Trari trara!, our privates are here
Marco Hinni is CEO of the AWZ Group. At 115 years old, it is the oldest company in Switzerland, yet it consistently maintains a youthful spirit. With approximately 1,400 employees, the company is active in both addressed and unaddressed direct mail in Switzerland. And it will become even more attractive in the future with Swiss Mail, the private postal company.
There is movement in the Swiss postal market. Since this summer, Swiss Mail private Post AG has been a growing alternative to the yellow giant. The company emerged from Swiss Mail Vertriebs AG. Swiss Mail comprises 12 partners. After the pioneering company Quickmail AG and the AWZ Group concluded a cooperation agreement in the spring of this year, the individual Swiss Mail partners will now be involved in the further development of the addressed delivery network. "This merger is a milestone for the history of private letter mail," Marco Hinni is convinced. The CEO of AWZ is one of three members of the Board of Directors or Executive Board of Swiss Mail and is also Chairman of the Coordination Committee of Swissdirectmail (SDM). In addition to the twelve partners of Swiss Mail, this association also includes the two Swiss Post subsidiaries Direct Mail Company in Basel and Epsilon in Geneva.
Since this summer, a new chapter has thus been written in the history of the over 100-year-old AWZ company. "What particularly distinguishes us at the moment is our entry into the addressed delivery of letters over 50 grams," says Hinni proudly about the new product offering. He sees "very great potential" for his company in this area. The market for letter delivery is said by Swiss Post to be in decline, especially due to electronic substitution. For AWZ, however, the remaining volume still means a very large market, only a quarter of which has been liberalized. In this competitive environment, the CEO therefore intends to clearly focus and expand its resources over the next few years. "Our planning is based on the assumption that in the next four years liberalization will hold at 50 grams and not come further down."
AWZ's great strength is that it functions as a general contractor. "We can offer our customers the full range of services that are in demand in dialog marketing," explains Hinni. With sales offices in Bern, Baar, Basel, and Lugano, three contracting depots, and more than 1,400 employees in the group, AWZ, together with its subsidiary Agentur für Direktwerbung (ADZ), offers the entire chain of services from address management to mailing packaging and delivery.
In the delivery of addressed letters, the AWZ partner Quickmail can cover around 10 percent of Swiss households in eastern Switzerland. Through the AWZ Group, another 20 percent coverage will be added by the end of this year. In the rest of Switzerland, one of Hinni's tasks is to ensure that, with the implementation within Swiss Mail, the density will be even better in the future. The private competitor aims to reach 63 percent of all Swiss households by 2012 at the latest.
Swiss Mail's logistics cannot be compared with the yellow post. "We don't see ourselves as a direct competitor either," explains Hinni. Swiss Mail sees itself as a service provider. "We want to further expand dialog marketing and provide the customer with an even better response. That is the main objective."
Marco Hinni's work has always been characterized by clear goals. He entered the professional world with a commercial apprenticeship. He has worked in various industries, in the service and consumer goods sectors. Even at a young age, he wanted to complete his first further training and had himself certified as a businessman HKG, which today is a higher technical college. He then worked for about ten years as a commercial manager at a consumer goods manufacturer, then for seven years at another manufacturer, with a short period in between in IT consulting. During this time of change, he considered what his personal goals were and came to the conclusion that in the future he wanted to move from being deputy managing director in an SME to being responsible for overall management. "I analyzed what I was still missing to do that, so I caught up on my marketing manager training." This put Hinni in a very good position after graduation, when he saw the AWZ advertisement in the spring of 2004. Here he was able to achieve two goals at once: Realize the desired overall management and at the same time bring the currently acquired marketing knowledge into a company that specializes in dialog marketing.
Very important to him was the significance of the corporate culture in a company. "At AWZ, I was pleased to discover that this level is very high." Since then, Hinni has tried to further ensure the high value of corporate culture with his involvement. The company's beginnings with a "typing pool for the unemployed" is a commitment to him. "The social idea is still strong." It's in this area that Hinni sees an interesting tension for AWZ's leaders. "We are committed to business principles in our mission statement. We want to generate as much cash flow as will allow us to finance our investments ourselves. On the other hand, we want to deliver dividends from this cash flow to the Verein für Arbeitsbeschaffung, which is a 100 percent shareholder. These should enable the association to finance its charitable projects."
