Suzy Meadows had a plan. After a successful career in the oil and gas industry, Meadows and her husband, Joel, in 1991 chose Mail Boxes Etc. as their future, and over the next decade it worked. In fact, it worked so well that the couple once owned and operated a chain of 5 Mail Boxes Etc. (MBE) stores in the Denver area.
Then in 2001, Suzy and Joel Meadows‘ plan received a near-fatal blow when Atlanta-based United Parcel Service purchased Mail Boxes Etc. and replaced the successful MBE business plan with an unprofitable system under which, as Suzy Meadows said, ‘only UPS makes any money.’
‘And the reason I can say that is we have one of each – an MBE store in Cherry Creek that still makes money under the old Mail Boxes identity, and a converted UPS Store in Denver that does not,’ Suzy said. In an orchestrated presentation rolled out across the country in February 2003, UPS told franchisees the MBE model was broken and could only be fixed by converting to the UPS Store model. Read more.
No comments yet.