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Forty years is a remarkable milestone to achieve in any business. For Gary Lewis, founder and chairman of Western Mailing at 461 Rosebank Road, the accomplishment is especially sweet, as it marks four decades of absolute commitment, innovation, and countless hours of hard work.
“Like a lot of others before us, we started the business out of my garage,” Gary says, “which we quickly outgrew, along with a few other premises, before we built the facility at 461 in 1998. It’s our fourth building. We chose the location deliberately as the development of the North Western motorway made it easier to get around and see customers and suppliers – and for them to come and see us.”
In the early days, Gary would park his Ford Escort panel van at the top of Rosebank Road and make his sales pitch to businesses up and down the length of it on foot, carefully keeping enough petrol to get home. “I wanted to save on petrol – and everything else – as all the money was going back into the business, mostly to buy equipment that would give us an advantage over the competition.”
Three generations of Lewis work in the business, with grandchildren and nephews currently employed. Gary’s son Wade started as a high school and then university student for extra cash, before joining in 1991. Like his father, Wade is an entrepreneur, who has successfully established his own businesses as well as returning to the family business as Managing Director.
“For me, Western Mailing has a great history,” Wade says. “Greenpeace was a client when the French bombed the Rainbow Warrior. Dad called to offer his condolences and asked if they still wanted to mail. They did, and the donations poured in. Supporting charities with their fundraising has always been a big component of our business, and some of them have been with us for years.”
Sheena Evatt Wood joined as General manager in late 2023. Previously Manager of Customer Success, APAC, for global software and technology company Infor, Sheena brings a wealth of valuable technology and customer service experience to Western Mailing.
The Western Mailing of 2024 is a very different business Sheena says, “We solve problems for our customers. That’s one thing that’s never changed. But as the technology has improved, and as society communication preferences have changed, we have too, and that’s reflected in what we offer. Our job is to find better, more creative, and more effective ways for our customers to communicate with their customers, and achieve their goals. We’ve undergone a huge transformation into digital, and this has opened up new opportunities for both us and our customers.”
The power of a message can be greatly increased by using more than one platform, Sheena says. “Running an electronic direct mail campaign in coordination with a powerful and personalised print component can create amazing results. We’ve done that for a number of our customers with considerable success.”
Western Mailing worked with Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to increase public engagement on its Three-Year Plan. Western Mailing first provided database cleansing and de-duping, to improve postal rates, and ensure each address only received one card. Then a simple postcard was designed and produced (the most cost-effective form of physical mail), including a URL, QR code and 0800 number to encourage people to contribute to the Plan.
The campaign allowed HBRC to minimise costs on production, postage and manual data entry. 98% of submissions were received electronically, with 72% submitted online, 26% by email, and less than <2% by mail or in person. This greatly decreased the Council’s manual administration time, a big change from three years ago. 21% of site traffic came from people directly entering the link, while 21% of submissions were made directly from the QR code, and another 33% driven by social media. Being able to lower the administration costs of manual data entry, gain direct visibility into where traffic and submissions were coming from and how they were tracking, lowering the overall campaign costs, was considered a success for both Council and ratepayers alike.
“The campaign was supported with ads in the local newspapers, social media ads, and posts in local Facebook groups,” says Sheena “This integrated approach of using different digital platforms combined with print helps get people to engage and really works.”
Western Mailing is still able to produce stellar results in the traditional mailing space, too. “Something as simple as producing invoices for large organisations, we’ve been able to achieve efficiencies that positively effect the bottom line. We redesigned the layout of their invoices, including hyperlinks to web-based bill explainers and FAQS, which resulted in 50% fewer inquiries to their call centre about billing. For them, that’s a lot of customer service time they can now spend on more important things – and an increase in customer satisfaction as a result.”
Sheena says one of the strengths of Western Mailing is the way it works closely with its customers, combining shared skillsets to work effectively as a unified team. We couldn’t do that without our people, their years of experience and deep knowledge of our customers. “That’s something we’re quite proud of, and something our customers tell us is a real point of difference.”
The business is also expert in managing more traditional mailings, such as invoices, renewals, catalogues or other direct communications, including email receipt tracking (knowing if an email has been received and opened), as well as print brokerage, a role the business has fulfilled for customers throughout its 40 years of trading.
“We offer a one-stop-shop service,” Sheena says, “and our knowledge in this area helps remove a lot of headaches for customers. Instead of them managing all the components and deadlines with multiple vendors, our team manage everything, allowing our customer to focus on their core business. It frees up their staff from low-value administration, while we pull together the communications puzzle for them, all at the right time.
“Our total focus is on problem solving for our customers,” says Gary, “no matter what their needs are. It always has been. This milestone marks forty years of experience at it, and we’ve learned a lot in that time. Everything’s changed since we first started in 1983, but our commitment to getting it right for the businesses and organisations we serve remains exactly the same.”
Roundabout Magazine
This article was published in Roundabout Magazine Issue 210 (August 2024).