The APS Report On Resurecting The Hobby

I saw this today, and 85 page report on how to revitalize the society

https://fepanews.com/wp-content/upl...ROOF_sm.pdf?

Sometimes it is a catch 22, how can the APS help me, if I don't support the APS.

Can the hobby grow without national support ?

Ho w about fixing the title of your post. The report is about fixing the APS, not the hobby

This speaks volumes.




On one hand the complaint is that the aging hobby demographic is what is in large part leading to declining revenue. On the other hand, this demographic is keeping things afloat. This cannot last though when post-boomer generations become the "silver" people but don't have the same emotional connection to stamps and postal history, having grown up in the digital age.




Again, these are not the same "silver's" that enthusiastically pursued the hobby in the past.




It was never a good idea to enter the real estate landlord arena. It is by nature cyclical, and many savvy people and entities have failed at it. This should not come as a surprise. In fact, the headquarters itself is IMO an unnecessary vanity possession. Reminds me of my town of 1,000 that owns a decommissioned elementary school for the town offices. It is a giant money suck out of proportion to what is needed to function and provide services. Don't know what the risk analysis was when this took place and would be interested in seeing what the assumptions were.

PS: The APS should investigate outsourcing many of its functions in order to reduce overhead (payroll).

Exactly how many payroll employees do you think they have? Not many. The biggest outsourcing so far has been turning sales over to HIP Stamp. Expertizing can be just cut as there are many others already. Circuits were to be eliminated except the outcry stopped that so those losses continue. That leaves the print magazine and who really reads that, if under 65. Then there is the library which for all out of copyright material can be digitized and then tossed. A third party outsource activity for sure. The material in copyright will take less space on the shelves.

A rent reduction to get income flowing on the vacant storefronts would be a good short term goal.

Too late now, but just how much of the APS funds were wasted on next month's Boston Show? No amount of sudden new membership signups there will cover the costs. On that topic, why spend so much APS money supporting the exhibit competitions around the country.

Lastly the APS should be honest and point blank say DO NOT BUY ANY NEW ISSUES, only get used copies. It will always be money better spent for the new collectors and stop the price shock when folks wish to divest.

Once all of that is accomplished, the APS should run smoothly and at a break even point.

Personnel is the largest expenditure being five times the amount of the next largest line item and they want to hire more people in 2026.

See here:

https://stamps.org/Portals/0/2026%2...0Meeting.pdf

Great to see so many experts here. I wonder why they weren't called on to help write the strategy.

"Great to see so many experts here. I wonder why they weren't called on to help write the strategy."

Having an open discussion about a business model that has clearly failed by those who have a vested interest in that business may not cure the APS' insolvency, but it surely won't hurt. Snide comments, on the other hand, have no redeemable value.

Brian

So rogdcam, which positions do you think can be outsourced of the two dozen or so FTEs?

Likewise what has been outsourced already? Payroll, accounting, tax preparation and auditing come to mind.

Well, if we assume that the services you list are already outsourced that leaves 32 FTE's with FT benefits and plans to add five more to the payroll in a time where membership posted a net loss.

As for the real estate, it costs over $500,000 a year in expenses for things ranging from groundskeeping to realtor fees to property taxes to maintenance (this alone being $95000). These expenses outstrip the rental income.

Some hard choices need to be made IMO. A complete shakeup of how things are done and is the property as-is necessary and the best way to do things.

I just took a quick glance at the APS 84 page report. I see that the word "dealer" only appears 5 times. Maybe that is what is missing in the APS equation. Dealers are they key for the hobby to thrive. No, I am not a member of the APS.

Sure, Brian, snide remarks may be unhelpful to some, but the comments here - like the title to the thread - bear little relevance to the actual document. The document describes significant expenditures to get the APS ops into a much more sustainable place in terms of staff and performance. But the fundamental issue remains membership. And while I see lots of points in the document about measurements and goals, for me, the leap towards reversing the membership slide is mostly a "let's try all this stuff" and see if it works. Pretty sure I'd not have done a lot better because to-date NO ONE has come up w a way to increased membership in "organized" philately.

