In a recent Print Buyers Online.com quick poll, 95 print buyers spoke out clearly against hidden commissions when asked: “Is it okay for a printer to markup the price of a print job to the end customer with a ‘kick-back’ or hidden commission that will be paid to the designer/agency who created the work?” While 79% of the print buyers said “no”, one has to wonder why that percentage wasn’t 100%. Perhaps the respondents that said yes are on the receiving end of the commissions or don’t realize the implications of those actions.
Speaking for the 18% minority, one print buyer supported the acceptance
MY LAME anxiety about the time remaining on my 65-year-old actuarial table got some welcome news this week. I had checked the U.S. government mortality tables for males age 65 and learned that I’ve got another 16.3 years. I’m gonna raise some kind of hell during that .3.
Then I had a big longevity breakthrough! First, researchers announced that people who laugh frequently live seven years more than folks who rarely manage a smile.
Whew!
Good news for me! I’m a laughing fool. Constantly. In the car. In the tub. In the shower.
Mine is a rumbling, belly-shaking laugh that begins deep somewhere down around my pancreas and
Pantone Inc.’s announcement of the new PANTONE Goe Color Specification System was for some the most exciting announcement at Graph Expo 2007. The PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM (PMS) was introduced 45 years ago. Goe is the company’s first new color specification system since, and is expected to eventually be as ubiquitous. At its Graph Expo press conference, Pantone stressed that the Goe system is not intended to replace PMS, but rather is a complementary system that accommodates today’s printing equipment, processes and workflows. It was inspired to create Goe from designers’ requests for more color choices that would enable them to differentiate their work from
I study trends of major print media buyers. For the past few years, print buyers were most interested in learning about digital and variable data printing. While the interest in that topic isn’t waning, the hottest—and perhaps more ubiquitous—topic of interest is sustainability, including green printing and social responsibility. Sustainability is red hot. Everyone is talking about it.
The adoption of new technologies, workflows and solutions is typically slow, particularly on the printers’ side. Despite that history, we’re seeing evidence of very fast adoption as large corporations are moving quickly to create sustainability programs. An obvious target for these programs is print promotions.
Most
Sometimes this industry amazes me with its fast-forward technologies and new ways of doing businesses, and then sometimes. . .not so much. Some things have stayed the same for ages and you’ve got to wonder. . .why? One example is print buyers’ bid sheets. Most buying companies are working off the same bid sheet that they did 10 or 20 years ago.
It’s true that we still need to communicate all the regular specs, such as how many pieces get printed, the type of paper and ink colors. But where’s the finesse? Today we have plenty of advanced capabilities for snazzy technologies like color management
IF YOU’VE ever visited Philadelphia, you probably ate a cheese steak. Maybe you ordered your cheese steak with extra cheese, grilled onions and hot peppers. That’s Mañana Man style. I’ve had to back off on too many cheese steaks due to my waist line and worsening lactose intolerance.
If you were just visiting Philadelphia, you probably didn’t have any Tastykakes. You have to buy them at the grocery store or a minute market. Personally, I prefer the Chocolate Lovers Cupcakes. They come two in a package, and you have to open the cellophane carefully, so you don’t disrupt the thick chocolate icing on the cupcakes.
One of the fun parts of my job is to reveal what print buyers think. And sometimes their views surprise print suppliers (and therefore provide me with a modicum of job security). This was the case last week when I asked printers and print buyers separately about the value of printers’ equipment lists.
Most printers believe that, on average, print buyers are less educated than they used to be. While that may be the case, it’s also assumed that today’s print buyer doesn’t have much knowledge of print equipment or isn’t as interested in a printer’s equipment list.
According to last week’s Print Buyers
Print buyers love to complain about printing sales reps that don’t make the grade—annoying guys (and gals) who are clueless, arrogant, slimy, or are just a pain in general. On the other hand, print buyers also are the biggest supporters of worthy sales reps.
In a PBO Quick Poll, Print Buyers Online.com asked 83 top print buyers: “How much of the decision to work with a print supplier is based on the sales rep that handles your account?” Interestingly, three out of four print buyers (76%) said that “whether the sales rep is the right fit and provides value is a huge part
I’m wild about the printing industry—the advanced technologies, ever-evolving companies, incestuous relationships and the wacky people. I think it’s a great business to be in. The one thing that drives me crazy though is that we’ve developed a poor lexicon to communicate together. A lexicon is a vocabulary of agreed upon terms. An industry as rich in technology and as specific in manufacturing as ours requires its own language. Our problem is that we don’t know what to call things.
A typical example of our poor lexicon is the word offset. This word of course can refer to several different things, including a type
For years, the number one complaint that I heard from printers about print buyers is “all they care about is price.” The pervasiveness of that comment surprised me because in the extensive work that I’ve done with major print buyers over the years, a printer having the lowest price is rarely the biggest factor in supplier selection. This made me suspect that perhaps print buyers aren’t always honest with their printers about why they weren’t awarded a project. That prompted the following survey:
In a Print Buyers Online.com Quick Poll of 82 top print buyers, buyers were asked “How often, if ever, do you
