Business Management - Marketing/Sales

WARNING! I am about to get on my soapbox! Having recently return-ed from Drupa, where the printing industry gathers for its global Olympics every four years, I had a strange sort of déjà vu (or premonition) type of experience. Remember 1984? Not the book, but the year Apple stormed the world with the breakthrough Macintosh and its PostScript printer? Desktop publishing heralded disruptive change for the printing industry and started a shift that has turned into a virtual avalanche today. The avalanche gained steam as the Internet became ubiquitous through the 1990s. While we can blame the economic downturn at the beginning of this

FOR REASONS I don’t quite understand, lists seem to be one of the hottest media items. People want a quick solution for all that ills them—losing weight, getting rich, finding happiness, etc. It seems the idea of lists is a magnet for catching our attention. When you walk past the newsstand, there is hardly a magazine cover that doesn’t have some sort of list prominently displayed. Even late night television talk show host David Letterman has his nightly lists mocking some person, idea or political thought. So now it is time for me to succumb and offer my newly minted Steven Schnoll list, which

LET ME be blunt: The people who buy variable data printing (VDP) are not buying printing. If you try to sell them printing, you will fail. You’ll fail because you have not articulated the productivity and capability of VDP in meeting business objectives in the 21st Century marketplace. The choice to buy variable data printing is a business decision made by individuals whose jobs entail making critical decisions for their companies. This precludes print buyers, production coordinators, traffic managers, etc. Instead, it includes directors and VPs of marketing, brand and division managers, senior VPs, and even CEOs, CFOs and presidents. If you do

From the buyer’s perspective, there are pros and cons in working with a mega printer (a printer that represents $500 million or more in sales volume). Print Buyers Online.com’s (www.printbuyersonline.com) major print buyer members, of whom 60% give business to mega printers, recently shared their thoughts on the subject. Here are some of the reasons why buyers consider it an advantage to work with mega printers:

“We work with one of them on a large project where they do the production and printing of a catalog. They have handled it very well and have the resources for that kind of project whereas smaller printers don’t.”

The cost of fuel is on everyone’s minds these days, and printers’ price quotes are beginning to reflect increased energy costs. Yet some print buyers seem to be in a fog about this issue. I was surprised that more print buyers didn’t respond to a recent Print Buyers Online.com Quick Poll where we asked, “Are your print suppliers adding a clause to their estimates that allows them to add a surcharge for energy and fuel costs?” Only 53 print buyers responded to the survey. Why the lack of interest in such an important topic, especially when we are each touched

SEWICKLEY, PA—July 17, 2008—The Binding Industries Association (BIA), the world’s largest association for trade binderies, loose-leaf manufacturers, and suppliers to those industries, announced the top winners of the 2008 BIA Product of Excellence Awards. The BIA and its members have taken the graphic arts industry back by force this year, and their award competition was no different. Judges had the honor of evaluating the most entries in almost a decade and had to be painstakingly critical in their evaluations. Companies submitted some of their best work for a chance to win the coveted “Product of Excellence”. Having this distinction tells your customers that you

Earlier this month in a Print Buyer Online.com Quick Poll survey, we asked our print buyer members “How messy is your desk?” It sounds like a silly question, I admit, but if you dig deeper, you will understand the importance of organization with the myriad projects a buyer handles on any given day. Here are the results of the survey:

• 13% of print buyers said, “Messy? Never! I’m super organized and my desk is almost always cleaned off by the end of the day.”

• 52% of print buyers said, “Somewhat cluttered. I vacillate between being super neat and being messy. (Perhaps

The R word is just about on everyone’s lips these days. In April, I spoke at the NPES Print Outlook 08 conference, which was attended by the top printing manufacturers in the industry. Not only did all of the analysts concur that we were either in a recession or one was imminent, but just about every session revolved around the issue. Is this being over-talked? Is all the discussion about a recession actually making one happen? Will it prove to be a self-fulfilling prophesy?

While I don’t negate the work of the experts, let’s gage the concerns

IN LATE April, Print Buyers Online.com conducted one of our popular Quick Poll surveys to see if more print buyers are pre-qualifying printers before they are able to work with them. Seventy-one major print buyers answered the following question: “Do your print suppliers have to be on an approved supplier list in order to work with your organization?” • Fifty-four percent of print buyers said, “Yes.” • Forty-six percent of print buyers said, “No.” This is in stark contrast to how printers responded to a similar question. Here are the results of a Quick Poll directed toward our print supplier

IN APRIL, I attended the Kodak Graphic Users Association (KGUA) as a member of the press. This group is probably one of the longest running user associations in our industry, previously having been associated with Creo and Scitex before all of the acquisitions. This was the first time the group invited the press, and I was pleased to be there with four other colleagues from North America. With 314 members in attendance, it was the largest gathering the group has seen—at least in the past several years, even with the economy in turmoil, Drupa around the corner and the IPA Technical Conference competing for