Significant expenditures chasing something, new members, that they cannot prove even exist or how many "potentials" there are. And to do so they are adding at least five new positions to the existing 2.5-million-dollar personnel costs which is by far the largest expenditure line item. And this while they work out of a facility that costs $500,000/annum to run. Are you telling me that they could not have found a suitable space for far less than $40,000/month; one which doesn't have them on the hook for tenant leases and maintenance etc. Are you also telling me when you increase the number of employees from 32 to 37 (assume a personnel cost increase from 2.5 to almost 3 million dollars) that you will actually have a net increase in revenue (membership) after costs. What kind of math is that?

You cannot divorce the costs from the document's focus on increasing revenue (new members). Costs & revenue go together like wet & water and approaching a discussion of the document from one side dishonest.

You're missing the point, Bobinrye - the APS doesn't have a membership problem, it has a spending problem. Unlike government entities that use deficit spending or raise taxes to pay the bills, the APS must adapt or die. And that is precisely what members here are alluding to - spend less money!

Brian

If you look in the latest AP, Kirk Gillis has an article speaking about saving the APS, but I honestly don't know what they can do. Then, if you go to the letters page, the second letter talks about social media "feeding the hobby" and mentions a group on Facebook as an example. Except I'm in that group and half the posts are from people looking to dump common, worthless stamps for a lot of money and others are just posting pictures for social media cred. There is almost no discussion about stamps or philately at all. If you get rid of the "tell me how rich I am from these stamps I found in the gutter" talk, there isn't all that much going on. And, of course, you just have to go to the back of the magazine to see that they lost 3600 members year over year and are now almost below 20k. I'm just not seeing a lot of evidence that tons of young people are coming in to save stamp collecting. I wish they were but I don't see a reason to think that they are.

On the APS themselves, I've long known that I get almost nothing from my membership. I get a magazine that I hardly read, the "sales" side over on Hipstamp, I see no reason to focus on members because Hipstamp itself guarantees equitable sales. When is the last time anyone even looked at the circuit books? I have never cared about their expertizing or their library. I'm just shoveling $45 their way every year for virtually no return. I agree that they need to spend less money, but they need to spend money on better things and that's certainly not happening. They're still living in the 80s when they meant something.

They're not. Spending any sort of money to try to get kids into stamps or whatever is just throwing good money after bad. All these schemes to get more people into stamps are well-intentioned, but they're a complete waste of time and money. Not saying that this is how APS has been spending its time and money, but I'm getting the sense they're trying to expand the tent, to little avail.



Agreed. Sell off the Match Factory, stop playing landlord, trim the admin staff. Expertizing and library resources are genuinely useful and differentiating versus the competition (the competition defined broadly here as 'the Internet'), so concentrate scarce resources on these for the future. Move the HQ and a smaller facility to somewhere that's easier for more people to visit. Park it somewhere in the Midwest near an airport so people can actually get to it without a 3 hour drive or whatever.

Membership is falling off a cliff; the current plan to somehow not just stem the tide but reverse it is wishful thinking. We are still a long ways from reaching 'equilibrium' where the decline starts to plateau.

I'm a member of both the RPSL and the CCNY, and while neither is growing significantly, they aren't rapidly shrinking like the APS. Sure, they're smaller and cater to philately's higher end, but that's what's gonna be necessary if the APS wants to survive. There just isn't a market for an average Joe membership organization anymore; these folks find each other and connect on Facebook, Reddit, etc.

I am not a Facebook user so I cannot comment on the content or the intent of that effort. Last year the APS launched an entry point into the Stamp Community Arena. The "HUB" is open to members and non-members and to date roughly 1,300 members who have joined. The "HUB" roll-out was tied to APS efforts to revitalize the training platform as well. To this point the "HUB" has received very little promotion and new training material has yet to be added. One draw-back to the current platform is that it is not tied the primary APS website and has a unique sign-in. From the strategic plan, it appears that this issue will be linked to the rollout of an overall website upgrade which is not slated until the end of 2026.

A link to the HUB has been added on the APS homepage and I understand that a push will be made at Boston 2026 to promote sign-ups. The inclusion of new training material is still being worked and will involve support from an external group. Obviously, attracting members to the "HUB" Community would provide fertile ground for adding APS members but this has not materialized to this point.