A variety of projects are supported, for example Arbeitsplattform.ch, Arbeit statt Fürsorge (ASF), Kompetenzzentrum Arbeit (KA) der Stadt Bern, Migros-Restaurant Bern-Westside and, at the end of the pilot phase, the "inizio" project. The origin of "inizio" goes back to National Councilor Otto Ineichen. Young people with poor academic performance and conspicuous social behavior are offered apprenticeships. In addition, they and the apprenticeship companies are accompanied until completion.
Looking back on his six years at AWZ so far, Hinni is keen to note that he has been able to continue running a company that was already extremely successful when he took over in the spring of 2005. "Shaped by a predecessor who spent 22 years shaping the fortunes not only of AWZ, but of the entire industry." Since then, the team of executives has managed to continue and consolidate that. "Now that the submarkets are changing a lot after all, we can always adapt to the changes in such a way most recently with the cooperation with Quickmail , that we can compensate for lost market share in another area with an adjusted orientation." This, he said, is only possible as a team and never the achievement of a single individual. The management team at AWZ has been constant for a long time, he said. And the satisfaction of that cadre? "We have succeeded in not only putting the basic values that make up a company on paper, but in living them, but also in constantly questioning them. This gives us the certainty: what we have created together is of a certain permanence, despite fashion trends." Not a matter of course for a company that has had to evolve from envelope writing to the possibilities of Web 3.0. Andreas Panzeri
Low wastage and optimum contact opportunities are good reasons why around a quarter of all advertising expenditure goes into direct marketing. With sales offices in Berne, Baar (Zurich branch), Basel and Lugano as well as three contracting depots, AWZ AG is one of the leading service providers in this discipline. Its offering includes address databases with 5.6 million private addresses, 455,000 business addresses and 450,000 private e-mail addresses and SMS mobile numbers. AWZ AG is entitled to bear the "GoodPriv@cy" data protection seal of approval. It undertakes to constantly scrutinize data protection and data security and to regularly review measures for improvement. The individual contracting service serves around 2.2 million Swiss mailboxes without stop stickers with unaddressed advertising. The service also includes IT services and mailing production with its own lettershop and fulfillment.
Since this summer, a new chapter has thus been written in the history of the over 100-year-old AWZ company. "What particularly distinguishes us at the moment is our entry into the addressed delivery of letters over 50 grams," says Hinni proudly about the new product offering. He sees "very great potential" for his company in this area. The market for letter delivery is said by Swiss Post to be in decline, especially due to electronic substitution. For AWZ, however, the remaining volume still means a very large market, only a quarter of which has been liberalized. In this competitive environment, the CEO therefore intends to clearly focus and expand its resources over the next few years. "Our planning is based on the assumption that in the next four years liberalization will hold at 50 grams and not come further down."
AWZ's great strength is that it functions as a general contractor. "We can offer our customers the full range of services that are in demand in dialog marketing," explains Hinni. With sales offices in Bern, Baar, Basel, and Lugano, three contracting depots, and more than 1,400 employees in the group, AWZ, together with its subsidiary Agentur für Direktwerbung (ADZ), offers the entire chain of services from address management to mailing packaging and delivery.
In the delivery of addressed letters, the AWZ partner Quickmail can cover around 10 percent of Swiss households in eastern Switzerland. Through the AWZ Group, another 20 percent coverage will be added by the end of this year. In the rest of Switzerland, one of Hinni's tasks is to ensure that, with the implementation within Swiss Mail, the density will be even better in the future. The private competitor aims to reach 63 percent of all Swiss households by 2012 at the latest.
Swiss Mail's logistics cannot be compared with the yellow post. "We don't see ourselves as a direct competitor either," explains Hinni. Swiss Mail sees itself as a service provider. "We want to further expand dialog marketing and provide the customer with an even better response. That is the main objective."
