including the governments of Canada, Great Britain, and the United States--had worked with Canada Post for nearly three decades, the vision of Picture Postage quickly developed into a profitable reality as a result of their close relationship.
Setting up shop
The logistics of devising a database and an imaging and printing operation for Picture Postage took Ashton Potter Canada nearly eight months, explains Barry Switzer, executive vice president and manager of Ashton Potter Canada's stamp group.
The endeavor requires the printer to process a customer's money; enter the necessary information in a database; approve or reject photos; scan the photo and perform any needed color adjustment, enhancement, or cropping; and print and package the final image.
Ashton Potter Canada officials wouldn't discuss the particulars of their proprietary manufacturing process, but according to the Canada Post Web site, the Picture Postage program employs the use of five-color lithography on Tullis Russell paper stock. "This isn't rocket science," says Switzer, "but we're holding this information close to our vest."
Breaking from tradition
Says Tim McGurrin, a communications manager at Canada Post's headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, the biggest challenge of the project was for the agency to convince itself to "break with tradition and try something we had never done before."
After much internal discussion, Canada Post decided that allowing citizens to create their own stamps with images of themselves, a family pet, or a daughter's high school graduation photo "doesn't significantly break with any tradition," says McGurrin.
Moreover, Canada Post was well aware that Australia had created the "P Stamp," a personalized stamp in which a standard domestic stamp is attached by perforation to a tab bearing a customer's chosen photo image. "Australia had put the image next to the stamp," says McGurrin. "We thought, 'Why not put it on the stamp?'"
Picture of success
Canada Post unveiled Picture Postage at a setting where it expected to receive the most resistance: the Royal Philatelic Society's annual three-day convention held last spring in Winnipeg. With almost no publicity, Canada Post sold 100 to 200 orders for the program during the show.
A survey conducted at the convention revealed that most of the respondents "wouldn't order Picture Postage, but they knew someone else who would," says McGurrin. "Most people thought it was a neat idea."
A minimum order is one sheet, which consists of 25 self-adhesive stickers bearing the customer's photo image, 25 self-adhesive gilded frames, and 25 personalized return-address labels. A single sheet of 25 stamps costs $24.95 Canadian (U.S. $16.34), more than twice the cost of a sheet of 25 normal domestic rate stamps.
When Picture Postage was made available for sale to the public, Canada Post was overwhelmed by the response. Within two weeks, postal offices throughout Canada were depleted of their Picture Postage order forms. To date, Canada Post has sold approximately 18,000 sheets of stamps, with 200 orders being placed daily. "The response is fairly incredible because a lot of it is mainly through word of mouth," says McGurrin.
Canada Post holds the patent in the United States and other countries for a composite stamp, or a stamp created in a two-part fashion.
