Editors’ Note

Brian Fleisher was formerly the Vice President and General Manager at Pitney Bowes Inc. and, before that, Plant Manager. Earlier, he was the Vice President & General Manager for World Distribution Services.

Company Brief

IMEX Global Solutions, LLC (imexglobalsolutions.com), headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, is a premier provider of international mail logistics and distribution services. Through its strategically located facilities in New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, and California, IMEX consolidates and distributes billions of pieces of mail, publications, and parcels to over 220 countries across the globe. With over 25 years of experience in international shipping, IMEX provides its customers with the highest levels of performance, accuracy, and customer service.

Would you touch on the history of IMEX and how the business has evolved?

IMEX was founded in 1986 and it was originally an acronym for International Mail Express – that tells you how much the business and industry have evolved, because we’re doing much more than just mail. A big push for us has been in e-commerce and the parcel arena.

In the late ’80s, we were a privately held organization that primarily consolidated presort flats and some mixed mail to different international destinations throughout the world.

We always provided expedited delivery at the lowest cost possible. Today, after 25 years, our mission is still the same: to provide value to our clients. Over the years, the international mail industry has evolved, and we have too. We have added innovative services, including our exclusive GPS, which is a Global Parcel Solutions e-commerce product, along with expanded business mail publications. We’re a one-stop-shop that provides much more than just the mail products that we did 25 years ago. We have also upgraded our wholly owned state-of-the-art locations throughout the United States.

Imagine if you could extract the values, features, and services that are best-in-class from your competition and incorporate them into your own business. At IMEX, that’s what we have done because, over the years, we acquired other organizations and competitors within our industry. IMEX is now made up of about seven different organizations.

How hard is it to make sure that the culture remains consistent when you’re bringing so many firms together?

For a while, we were owned by a major Fortune 500 organization and their culture would override the individual cultures of the organizations that we were acquiring at the time. Since we have become independent, we have focused on fostering an environment where our clients, innovation, and people come first.

One of the things that helps us assimilate the various cultures is working with individuals to help them understand our overall vision.

How can you provide your range of service at such a low cost?

We are able to leverage the relationships and the experiences we have dealing with the different postal agencies to develop customized routings for IMEX that are different than those the general industry is able to offer.

Many postal rates are determined by volume. At IMEX, we are able to work with the culminated volumes of several different organizations, and we put ourselves in a position where, today, we are the largest privately held international mail consolidator in the United States.

We leverage the volume of mail we consolidate and collect from our clients, and sort it to our proprietary matrix to gain the best postage rates. Due to the tremendous volume, we can maximize our line haul and control our expenses. Our combination of dense weight publications and business mail, and lighter weight parcel packages allow us to cube out airline containers and achieve the best possible rates.

How has technology impacted your business?

Innovation has always been a key component of our culture, and we’ve continued to move towards offering different levels of web-type services or portals to our clients so they can easily access our services.

We have been able to develop proprietary software. One of our programs, PostTrac, is a web-based management tool that allows our customers to quickly track an invoice and international postage costs for their mailings.

We’ve also developed Global Parcel Solutions, which is exclusive to IMEX and designed with e-commerce businesses in mind. GPS combines the latest technology with our effective service-delivery solutions across the globe. It enables transparency because today, it’s no longer adequate to get packages or mail from point A to point B – clients demand trackability and transparency. This solution comes down to providing communications so that our clients know exactly what is happening with their mail every step of the way.

How do you define your target market?

It has evolved over time. Our target market includes e-commerce businesses, financial institutions, publishers, print-houses, retailers, and fulfillment-type organizations that produce catalogs and different types of magazines.

We typically deal with bulk volumes, those over 1,000 pieces, be it parcels, publications, or financial statements such as bank statements or credit card distributions throughout the world.

What approach have you taken to attract the talent you need?

Over our 25 years, we have built an excellent reputation based on our experience and innovation, and the integrity and passion of our workforce. We own and operate our own facilities – we don’t subcontract work to third parties. This allows us to run a tight ship, and maintain an unmatched credibility.

Many of us have worked together for so many years that it’s like a family. The passion and strong work ethic that we have in our organization is evident in our quality and commitment, and keeps our employee retention rate high.

When we talk about developing our culture, innovation continues to play a key role. We continually make significant investments in our technology because our clients deserve it and this is where the future lies.

Service excellence must be ingrained in every department, and it begins and ends with our people. Great customer service builds morale because people are committed to and enjoy working for an organization that drives value and consistently delivers an outstanding experience for clients.

We continue to invest in training and development every year, and we make sure that our employees are empowered to make decisions so they can be a trusted resource for our clients, be it through offering advice or different services, or answering their questions about how mail moves. International parcel and mail logistics is our passion. That is what we’re here to do.•