Delegates to this year’s Mail Show were eager for the full opening of a competitive mail market – but frustrated that a number of factors are delaying the benefits that competition should bring. This was the key message from the audience of over 400 senior industry executives and major mail customers at The Mail Show 2005 at Olympia last week.

With a range of authoritative speakers over the two days putting forward their opinions, it was clear from the start that the audience was enthusiastic about the prospects of open competition. However, when event organisers Triangle presented the results of the pre-Show Customer Forum (a sample of the UK’s top mail users), the consensus view was frustration that little had changed in the last 12 months. While Royal Mail had woken up, started to address its product range and signalled its fightback using weapons such as Pricing in Proportion, its rivals had been slow to come forward with new service offerings. Many felt that regulation was still delaying customers from receiving the benefits of liberalisation and that any innovation that was taking place was having to suit Royal Mail’s operational requirements.

Warning signs for new operators
The interactive voting system demonstrated a level of eager anticipation for the open market, while also highlighting the feeling that the new operators may be losing their focus. On the first morning, well over three-quarters of delegates were feeling positive about liberalisation. 76% of the audience went on to agree that innovation was the key to the future of the postal industry, but only half felt that the new operators were actually listening to what customers want. The concern was that the operators were focusing too much on fighting Royal Mail and not enough on producing services that customers wanted. A clear majority of delegates feared that customers would not have enough choice on 1^st January 2006, and there was an important warning here for the commercial operators to sharpen up their act.

The pricing predicament
Another area of frustration was price, where the dilemma of different forces pulling in different directions was evident. A number of speakers and delegates felt that new operators were discouraged from entering the market with the products customers wanted as the access price is too high. From their point of view, mail customers and Postwatch, on behalf of the consumer, wanted to see prices lower as this was one of the expected benefits of competition. The claim had been made in the Customer Forum that Royal Mail was muddying the waters with its size-based pricing proposals, but Chief Executive Adam Crozier argued that this was important to allow Royal Mail to progress towards its aim of becoming “demonstrably the best and most trusted mail company in the world”. He said he appealed only for a level playing field – the problem for those in the hall was to determine which way that field currently slopes!

There was no doubt that the 2005 Mail Show was bigger and better than ever before. Around a third of the delegates were customers and there was a noticeably large representation from the financial community. The UK Mail Awards ceremony on the first evening of conference was over-subscribed well in advance, and a delighted Triangle Chairman Paul Jackson said that there was “a clear mood of an industry which can’t wait to get on with it.” The next year will be a fascinating one for the mail market in the UK, and the 2006 Mail Show is already eagerly awaited.

Notes for Editors:

• The Mail Show is an annual event held every November in London, organised by Triangle Management Services Ltd

• Triangle also runs the UK Express Delivery Conference in Birmingham in July and a series of World Mail & Express events around the globe, as well as the annual World Mail Awards and the UK Mail Awards

• Further press enquiries, including requests for photographs of the conference and UK Mail Awards Gala Dinner, should be made to Triangle’s Marketing & Media Department on 0870 950 7900 or to media@triangle.eu.com

Triangle Management Services Ltd, founded in 1984, is today the pre-eminent independent specialist management services company within the global mail, express and logistics sectors. Triangle offers the following services to clients: Recruitment, Market Research, Consultancy, Conferences and Mergers and Acquisitions - all of which focus primarily on the mail and express industry sectors.