Very Cautiously Optimistic?

It’s Thanksgiving, and Poor Richard is thankful for a day off. It’s been over a month since I’ve written here. And it’s been a busy span of time. Poor Richard is very thankful for that and for the good customers who have provided work for all of us at the printshop behind the red awnings on Poplar Street (name withheld to protect the very delicate sensibilities of the franchise).

My fingers would be crossed if I had time to cross them.  I’m thankful that our business has been able to survive through this so far, and if business doesn’t tank again in the first months of 2010, we’ll probably pull through OK. OK doesn’t mean unscathed, though. We’re operating with fewer employees that we had when the company first opened in 1998. There is little time to work on the business for working in the business. Because our bank essentially bailed out on us early in the year, there is no money for investment in new technology or new talent. Assuming that the recovery has begun, it’s still going to take a long while to make up the lost ground of the last 18 months.

Last week, Mr. Obama’s administration stealthily held a small business forum to discuss “small business financing issues.”  The forum was announced to the public on November 16, two days prior to the date of the session and received resounding condemnation from at least one group (American Small Business League) representing small business who were neither notified of the event nor invited to attend.  Hosted by Treasury Secretary Geithner, the forum did not generate much excitement or much in the way of reporting after the fact.

That’s because nothing happened. Poor Richard managed to find the agenda for the meeting on the Treasury Department web site.  There’s nothing new there. The efforts of the SBA to open up credit for small business have been lacking and the banks have not been cooperative.  A change in the tax code to allow a 5 year carryback of losses may inject some cash into small businesses next year; but for those who have already failed it is too little, too late. At least 7 small business owners (bios listed on the Treasury site) were invited to the forum and the transcript of Secretary Geithner’s remarks contained several weighty statements, like the following:

“We need banks to be working with us, not against recovery.”

Little was reported in the press or on the internet from the day-long forum. According to a New York Times blog, most of the discussion centered on the needs of banks and their reluctance to get involved with small business.  They also stated that the Treasury Secretary and the SBA Administrator took careful notes. A report from Small Business Trends concluded that, “many lenders contend that small-business loans are too time-consuming and too small to be worth their while.” Hmmm . . .

The small business sector has long been our country’s engine for job growth and for innovation. Guess what? Small businesses are where large businesses come from. Hewlett-Packard started in a Palo Alto, CA garage. Ford Motor Company was launched in a converted wagon shop with a $31,000 investment.  In typical years, small businesses create over 50% of the new jobs in our economy.  In years like the last one, we try to preserve jobs for the folks who depend on us. The economic engine has choked down.

Nonetheless, small business owners are a fairly optimistic group. We have to be. None of us  are really looking for a bailout. Nor do we place a lot of trust in the machinations of government. Our businesses are made or broken by the decisions we make and with the risk we assume.  We have to be optimistic, tenacious, and now cautious. Many of us will come out of this with a healthy distrust and dislike of the banks who were anxious to provide funding for growth in good times but not so willing to help us survive when times got tough.  We will be less inclined to assume debt to finance growth and we will be careful about how debt is assumed.  Many of us will need to repay debt generated during the recession before we expand again.  It may take some time for small businesses to re-start the engines that produce growth and new jobs.

I suppose that I shouldn’t find the administration’s dispassion toward the small business sector particularly surprising. It makes as much sense as taking over GM with the stated goal of restructuring the  company to produce economical and fuel efficient vehicles and then promptly shuttering the Saturn division (which made economical and fuel efficient vehicles). But perhaps the worst really is over and we’ll make it on our own.

Maybe I should find time to cross my fingers.

The View from My Window

The view from my window is sometimes entertaining and sometimes thought provoking. Here’s what I see when I look out from under the red awnings at the printshop on Poplar Street (brand name omitted to protect the delicate sensibilities of the franchise):

The Poplar Street Park Congregation

At Gralpharaphics, we call them the Poplar Park Congregation. Their membership ebbs and flows with the weather and the economy. Lately, it’s been growing. It’s not that Poor Richard really minds the congregation that much most of the time.  It’s a public park and they have a right to be there. And they’ve been there or somewhere else downtown for a long time. My dad, who has worked in downtown Macon for over 70 years, knows many of them by name. They are loud, profane, occasionally drunken, and mostly harmless to others; if not to themselves.

There is an occasional preacher. There are frequent arguments and brief fistfights. If an event is upcoming, the Macon Police Department will clear them out for a day or so.  When the event is over, they come back. My customers have learned to always park on our side of the street to avoid jeers, comments, and requests for money. The money is used to buy a beverages in brown paper sacks from the Poplar Mart, the foodstore on the other side of the street that sells beer by the bottle.

