Don't be so quick to place the marker.

The Internet has been buzzing with reports of the demise of printing. The book industry in particular has been all aflutter about The Kindle, The Nook, and iPad. Are they right? Have electronics finally won? Is printing dead?

I am old enough to remember all of the predictions of a paperless office. Computers were supposed to eliminate the need for paper. Instead, printing flourished at a time when the era of paper was sure to be over.

It is different this time. Although I think it is too early to write off printing, I do believe that the boom we saw with the advent of computers won’t repeat. The business climate has changed, not only for now, but also for the future. There are several reasons for this:

• Direct Mail Advertising has been wounded–not fatally, not yet.

1. The first arrow to strike was postal charges. Unfortunately, the post office has a blind spot when it comes to pricing. They don’t understand that there is a direct correlation between rising prices and declining customers. The higher stamps cost, the more people turned away.  The US post office has been the greatest friend email could ever have.
2. The second arrow was the Internet. Websites provide options that ink on paper can never duplicate and at incredible prices. Electronic advertising has eliminated much of the need for media. No paper. No ink. No presses.
3. The third arrow was the recession. Companies of all sizes hunkered down behind walls of cash refusing to spend until the customers were ready to buy. The customers, of course, having lost jobs, having had salaries decreased, and in a tightening credit market find themselves unable to buy. It’s what is known as (with apologies to our neighbors south of the US) a Mexican standoff. Where were the easiest places to cut their budgets? Printing, particularly direct mail.
4. The fourth arrow is book readers. Book readers are coming on strong. I myself, love books. I have a well-stocked home library, but there are books I can get free and others that I would like to be more portable. I, the defender of printing, will get a reader for myself. Actually I already have one in my iPhone, but every book bought electronically is a book that isn’t printed.

• Form Printing and Envelopes have taken one to the chest.

1. Nearly everyone uses on-line forms to pay bills, buy something, or get credit. It’s quick, user friendly, and no one has to buy a stamp or wait several days for delivery.
2. The changes is bill paying greatly reduce the need for envelopes. From the millions upon millions of envelopes purchased by the financial industry alone to a bare trickle.

• Catalogs, Newspapers, and Magazines are dropping dead in their tracks.
  

1. Pundits warned us of the paperless office, but they didn’t tell us about the paperless home. Who could have predicted a family breakfast scene without the father figure sitting behind the daily news? Oh sure, we still have many of the same magazines, but their page counts are down to half or more. And their sell price has gone up. They raise prices and just as surely decrease buyers.
2. Catalogs are experiencing the same problems as magazines. It costs too much to mail, so they reduce their page count. The point where catalogs split from magazines is the Internet. Newspapers and magazines have served for hundreds of years as paid information sources. Information on the Internet has been free. People expect the Internet to be free and therefore they are unwilling to pay. Catalogs never had, and never will have a paid subscriber base.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Printing has changed and many of the changes are permanent. All that being said, I’m optimistic about the future. There are innovations introduced all the time to make printing, better, cheaper, and faster. The Internet for all its puffery and bluster has been proven to be less effective than direct mail as an advertising medium. Yes, you can get a great CPM (cost per thousand) but there is such a massive overwhelm that customers have learned to tune the advertising out. If you want a buyer to pay attention to your message, put something in their hands.

Regular readers may have noticed that it has been a few days since I made a post. Please accept my apologies. I do have an excuse. My solution to battling  printing economic woes is to develop additional income streams. I reason that if my livelihood isn’t dependent on just one source, should one be down, the other streams can still keep my boat afloat. The problem is that I’ve spent thirty-five years developing the print broker income stream and barely three months working on the others, and since my other income ideas still revolve around printing, there is no guarantee that there will be any better payoff–is there?

There are thousands of financial gurus out there who promise to teach one, for a fee, how to make big bucks during an economic downturn. They have the secret and it’s always easy, fast, and guaranteed. Blah, blah, blah. The way you learn how to get rich is to buy what they are selling. You give them money, and they get rich. You can’t fault them. They deliver what was promised. With your money they do demonstrate the number one wealth building principle–get someone else to give you their money.

