National Association of Retail Shipping Centers

The National Association of Retail Shipping Centers (NARSC), is North America's largest not-for-profit organization of retail, mail and parcel shipping store owners, representing less than 200 members (as reported in Jan 2008), who are involved in all aspects of the consumer and commercial packing and shipping industries.

NARSC functions as an elected, membership-managed and operated organization for the mail and parcel center industry.

NARSC's membership is composed of retail store owners including independently owned and operated store owners, non-carrier owned franchised retail, store owners and associated store owners such as Eagle Postal Centers, Postman Plus, PostNet, Pak Mail, Postal Annex, Postal Connections, Goin' Postal, Aim Mail Centers, Parcel Plus, Packaging Store, Mail Boxes Etc. and others engaged in all aspects of the retail packing and shipping industry in the 50 states in North America.

NARSC, on behalf of its membership, intends to represent its members as a lobbying organization to other industry organizations, industry vendors and the government.

Mission Statement

The National Association of Retail Shipping Centers (NARSC) official mission statement describes the organization and its aims as follows:

NARSC is an independent, member owed and operated, not-for-profit organization which utilizes collaborative networking to proactively promote and lobby for the commercial interests of its members to the mail and parcel industry. NARSC’s goal is to ensure the well being of its members and the commercial viability of the industry for the benefit of member store owners, the industry and its customers.

History

The origins of NARSC lie in the formation of the Neighborhood Postal Centers (NPC) which is part of the national trade organization. The NPC Chapters came together with the objective of organizing store owners on a state or regional level into locally organized chapters. The formation of locally organized groups of store owners began in Phoenix, Arizona and was adopted as a national model for by Charmaine Fennie, the president and then owner of AMPC. The first chapters were called NPC (Neighborhood Postal Centers) chapters and laid the groundwork for the future NARSC.

The new association of NARSC chapters represent less than 200 store owner members from across the United States dissolving the original Neighborhood Parcel Center chapters. The reformulated NARSC lifted the restriction that only Neighborhood Postal Center (NPC - as part of AMPC) member stores could join NARSC, enabling the new NARSC to expand its membership. This growth in membership is considered critical to the new responsibilities NARSC expects to take on. NPC stores as well as non-NPC branded stores are now welcomed into the new NARSC.

These new organizational changes were decided on by the chapter presidents representing the store owner members across the United States. Under the new structure, the local store owners will be able to take full responsibility for setting the overall direction of the organization.

NARSC's transformation from a subsection of the Neighborhood Postal Centers network with AMPC as its parent and founder, to a totally independent store owned organization enables NARSC to more strongly represent the needs of its member store owners and to focus its attentions on common economic issues with a set of clear goals for the future.

The current president of the National Association of Retail Shipping Centers is Bruce Bernstein, owner of a retail store, who NARSC members have installed over Greg Granby who was strongly petitioned to be removed and was rapidly. Mike Thompson (Owner of Pack Mail Waco) who was a Board Member was removed as well. Bruce has stated he is changing NARSC from a non-profit to a 501 corporation (tax exempt) and will be removing vendor partnerships and rely upon RSA for building vendor relations. At that point it is unclear why there would be a need for NARSC or paying an annual fee for membership if there is no benefit to being a member.

With RSA driving a non-profit arm and in essence competing directly against NARSC for representation, it will be interesting to see the outcome and viability of NARSC and membership.

External links

* [http://narscinfo.com National Association Of Retail Shipping Centers] National Association Of Retail Shipping Centers