We’ve had occasional fun with the congregation. There was the time when beautiful wife was given plug-in air fresheners by a friend who works at a bath boutique in trendy North Macon (where the congregants dare not tread).  Thinking to improve the atmosphere at the printshop, beautiful wife plugged in one of her new acquisitions in the lobby of the printshop during a brief Saturday afternoon visit. What she didn’t know was that there was a reason the trendy boutique had decided to dispose of the air fresheners at a deep discount. It was the fragrance–“Aroma de French Bordello.”

None of the printshop crew had ever worked in a bordello and they found the perfumed aroma somewhat strong for their tastes. With burning eyes, they unplugged the air freshener and transferred it to an outlet in the middle of Poplar Street Park just as the congregation began to arrive for the day.  It made for an entertaining morning as we watched the members of the congregation try to identify the source of the noxious odor.  One of them finally noticed the plug-in on the column in the middle of the park, and on hands and knees stuck his nose directly above the source of the smell and began to sneeze. The air freshener was removed by one of his fellow congregants, pocketed presumably to take to a location where Aroma de French Bordello would be better appreciated.

Now to the thought provoking part. The Poplar Street Congregation is indicative of a problem that is not getting any better. Macon, our lovely city, didn’t fare too well in the press last week. Forbes magazine published a top 10 article and we made #7. We’re #7 in the list of the top 10 most impoverished metro areas in the nation. That’s not a statistic that does much for civic pride. For the purposes of this short blog entry, it’s not worthwhile to go into the details of the problem . . . high unemployment, low incomes, poor education, etc. Fill in the blanks or read the Forbes article.

The causes of the problem are tough to tackle. The symptoms are visible from my window – the Poplar Street Congregation is a segment of the population that doesn’t even fall into the ranks of the unemployed. They haven’t been employed and they’re not looking for work. Goodwill, the agency whose motto is “Building Lives, Families and Communities – One Job at a Time,” used to operate the store behind the congregants. It shut down three months ago.

It seems that the Macon of my lifetime has always been a town just on the edge of getting it together. There was a time in the 1960s and 70s when we were a music mecca for Soul musicians and Southern Rock bands. We have a great university (Mercer) in town, plus Wesleyan College and Macon State.  The cultural scene is really pretty amazing. As is the case in many small cities, real estate and development interests have been allowed to run unchecked, leaving areas of abandoned and decaying buildings in their wake. Before the Decession, Poor Richard was convinced that downtown was on the verge of a renaissance and that may yet be the case. There are still signs of life and a great organization (Newtown Macon) that is devoted to the restoration of the city center. But the view from my window is troublesome today.

It seems that because the causes of the problems are tough to tackle, we don’t try. It’s easier to argue, to blame political incompetence and the inability to make rational decisions on race, to pretend that North Macon is part of another city entirely, to put personal aggrandizement ahead of the best interests of the community. Or perhaps it’s easier to pretend that there are no problems, that it’s all a bed of roses. Poor Richard is  afraid that the smell is more like french bordello air freshener than roses.

The Forbes article indicates where we are as a community. It is a warning of where we might wind up. It’s time to get behind the positive efforts to change Macon’s  direction. The list is long:  improving public schools, keeping the museum district intact, developing the College Hill Corridor, consolidating the City and County governments, reducing the number and improving the quality of our city and county representatives. It’s not impossible, though. Poor Richard is an optimist -  I’m sure that there are many like me who don’t want any part of politics, but will be glad to pitch in and help if we can all work together.

I’d like to still be looking out of my downtown window in a couple of years, and I’d like to see a different scene. Instead of the Poplar Street congregation, I’d like to see shoppers and tourists enjoying the park with open stores and businesses behind them that employ people.  Instead of the Poplar Mart selling beer, there will be a new grocery store to serve all of the folks who are moving downtown. Grant’s Lounge will be open every night, featuring the best Indie bands, who all want to play in Macon. It could happen, couldn’t it?

Re-inventeration

Square-wheeled trike. Thanks to Jeff Atwood at www.codinghorror.com.

If one happens to be a small business owner, especially if one happens to be the owner of a local printing company, the idea of re-inventing one’s business is probably pretty far up on the agenda these days. This is primarily because much of the business we all once enjoyed has suddenly just disappeared, as if by magic; or possibly due to the re-inventing of a much less cooperative economy.

Re-inventeration, a new word which Poor Richard thinks he has just coined, is the process of re-inventing something.  Of course, the whole concept is preposterous.  If something is invented the first time, does it really make any sense to try to re-invent it?