Heck, even in my own advertisement next to this blog I promise to reveal a secret that will teach printing buyers how to save money. It isn’t really a secret at all, but it does work. All of the marketing experts I’ve read say that you have to have some sort of hook to draw people in. Can I really teach methods to cut printing expenses? Yes, I believe that I can. So please forgive me if I use a little teaser to call attention to my message. All I’m attempting to do is utilize my long career in printing to help other people. If I can teach them a few techniques to help make smarter purchasing decisions, then I’ve provided a needed service. How do I know that it is needed? I meet people all of the time who have the responsibility of handling printing for their companies and they don’t even know the difference between digital and offset printing. If you don’t even know the basics you are in over your head. How many art and marketing students graduate with an understanding of printing? Not many, I can tell you. If the schools don’t teach it, how are they to learn?

So am I trying to present myself as a printing guru that will swoop in and give you a magic elixir that will fix all of your printing woes? Oh G_d, I hope not. I’m not flashy (just ask anyone who knows me), I don’t swoop, and I don’t promise anything I can’t deliver.

I hope you readers aren’t too bored by this point. I’m going somewhere with this train of thought and it isn’t just self-promotion, although it may sound like it. President Bill Clinton was quoted as saying, “Ah feel your pain.” In his position he wasn’t sharing the pain. He was above it. I have to confess that I am sharing your pain. My business is off too. My wife and I are in a position we haven’t been in for thirty years. We are struggling to make ends meet. We share your pain.

What are we doing about it? We are trying to implement some, and I hate to trivialize it with a cliche`, out-of-the-box thinking. We are attempting to establish multiple income streams and redefining our service. Would we have done this if we weren’t faced with the current difficulties? Nope. Adversity is the mother of invention, not to take anything away from Plato who said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” And when the dust settles, what will the printing industry look like? Truly, I don’t know. I can make some guesses which may or may not be right, but I am optimistic about the future. Upheavals present challenges, challenges lead to new thinking, and new thinking leads to improvement. The printers who survive will be leaner, more efficient, and I hope, more prosperous. It’s not that that we have a choice. Innovate or die. That’s the only choice.

What is the first rule of economics? Supply and demand. The economic slowdown (I hate to say crash, I’ll leave that to the historians to decide) has affected printers, big time. Printers all over the country are shinning their spotlights, searching for hope, any hope, that this will soon be over. There are rumors of printers giving up, quitting, closing their doors, and walking away. There is gossip spreading about presses being repossessed.

Prices are being reduced to entice people to print, and often those bids are so low  there isn’t any profit. It is reasoned that it is better to keep, or get, the press running than to make payments on a piece of iron that is generating Nada, zilch, bupkis. We have an overabundance of supply and a sharply reduced demand. It’s good for the buyer, but is a killer for the printer.

hoarding assets

It makes sense. When companies are in the midst of trying to figure out how to weather the storm, they  hoard their assets. What’s more important after all, printing a new brochure, or keeping your core employees, so that when the situation improves you still have a company left? Tough decisions.

steer into the slide

Everyone in advertising and marketing is shouting as loudly as they can that it pays to advertise during a recession. Companies, they say, who keep their names in front of the public come out of recessions even stronger. That does make sense, logically that is. It is exactly what you are taught  in driver’s education, if you find that the car (the economy) is sliding, steer your car into the slide. Our natural  instinct tells us otherwise, but steering into the slide is the only way to stop it, other than wrecking it.

The problem with recessions is that they are fear based. Emotions trump logic in this case. You’ve all heard the stories of people using worthless stock certificates to paper their walls and discovered decades later that the worthless stock was now a goldmine.  How many potential millionaires tossed away their stock fortunes because of emotions?

feeding emotion

The downward slide we are in, is fed by emotion. Who would buy a new car when they don’t know if they will keep their jobs? Or if they keep their job will they have to agree to pay cuts? Who will buy a new home, go out to a nice restaurant, or invest in a struggling company?

high hopes and low expectations

I have high hopes and low expectations of the new American president. May his infectious smile reassure us that we can pull out of this nose dive. May we learn to sneer at the doomsayers, and laugh in the face of negative press. I’m doing what I can. I’m spreading the word to a larger audience about Bill Ruesch Print Broker, and hoping to infuse my company with new customers. In the meantime, we’ve cut our expenses to the bone, hedged our retirment money, and are doing our best to remember to steer into the slide.