Post offices offer personal stamps

The nation's postal service plans to boost sagging revenues by issuing vanity stamps, a government official said yesterday.

"Over the past few decades, stamps were usually designed by the government. However, when the postal business is challenged by other correspondence tools, we have to create some incentives, such as attractive stamps, to pull customers back," said Chen Chih-chin (陳志津), a deputy manager at the Directorate General of Posts under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.

The left side of the new product offers regular stamps, while on the right side are photos chosen by customer. The vanity stamps feature personal photographs and customers can use them as regular stamps for postal deliveries.

The postal authorities hope to make a windfall with the plan.

"We expect that over the next five years the personalized stamps will generate NT$100 million in new sales per year," Chen said.

The new stamps is on sale between Nov. 20 and Dec. 10, but won't be delivered until Dec. 12.

"This is the first time personalized stamps are being printed in Taiwan," Chen said.

Main post offices in Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung will offer the service and the total amount of stamps is limited of 300,000.

Those who are interested in the program have to fill out an application form, attach the photo to the form and then turn the form in to the respective post office by Dec. 10.

"Within the first two days that we accepted applications, we received more than 20,000 orders. Most of the customers are young people, young couples and candidates in the year-end elections," Chen said.

Another official said scheme is the post office's latest method for competing with other correspondence businesses.

"For the past few years, the postal business has been significantly impacted by express delivery companies such as DHL and UPS as well as Internet transmission," said Tsai Min-ting (蔡敏庭), a section chief at the Directorate General of Posts.

This year's revenue, including letters and packages, is at least 10 percent lower than last year, he said.

"Since we don't have branch offices around the world, it is difficult for us to boost revenue from business correspondence," Tsai said

E-mail has not had a dramatic impact on the post office's revenue because most Web users are young people, who are not major postal users, he said.

"Most Taiwanese who are middle-aged or older, still prefer to write letters and cards longhand rather than type virtual notes in cyber world."