And it’s complicated. Re-inventeration is frought with Catch-22 scenarios. For those who have not read Joseph Heller’s famous book, the Catch-22 was the ultimate bureaucratic boondoggle.  Catch-22 (the book) told the story of Yossarian, a WWII B-25 bombardier and his squadron, as they were forced to fly increasing numbers of bombing runs over Italy.  The squadron commander, Major Major, literally embodied the concept of Catch-22. It was possible to schedule an appointment with Major Major at any time; however, one could only actually see Major Major if he was not in.

Similarly, if one was deemed insane, it was possible to get discharged from the Air Corps. Because Yossarian’s desire for discharge was deemed very sane, his insane behavior was considered by his superiors as a natural expression of his  true sanity. Catch 22.

Not unlike Yossarian, Poor Richard is struggling with the Catch-22s of the re-inventeration process at his downtown Macon Gralpharaphics shop (name carefully disguised to protect the sensibilities of the franchise). The first Catch-22 is simply time.  Business is down, we’ve cut back on staff, and more time is spent working in the business than on the business.  Without more time to work on the business, we’ll never be able to grow the business back to a point where more folks can be hired to work in the business; relieving the requirement for the owner to fold brochures until 2 am and allowing him to use his brain once again.

The next and more worrisome set of  Catch(es)-22 have to do with scope, the literal definition of the business. Behind the red awnings on Poplar Street, we’re taking jobs that we probably wouldn’t have looked at a couple of years ago.  A lot of these are small and risky.  The risk is that the expense in time and effort to produce the small jobs will exceed the revenue that results. Catch 22. The potential benefit is a new customer who might actually bring us a profitable job one day. Poor Richard is not sure how this one is playing out.

The low hanging fruit has been picked. We’ve responded to economic pressure on mainstay product lines by adding more products. In our case, we’ve added wide format printing and reprographics to subsidize some of the losses in conventional offset printing.   These were natural additions – similar products and services to what we were already doing. They didn’t disrupt the production process much and they added little in the way of expense. Unfortunately, they did not add enough revenue to compensate for the decline in conventional printing; and these product lines are also facing economic and competitive pressures. Catch 22.

So what’s the next step? Poor Richard has written before (with misgivings) about the current buzz-phrase in the printing industry. The latest rage is for printing companies to become marketing service providers. (See Poor Richard’s post Measuring Value). Our little company  is moving in this direction slowly but steadily, unsure of all of the implications, but with a sense that it is inevitable – there just aren’t many other areas of opportunity left.

Becoming a marketing service provider is full of Catch(es)-22. First, the whole notion takes us out of the realm of producing tangible products and into the area of shaping content. We’re no longer working with machinery that prints, cuts or folds stuff; but rather with electronic means of communication and the disciplines that go along with them – CSS, XHTML, Purls and a bunch of other acronyms. The competitive cost of entry into this business is low relative to the cost of a new printing press, which means that the pressure to keep ahead of the technology curve will be steep. Worse, the marketing service provider notion requires a new skill set that takes time to learn.  In our case, that’s the owner’s time that is in very short supply. Catch 22.

Second, the whole idea of shaping content laps over into creating content.  Printing companies are pretty good at shaping. We do layout work, color correct photos, even occasionally light editing for our customers. This is different from creating the content, an area we have generally avoided because of time limitations and a focus on keeping the machines running.

It’s just a little too hopeful to think that we might make money only by implementing marketing services — integrated direct mail and e-mail campaigns, for example. Most of our customers simply lack the time and resources to develop the content for this kind of effort, so it appears inevitable that we will be required to do some development work for them if we want to sell the services.

Hopefully we can do this without stepping on the toes of our agency customers and triggering yet another Catch 22. Ideally, the agencies might find it helpful to use our shop to implement integrated direct mail and internet campaigns for their larger customers. Our challenge will be keeping the focus on implementation (and measurement) of specific marketing services without getting customers confused about what we can do (and want to do).

Creating content, even on a limited basis, is a big step for a small printing company; but it is still a lot different from the conceptual work that our agency customers do. We can make that statement, but will our customers understand it?  Another Catch-22.

Poor Richard supposes that re-inventeration, like change, is necessary and unavoidable; but he hopes he’s not re-inventing a square-wheeled tricycle.

PostalCare Reform

Poor Richard indulges in anachronism. He still reads newspapers.  You may remember them, they’re printed with ink on cheap paper. People used to take them on buses and subway cars to annoy others. They could be rolled up to train dogs, much to the dismay of the paper boys (another anachronism).  What Poor Richard has been reading lately is a lot of conjecture about what a government sponsored health care system would be like and how it might be administered.

There seems to be a great deal of skepticism amongst a very vocal segment of the population  regarding the capability of the U.S. government to administer a single payer system.  Our intrepid and career-oriented legislators have euphemistically entitled this version of a health care fix “the public option,” with the inference that if the private option currently in existence is irrevocably broken, the public option that they propose can’t be too much worse.

