Mailpac buys Global Courier Services
Online shopping company Mailpac announced yesterday that it has acquired Global Courier Services, expanding its customer base to over 75,000 Jamaicans.
“The acquisition of Global gives us the opportunity to service a broader segment of the online shopping market with our unique technology, infrastructure and service offering. It is one more step in our drive to ensure that every Jamaican has seamless access to online shopping and a necessary consolidation in ensuring superior efficiency and better pricing for customers,” said Mailpac managing director Mark Gonzales.
Like Mailpac, the Global Courier Services provides online shopping services to Jamaicans that want to access products and services available online. More specifically, Global provides a personal address in the United States where Jamaicans can send their online purchases. Global then ships these products to Jamaica, clears them through customs and delivers them to the customer locally.
Founded by siblings Chris and Sara Barrett in 2002, Global is the country’s second largest provider of online shopping services, the two parties said in a joint press release.
Barrett expressed his support of the acquisition as he believes that the continued growth in the online shopping market will require additional resources that the combined company will be better positioned to provide.
“As entrepreneurs, our number one concern has always been our customers and the service they received. We have seen significant growth in online shopping locally and believe that a combined platform will provide our customers with greater efficiency and service,” said Chris Barrett.
“The recent spike in online shopping clearly requires a larger warehouse, greater airlift capacity, a broader customer service team and other necessary infrastructure that will be provided through this combination,” he added.
The Barrett siblings will play an advisory role to Mailpac through a six-month transition period.
In response to the growth of online shopping and the additional capacity required to effectively support clients, Mailpac said it has already started to invest in such infrastructure.
“We have relocated to a 160,000 square foot facility in Miami from our previous 53,000 square foot platform. We have also increased our Miami staff by over 25 per cent,” Gonzales.
“Additionally, we are in partnership with a local call centre to provide a larger pool of customer service agents so that every customer can be addressed more timely. Our phone lines have been a major concern for us and we want to make sure as the Christmas season rolls around, we have the necessary capacity.”
Tthe companies said the acquisition will not result in changes for Global Courier’s existing clients and the business will continue to operate out of its Lady Musgrave location. Customers will continue shipping goods at their existing rate structure and have the ability to use their current US-based address or a new address that will be provided to them from Mailpac, the release stated.