Endicia

Got Books?

Got Books? logo

Don't Throw Them Out, We'll Pick Them Up!

Got Books is a for-profit professional fundraiser and used book seller whose primary mission is to support the local community through books, mostly by hosting weekly Charity Book Sales at their warehouse in North Reading, MA, 15 minutes north of Boston. Their Book Sale provides a meaningful and effective way to raise money for a variety of local causes and fifty percent of all weekend book sale profits go directly to the fundraising partners. Some donated books are given away free to local schools and libraries while some are sold online. And that is where Endicia comes in.

Background.  Founded in 1999 by Bob Ticehurst, Got Books? offers a free pickup in Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire and drop-off service to six different states in New England. People can call in and schedule the pickup at a date and time of their choosing. Donations can take the form of books, videos, CDs, DVDs, and audio books. They also have the option of dropping them off at the nearest Book Donation Container. These items are then sold at the weekly Charity Book Sales, held every Friday and Saturday. For those who are unable or unwilling to sell online, Got Books? is also willing to pick up their items and find good homes for them. Fifty percent of the profits of these sales are given to different non-profit groups. The unsold books are mostly given for free to schools and libraries, but 10-15% of them are sold online to cover expenses. Unsalvageable items are recycled as a last resort.

Got Books? entrance

The books are sold online through Amazon (US and UK), AbeBooks, Alibris and Half.com. About 1,500 packages are shipped every day, almost all exclusively through the Postal Service, thus making the use of Endicia all the more indispensable.

Endicia’s Role. Bob Ticehurst was having a hard time shipping his packages. “Thirty a day was already too much,” he recalls, then he heard about Endicia on an Amazon discussion board. He decided to try out the software and was immediately seduced by its ease of setup and use, the uptime, and the customizable layouts – all these for a respectable fee. The time when he struggled manually writing the addresses on the packages himself and waiting in line at the Post Office was over. Now the whole process is streamlined, and the difficult-to-manage 30 packages a day seem a joke compared to the 1,500+ items he is able to ship today.

Endicia is entirely integrated into the workflow. After having grabbed the order, the items are packed into a bubble mailer and put on a scale. A pick slip is scanned to pull in the order information for their own proprietary system that directly puts the address and weight onto the label. Then, using Endicia, the user just selects either Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope or Priority Mail Flat Rate Box and prints the shipping label from either of two Zebra 2746E printers.

View into the Got Books? warehouse.

Stealth Postage, Label Customization and Electronic Delivery Confirmation are just some of the many features that endear Bob and his coworkers to Endicia Premium. Stealth Postage allows customers to hide the amount of postage, thus letting Got Books? charge a reasonable shipping and handling fee without drawing the customers’ attention. Label Customization offers a professional look and is also a way of differentiating the Got Books? packages from any others, while Electronic Delivery Confirmation allows them to notify customers that their orders are on the way.

Got Books? recently upgraded to Endicia Professional, which allows them to take advantage of the Shipment Confirmation Acceptance Notice (SCAN). This feature provides proof that the shipper actually transferred the packages to the care of the Postal Service. The application involves a single scan which can be performed by any Postal Service carrier or clerk. The single scan signals the acceptance of packages bearing Electronic Delivery or Signature Confirmation created that day by the shipper. Each SCAN form can contain 200 shipments (or less), and multiple SCAN forms can be created to cover the shipper’s needs.

Got Books? also took advantage of Endicia’s Refer-A-Friend program, having referred 11 customers to date. This program enabled Got Books? to receive one month service fee credit for each referred customer who maintained an Endicia account for 30 paid days.

The Future.  As Bob Ticehurst put it himself:

“We use Endicia to streamline our system so we can spend more time on growing the business instead of the shipping process.”

And grown it has. Last year, Got Books? saw its business go up by over 200%, improving upon the already spectacular rise of 100% from the previous year. This exploding growth will lead the company to expand its resources (material, personnel…) in order to broaden their customer range even more, but one thing seems almost certain: Endicia will still be there for their shipping process.

To learn more about Got Books?, please visit www.gotbooks.com.