Poor Richard finds that comforting, I think.  But he doesn’t understand the reticence to create another multi-trillion dollar bureaucracy to administer health care.  After all, it’s only money (we can always print more) and the U.S. government is so good at bureaucracy.

Mailman with brains

And I am simply astounded that none of our clever would-be statesmen have grasped the phenomenal opportunity to re-employ a failing public bureaucracy that is dangling right before their eyes. In past blog posts, Poor Richard has written about the tribulations of the U.S. Postal Service (See Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor Dead Economy). After years of study led them to the realization that people don’t want to mail anything anymore, the USPS has decided to let some people go.  Fortuitously, they are releasing an army of career bureaucratic types at the exact time these folks are needed . . . to administer the new health care system!

Downsized postal workers are eminently qualified to run the new health care system.  Never mind that most of them don’t know anything about biology, physiology and the like. They all know how to follow the regulations. There is no way that the new regulations for a national health insurance program could be more cryptic or nonsensical than USPS regs. It’s a natural fit . . . today a mailman, tomorrow a claims agent or even an underwriter!

Just consider the benefits:

• The postal workers are already on the government payroll.  There’s no need to re-test them for incompetence.
• Instead of hundreds of thousands of early retired postal workers placing a burden on the USPS retirement system, they could be gainfully employed spending government money and determining whether Aunt Sally really needs a new kidney.
• There would be no concerns about health care delivery under the new system. USPS employees are really good at delivery.
• If the regulations for the “public option” don’t make sense, it won’t be an obstacle to the re-employed postal workers. They’re used to dealing with irrational regulations and have no compunctions about explaining nonsense to their customers. It’ll be even easier if they’re the only game in town!

Poor Richard suggests that we call the new system PostalCare, in recognition that the new bureaucracy will probably benefit the newly re-employed postal workers more than the rest of society.  Poor Richard also agrees with President Obama that Congress should act in great haste . . . we wouldn’t want this wonderful opportunity to slip away!

My apologies to our friends at the postal service.  This one was just too good to pass up.  Life is grand, isn’t it?

Direct Mail and the Internet

So it’s no great mystery why mail volume, including direct mail (advertising) volume is down and the USPS is in a bind. In the last post Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor Dead Economy, we went over some of the dismal numbers that the USPS has “posted” in recent months. The financial strain of the recession has accelerated the move of content online, where the costs are less. Printers and the USPS are suffering.

So, is there still a place for printed direct mail in the mix? Let’s turn to the USPS again.  In a surprisingly insightful brief entitled Mail and the Internet, the postal service presents a convincing case for a combination of print mail and online advertising. Here’s the thrust of the argument:

In fact, recent studies by the U.S. Postal Service and a number of independent research groups found that consumers — even heavy Internet users — continue to view mail as a highly relevant and significant part of their lives. It provides a physical and tangible quality consumers find lacking in their electronic communications. But that’s not all. The studies also showed that mail, working side by side with digital media, can have a substantial impact on the use of commercial Web sites.

Much of the specific content of the brief deals with the integration of email, online storefronts and conventional catalogues, but the USPS makes a couple of key points regarding the combination of conventional mail and email in the marketing mix:

1. While email has outpaced mail as the primary form of (written) personal communications, readers are much more likely to “trash” marketing emails than conventional mail pieces. People still enjoy opening the mail.  Junk email is a nuisance.
2. Conventional mail is a very effective way to get permission to send an email.  In other words, direct mail is a great way to get potential customers to subscribe to emailed news briefs or promotions.

From here, it’s tempting take on the ROI argument and search out some spurious data to try and prove that the return on investment for conventional direct mail is actually higher than the ROI for an email campaign.  Poor Richard thinks that’s a worthless effort, but can state uncategorically that the ROI for a  well-conceived direct mail or email campaign will always be higher than the return for a poorly implemented campaign of either type.

Nor is it useful to argue that direct mail and email are apples and oranges. They’re more like white grapes and peach . . . the juice goes together really well. And there is great potential to combine conventional mail, email and other online communications to improve the total ROI for the combined efforts. Conventional direct mail combined with personalized URLs (PURLs) provide a great method of sorting through an inexpensive direct mail list for those who are really interested in a product or service.  Respondents sign on to a landing page, where they can ask for direct contact or for more information. They might also be asked if they’d like to subscribe to an e-newsletter or for periodic special offers.

The net result is that more money and attention are focused on those who are most interested (and most likely to buy something) and less on those who aren’t interested. Even more better, you get to measure. While it is possible to partially measure response from conventional mail campaigns with BRMs, coupons or a tracked phone number, the integrated print and email campaign generates better measurable data from the landing page . . . including names and addresses of those who respond. And if they subscribe to an e-news brief or some other such offering, they’re actually asking you to stay in touch.