Marco Hinni's work has always been characterized by clear goals. He entered the professional world with a commercial apprenticeship. He has worked in various industries, in the service and consumer goods sectors. Even at a young age, he wanted to complete his first further training and had himself certified as a businessman HKG, which today is a higher technical college. He then worked for about ten years as a commercial manager at a consumer goods manufacturer, then for seven years at another manufacturer, with a short period in between in IT consulting. During this time of change, he considered what his personal goals were and came to the conclusion that in the future he wanted to move from being deputy managing director in an SME to being responsible for overall management. "I analyzed what I was still missing to do that, so I caught up on my marketing manager training." This put Hinni in a very good position after graduation, when he saw the AWZ advertisement in the spring of 2004. Here he was able to achieve two goals at once: Realize the desired overall management and at the same time bring the currently acquired marketing knowledge into a company that specializes in dialog marketing.
Very important to him was the significance of the corporate culture in a company. "At AWZ, I was pleased to discover that this level is very high." Since then, Hinni has tried to further ensure the high value of corporate culture with his involvement. The company's beginnings with a "typing pool for the unemployed" is a commitment to him. "The social idea is still strong." It's in this area that Hinni sees an interesting tension for AWZ's leaders. "We are committed to business principles in our mission statement. We want to generate as much cash flow as will allow us to finance our investments ourselves. On the other hand, we want to deliver dividends from this cash flow to the Verein für Arbeitsbeschaffung, which is a 100 percent shareholder. These should enable the association to finance its charitable projects."
A variety of projects are supported, for example Arbeitsplattform.ch, Arbeit statt Fürsorge (ASF), Kompetenzzentrum Arbeit (KA) der Stadt Bern, Migros-Restaurant Bern-Westside and, at the end of the pilot phase, the "inizio" project. The origin of "inizio" goes back to National Councilor Otto Ineichen. Young people with poor academic performance and conspicuous social behavior are offered apprenticeships. In addition, they and the apprenticeship companies are accompanied until completion.
Looking back on his six years at AWZ so far, Hinni is keen to note that he has been able to continue running a company that was already extremely successful when he took over in the spring of 2005. "Shaped by a predecessor who spent 22 years shaping the fortunes not only of AWZ, but of the entire industry." Since then, the team of executives has managed to continue and consolidate that. "Now that the submarkets are changing a lot after all, we can always adapt to the changes in such a way most recently with the cooperation with Quickmail , that we can compensate for lost market share in another area with an adjusted orientation." This, he said, is only possible as a team and never the achievement of a single individual. The management team at AWZ has been constant for a long time, he said. And the satisfaction of that cadre? "We have succeeded in not only putting the basic values that make up a company on paper, but in living them, but also in constantly questioning them. This gives us the certainty: what we have created together is of a certain permanence, despite fashion trends." Not a matter of course for a company that has had to evolve from envelope writing to the possibilities of Web 3.0. Andreas Panzeri
Low wastage and optimum contact opportunities are good reasons why around a quarter of all advertising expenditure goes into direct marketing. With sales offices in Berne, Baar (Zurich branch), Basel and Lugano as well as three contracting depots, AWZ AG is one of the leading service providers in this discipline. Its offering includes address databases with 5.6 million private addresses, 455,000 business addresses and 450,000 private e-mail addresses and SMS mobile numbers. AWZ AG is entitled to bear the "GoodPriv@cy" data protection seal of approval. It undertakes to constantly scrutinize data protection and data security and to regularly review measures for improvement. The individual contracting service serves around 2.2 million Swiss mailboxes without stop stickers with unaddressed advertising. The service also includes IT services and mailing production with its own lettershop and fulfillment.
The AWZ Bern was founded in 1895 as a "writing center for the unemployed". Behind this idea was the Verein für Arbeitsbeschaffung (VFA) Bern, which was committed to combating unemployment with various socially oriented projects. As a branch of the VFA, AWZ AG developed over the years from a mere typing pool into a provider of individual services in the address and contracting business. Today, the pioneer in addressed and unaddressed direct mail is still a wholly owned subsidiary of the Association for the Creation of Employment. However, the company is managed according to modern business management criteria. The dividend made available to the VFA is used to support charitable projects.
