| When you want
something delivered quickly chances are that you would turn up at a counter
like this one. You want service with a smile, you want absolute confidence
that your parcel will arrive when promised, you want the price to be fair
and reasonable, and preferably all of the above.
Southern California
residents have discovered such a delivery service in Overnite Express,
which does only regional deliveries in a 200-mile radius - no
more
Coming from nowhere to
a million dollar enterprise in it's early years it tweaked the noses of
the bigger guys saucily moving in right next door to one of them and
instantly attracting value conscious customers eager for a
choice.
Bruce Page, "It's hard
to believe that there could be a market niche between the global delivery
services with household names and the back-pack bicycle brigade of most
major cities - but there was. Overnite Express struck a bonanza when it
came up the obvious; later pick up and drop off times and lower
prices.
Rob Ukropina,
President, "So we go and pick up a package at 11:00 o'clock at night in it
needs to go 200 miles south the next morning the only alternative to after
FedEx and UPS at that point is a using a ground messenger for $200. We're
$8.75 so we really don't have any competition; FedEx and UPS have gone
home a long time ago.
Another reason for
success, Rob looked at potentially big accounts and came up with a win-win
solution after he asked himself the obvious question. Ukropina, "How do we
get those packages? I went in and asked if one of our employees could
disseminate all of the overnight shipments, including using the FedEx
powership and then preparing shipments in our area later. That was a trade
off we gave them an employee and we got their Southern California
packages."
Rob fully expects to
double his revenue, and then double it again within two years as the good
news gets out underscoring an age old lesson - when the price is right and
the service top drawer the customers will flock to your door.
By Bruce Page January,
1996
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