Back to the USPS and the printing business. Regardless of the trends, there will remain a very real need for the postal service in the foreseeable future. While it’s easy to communicate online, you need a Star Trek transporter to actually send stuff through cyberspace. Similarly, the tangibility and portability (and disposability) of print gives it an advantage over electronic media in many situations. I haven’t seen them passing out Kindle’s at the theatre, yet.

Poor Richard can’t speak for the future of the postal service, but the the technology to produce and manage integrated electronic and print communications is very available. We’re even playing with it at Gralpharaphics (name changed to protect the innocence of the franchise). Not to say that the change isn’t painful.  It was certainly easier for printers when print was king. But change is inevitable . . . and Poor Richard isn’t really ready to become a dinosaur yet.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor dead economy?

Poor Richard thought it was only printers that had it bad. It had been a while since I had visited our local BMEU (Bulk Mail Entry Unit). The printshop next to Grant’s Lounge (name withheld to protect the sensibilities of the franchise) had a mailing to go out Friday, and no one else was available, so I loaded up the Suburban and headed for the post office.

First, let me say that the people we work at the Macon BMEU are nice folks. Ken, the boss, helped me get started in mailing several years ago.  I called him looking for information and he actually came out to the shop and spent a couple of hours going through the regulations. Randy, Charlotte, Gary and John are always helpful and friendly.  They play by the rules and let us know when we screw up, but they have always been patient and very good to work with.

This part of the post office (the BMEU) used to bustle with activity.  On any given day, There would be several mailers there with at least one who had made a royal mess of a mailing job.  One of the folks mentioned above would be patiently explaining the rules, even if the customer was irate. There is a Merlin machine behind the counter that checks barcodes and machinability. In days past, this machine was generally running. Other postal folks were continually going in and out behind the counter doing the things that postal folks do.

Yesterday’s scene was quite different. Only Ken and Charlotte were there and there was no activity at all. The first words from Charlotte’s mouth were, “This is my last week. I’m taking early retirement.”

And apparently she’s not the only one. The USPS has offered its employees an early opt-out program in recognition of the changes in their business. And the mail business has changed indeed.  The official statement from USPS on the Voluntary Early Retirement (VER) program reads like this:

Automation and technological advances coupled with mail volume reductions has the Postal Service continuing to look for ways to voluntarily reduce its workforce while maintaining excellent customer service.

Source: Liteblue.usps.gov

Dear readers, I hope you don’t think it inappropriate for Poor Richard to read a bit between the lines and hazard some not so bold inferences.

First, the reduction in mail volume is easy to document.  First Class mail peaked in 2001 and (with one year’s exception) has been declining steadily ever since. In FY 2008, the USPS lost $2.8 billion (yep, billion) on it’s operations and total mail volume decreased by 4.5% from the previous fiscal year. It’s a no brainer . . . email continues to replace mail.

The recession has impacted direct mail in the same way that printing has been affected. Direct mail is an easy target for businesses cutting expense. Standard mail piece volume for FY09 was down almost 20% from the same time period in FY08. (Source USPS Financials).

Staunching the flow of red ink seems to be more important to USPS than excellent customer service, though. It seems obvious that USPS is moving toward a much less customer-friendly environment. Bulk mail facilities in smaller communities have already been shuttered with customers told to carry their mailings to centralized units in larger communities.

The postal service is also quickly heading towards enforced online entry of mailings for mail service providers. At this point, the online service (PostalOne) is kind of clunky and complicated. That’s no big surprise. The problem, though,  is that all of the customer-friendly postal employees are taking early retirement. There’s no one to explain the new systems.

Finally, transferring costs to the customer may be exacerbating the problem. Poor Richard thinks that it started with rubber bands. Only a year or so ago, the bulk mail offices actually supplied rubber bands to their mailers for use in packaging standard mail. When mailers were told that there would be no more free rubber bands, most of us just shrugged our shoulders and passed that little cost on to our customers. Since then, there have been a lot of incremental cost increases that we’ve had to pass along. For example, the USPS has added a move update requirement that has increased the cost of list processing. They’re also charging a small fortune for address corrected pieces that are returned to the mailer.

Postal rates and costs continue to increase while the perceived cost of electronic communication is low.  Even when the potential impact of mail can be very positive (high ROI), it is perceived as an expensive way to market.   Simply put, the cost to mail has gone up while the perceived value of mail compared to the alternatives has diminished.

This is not a winning scenario for the USPS . . . and it does explain the drastic changes at the Post Office.

So we have to ask the question. Is printed mail, especially direct mail, still a worthwhile endeavor? Is there a place in the new economy for the US Postal Service?

NEXT POST – Direct Mail and the Internet

Inevitable

When we opened our Gralpharaphics (name altered to protect the sensibilities of the franchise) shop in 1998, one of the thoughts that passed fleetingly through Poor Richard’s feeble brain was that this was an industry that was “WalMart-proof.” Printing is just too technical and complex, he thought. They’d never want to get in this business. Wrong!

Last week, WalMart and PNI Digital Media of Canada announced a partnership that will feature printed products and ad specialties for small business as part of WalMart’s Online Photo Centre. The new product features will be rolled out in Canada only . . .for now. See the GraphicArts Online Press Release.

Being of a curious nature, Poor Richard had to check out the site. At first, I was slightly encouraged.  The site is template driven, much like VistaPrint and the other online megaprinters. Business cards are prominently featured with a special offer at $49.99 for 500.  This is no great deal, especially after you add shipping, lead times and PITA factor. Then I dug into the details, checking the other items listed. Uh oh . . . WalMart’s rolling back prices, again. Get your printing here for cheap. Factor in the Canadian exchange rate ($1.10 Canadian to $1 US) and it’s really ridiculous.

Poor Richard has railed against WalMart before (see Why We Need Small Business Part 1 and Part 2). The company has a ruthless history when it comes to small business, driving out local businesses with low prices to gain dominance in every market they enter. Worse yet, WalMart has become part of the American ethos . . . we’re so addicted to the perception of cheap that Joe Consumer is overjoyed when the opening of a new Super WalMart is announced for his community. Poor Richard thinks that it’s tantamount to issuing an invitation to the Visigoths to vacation in Rome or encouraging the high school rake to have his way with your teenage daughter. But perhaps I’m indulging in hyperbole.

I feel very secure that those who shop for printing at WalMart will get the value that they pay for and that they deserve. I am very curious as to how the mega retailer will implement solutions at their customer service counters to the problems that are so peculiar to printing.  Will Joe Consumer, who ordered blue printing and received purple, really be able to get satisfaction from Louise with her bouffant hairdo and cat’s eye glasses? And will he be willing to wait in line for 30 minutes before he finds out that she’s colorblind?

It’s inevitable, and it is unfortunate that small businesses, especially the new ones that are forming in this poor economy, will gravitate toward WalMart’s print services. It may not occur to many of them to look for another small business that might actually become a valuable partner. They may or may not learn the value of relationships in their community, but it is equally inevitable that they will come to resent the mega businesses like WalMart that sap the potential from every market they enter.

Thanks to whoever created the evil Walmart greeter. It’s floating around all over the web and I love it.

OK, Let’s see if we can get this straight

“My sorority is sponsoring a beauty pageant,” says the well spoken young lady at the counter, “we’d like you to do the program for us.”

“And we’d love to do the program,” says Poor Richard, because this is exactly the kind of job that the printshop behind the red awnings (Gralpharaphics . . . use of real name discouraged by the franchise) does really well.

“Can you give me an idea of how much it will cost?” asks the young lady.

It’s a very reasonable question. We discuss paper, whether the booklet will be in color or in black and white, and who will be doing the layout. Everything’s coming together smoothly until Poor Richard asks the devastating question, “and approximately how many pages will it have?”

The sorority president opens her mouth and all of a sudden she’s speaking Chinese and Poor Richard is speaking Latin! Neither of us understand the other. Finally in exasperation, she holds up her fingers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . counts Poor Richard.

“Es tut mir leid, aber Bücher mit sieben Seiten kommen nicht,” exclaims Poor Richard. Booklets don’t come with seven pages (or if they do, p. 8 is blank).

“Jeg er redd JEG ikke gjør det oppfatte i det hele tatt,” responds the young lady in Norwegian. She doesn’t understand at all.

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” I ask with a smile on my face.

It happens all the time. A customer is counting sheets and I’m counting pages. I get 16 and she gets 4. Let’s see if we can get this straight.  We’re going to look at a quickly designed sheet with four pages on it.

Single Page

So, here’s Page 1. We’re going to assume that the finished size of our little folding document is the size of a standard sheet of paper, 8 1/2 x 11 inches.  That means that a page measures 8 1/2 x 11 inches.

A page is printed on one side and in many (but not all) publications is assigned a number.  Page numbers are very convenient if you wish to use a table of contents or list topics in an index at the back of a book.  They’re also extremely helpful to the folks who operate the bindery equipment that puts booklets together. It’s their responsibility to make sure that Page 5 follows Page 4 and is succeeded by Page 6.

Our illustration uses only one sheet, but the same principles follow in a larger booklet, which by definition has more 8 pages/2 sheets or more. Typically, a booklet is stapled or saddle stitched in the center. Because there are four pages to a sheet and all of the sheets collate (nest) together and are folded to make a booklet, this means that arranging the pages on the sheets is an art unto itself. This arrangement is called imposition. The sheet size for an 8 page booklet with a finished size of 8 1/2 x 11 is 11 x 17. Two pages are positioned side by side on each side of each sheet. 4 pages are positioned on each sheet (2 to a side). In an 8 page booklet, page 1 and page 8 would be positioned on the same side of the same sheet. Page 1 is the front page and page 8 is the last. On the inside of the sheet would be pages 2 and 7. This arrangement is called a printer’s spread and is probably a little further on up the road than we want to go in this post.

Inside Spread/Reader's Spread

So, back to our illustration. Here are pages 2 and 3, which take up the inside of the sheet.  In a booklet, these would be the center spread and because the pages are in order, the spread is called a reader’s spread. In a booklet with more than one sheet, the pages in a reader’s spread would actually lie on different sheets. The center spread always contains two sequential pages on the same side of one sheet. This is a good thing to know for designers, because it’s always safe to place an image across the pages on the center spread.  It might not work so well on other pages where the alignment of the sheets may not be exact. Confused yet?

OK, two pages on one side of a sheet. Now let’s look at the other side of the sheet.

Outside Pages/Printers Spread

You’ve seen Page one earlier in this post. In our example, page one is backed by Page 2 and Page 4 is backed by Page 3. Four pages to a sheet.  In a booklet, fronts and backs will always be sequential, but left and right facing pages (on the same side of the sheet) will only be sequential on the center spread. Now you understand why the sorority president was speaking Norwegian.

Here’s the good news . . . you don’t have to worry about imposition. Deliver your booklet to your printer in page order (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and let them worry about setting it up for print.  We’ve done it before and we’ll usually get it right.

Here’s what you should remember from all of this . . .

• A page is what you read. One side finished size. One half of one side of a sheet.
• 4 pages to a sheet in a booklet
• Tell your printer how many pages, not how many sheets.
• Use your fingers and get an interpreter if necessary.

Finally, page numbers are good. When you’re thoroughly confused you can just check the page numbers to find out if everything is in order. Verstanden?

Isn’t life grand?

Insincere apologies to Brian, Todd and the memory of Alfalfa.

Death of the Salesman?

These days, Poor Richard is getting older faster. I was young until I was 40, zoomed through middle age in a short 10 years and will be 50 this year. It’s tempting to say that 50 sure seems old to my 30 year old mind, but I’m afraid that the brain is aging, too.  Fer’ instance, there was a time when I could keep up with everything going on in the digital world . . . the latest microprocessors, the emergence of the internet, graphic and web design software and tools and all of the cool “killer apps.” That’s all left me in the dust. (Now I have to call my friend Mark Strozier at  The Brainstorm Lab, who has given up sleeping, but still knows everything).

But that’s not what this post is all about. I’ve written before about the massive changes that this recession is producing in the printing industry (see Poor Richard’s post Obsolete). Budgetary pressures have accelerated the transition of the publication of content from paper to the internet, and the rapid change is difficult for printers to cope with. Yesterday, I came across a discussion on Linked In that presents another dimension both to the difficulties that printers are facing and to the age and perspective gap that is becoming increasingly obvious to Poor Richard.

The discussion was posted by Jim Gross, who is an Account Executive Consultant at Image Printing Solutions in LA.  I’ll quote the post verbatim, since I’m not sure that a link will work:

Death of the Salesman – The Internet versus the human element.

The play “Death of a Salesman” tells of the tragic downfall of Will Loman. Loman’s flaw comes down to a lack of self-knowledge and obsession of greatness without adapting to change.

Today, the salesman’s world is rapidly changing to internet services so your clients can search for best prices or gather information for purchasing decisions. One main reason is avoiding the interaction with the dreaded salesman. Are you and your industry next? When is the last time you used a travel agent?

It has become an acceptable practice to purchase vacations, computers, cars, clothing, insurance, mortgages and other services daily with our computers.

The printing world is continually moving toward this trend with end-users reaping the benefits of faster service and lower prices. Manufactures, distributors and brokers are fighting to keep business at a profitable margin. The internet is making our industry into a commodity and the expertise of the salesman has been reduced to, “what is your best price”.

23 years ago a sales trainer at Uarco named Larry Dilly said there are only 3 things you need to know about the printing industry, “BETTER, CHEAPER, FASTER”. These words hold true today.

What is next for the print salesman? Promoting clients to go to your website for pricing and uploading artwork? If yes, then you will be the next Willy Loman.

The salesman of the future must be able to sell programs to companies and be viewed as a consultant with value while embracing the better, cheaper, faster of internet capabilities.

We are in an industry where both right and left brains must function equally. For printing is where conceptual ideas are turned over to mechanical engineering that produce works of art.

Poor Richard finds Jim’s message disturbing, a little confusing, and definitely thought provoking. A few observations:

• In a pure commodity market, “better, cheaper, faster” trumps everything else. My experience is that very few products are purely commodities, regardless of the desire of some of those who purchase to make them so. Even lumber, which is defined as a commodity, has product attributes that are deemed better or worse by the buyer and other transactional attributes (delivery, for instance) which vary seller by seller.  With printing, each product is different. And even if the process of producing a piece may be similar from one provider to the next, quality and service aspects may vary widely. The low cost producer may not be able to produce “better” or “faster.”
• Selling printing, at least for small and medium printers, has always required a consultative approach. Even in the days when it was given that all companies used printing, buyers varied in their knowledge of and comfort with the process. Today, it is rare that we deal with a professional “print buyer.” Most of our customers have to deal with printing only once or twice a year. They need all kinds of help to get their projects done. This is an opportunity for a proactive and creative salesperson.
• Poor Richard could maintain that printing was not conducive to sale from Internet providers and that the implied comparison of our industry with the travel industry  is invalid, but this would only be a denial of reality. Just as Orbitz and Travelocity have taken a large bite from the business once held by local travel agents, so the gang run printers and VistaPrints of the web have appropriated business that once was the domain of the local printer.  Just as travel agencies have specialized in services and capabilities that are not easily replicated by the internet travel sites, so must printers do the same.

Defining and explaining the value that his company provides is and always has been the mission of a good salesman. Nonetheless, the comparison to Willy Loman is troubling. Poor Richard has read and seen Arthur Miller’s drama. While Loman was essentially overcome by his own ego and delusions of grandeur, at the core he thought he was right. The inability to recognize reality was at the root of his problems. His refusal to act on the basis of reality ultimately did him in.

It’s scary to think about Willy Loman when you’re approaching 50, especially when the world is changing so rapidly. I am hanging on to the hope that there is value to the human element and to the aspects of my business which can’t be commoditized. At the same time, it is folly not to look for opportunities amidst the change; essentially new ways to provide products and service that will be assigned a value by our customers.

Willy Loman?  Naaah . . . Mark, can I borrow your energy pills?

Squelched

So maybe I’ve crossed the line. I never intended this blog to belittle or to  be demeaning and certainly not to frighten off a customer who might consider coming into our printshop. The phone call I received from the franchise just a little over a week ago led me to believe that I may have done all three. It was from the new marketing director, a person I had never encountered before. She began by asking questions about the blog . . . what was it’s purpose?

I explained that it was mostly for fun, partially therapy, and that I occasionally write about something that is substantively related to printing.  The marketing director didn’t beat around the bush, but explained that the franchise was concerned with a negative tone toward customers and about the adverse impact it might have on their brand. She also stated that the franchise would do whatever was necessary to protect their brand. I understood that part clearly.

We didn’t argue. I did ask if she had read the blog and didn’t receive an answer that indicated she was very familiar with it. Mostly I listened and ultimately concluded that the best way to make sure that the franchise was not threatened was simply not to ever mention them in my blog again. This is admittedly problematic, since our printshop is usually recognized by the franchise moniker (begins with A, 2 syllables, second syllable is “graphics”), but I guess I’ll have to live with it.

Mind you, it did occur to me that marketing directors were supposed to be about marketing their business, not squelching such efforts. It also occurred to me (and I even mentioned this to the nice lady) that whatever recognition the brand name has in Middle Georgia is largely due to the efforts of my company.  That’s probably all irrelevant, though.  Besides,  the franchise has never really been very good at marketing.  Operations, yes . . . marketing, no.

So, I have a quandary and a conundrum. How can I continue to blog about my printshop without mentioning the name? I guess it will just have to be a game.  While I won’t mentioned the name A_____G______s any more, many of you will know where I work. Poor Richard might also mention the printshop behind the red awnings on Poplar Street. Or perhaps we’ll take a lead from the artist formerly known as Prince and just use some mysterious glyphs, like this, Ω&♣ζ±. Or maybe we’ll take a cue from Scooby Doo and call it GralphaRaphics.

I hope that many of you will continue to frequent Ω&♣ζ± and visit us at the place with a more recognizable name on the red awnings. To anyone who has been offended, I do offer my sincere apologies; and also the consolation that it probably wasn’t you that you thought you were reading about.  To my good customers, I offer continued thanks and the promise that we really, really do appreciate the business you do with us.

Finally, Poor Richard recommends a strong dose of humor to all of those who occasionally read these paragraphs. I really hope that you don’t take it all too seriously . . . I surely don’t.

Signing off from the printshop next to Grant’s Lounge in lovely downtown Macon!

–Poor Richard