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  • Where Are The Young Guns in Quick Printing?
    By John Giles - Thursday April 28, 2011
    Industry consultant John Stewart recently released the 2011-2012 Quick Printing Industry Pricing Study. The document is packed with interesting pricing information, but to me one of the most striking observations was not in pricing, but in the Basic Company Data section. According to the report, the average age of the 350 printers participating in the report was 55 years old. The average age of the company was 28 years. If this report is representative of the industry, then quick printing is going to go through some major changes in the next 10 years. The age factor raises more questions than answers. Are younger people not coming into the industry? The baby boomers who started the quick printing industry are still here, but where are...

  • How Do You Define a Small Printer?
    By Bob Hall - Monday April 25, 2011
    Last week I got the inaugural copy of NAPL’s [P]REVIEW magazine, a quarterly publication for association members. It was pretty slick with a lot more information aimed at the smaller and medium sized printer than in previous NAPL publications. That is a good thing, since these printers make up a very significant portion of NAPL’s membership. The printing industry is often segregated into categories according to the number of employees, amount of sales, or size of equipment. What NAPL’s new magazine has done is to emphasize the idea of small businesses. A couple of years back, Heidelberg advanced that same notion by separating the industry into large corporate type printers and smaller entrepreneurial printers. At...

  • Less Yellow Is “Green†
    By Mark Vruno - Friday April 22, 2011
    It comes as no surprise that printed phone books are going the way of, well, computer documentation booklets. When the first Earth Day bloomed in 1971, telephone directories still were a mainstay in American households -- and directory presses in printing plants like RR Donnelley’s Dwight, IL facility thundered with work. Some 90 years earlier, the telephone was a new invention, and R.H. Donnelley (one of R.R.’s sons) was a clerk in his father’s then-subsidiary Chicago Directory Co.   But this week, it wasn’t tree-huggers who made the Yellow Pages Association change its name to the Local Search Association. Technological shifts and online/mobile search habits have led to the decline of phone book use on the East...

  • Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
    By Karen Hall - Monday April 18, 2011
    For quite a while, I was a somewhat reluctant adopter of social media. LinkedIn seemed a promising tool for business and Quick Printing had a semi-lively discussion group. Twitter was a good way to push breaking news out into the marketplace for those who cared to follow. But for the life of me, I just couldn’t imagine what advantage Facebook would offer to a B2B magazine/website/information source such as ours. Unless you’re an advertiser, we don’t sell anything. Even if you are an advertiser, we don’t send out coupons or offer surprise weekend specials. We don’t have roving celebrities, so there’s no need to post our whereabouts for people who want to snap our photos or ask for our autographs...

  • Does web-to-print add value?
    By Mark Vruno - Friday April 15, 2011
    Web-to-print solutions can add value to a printing operation; however, that’s not always the case. The value answer depends, says NAPL senior consultant Howie Fenton, on what you’re printing. “Printers ask me all the time why they’re not selling [web-to-print] better or why more people aren’t using their web-to-print,†Fenton reports. Consider whether it’s something that your customers can work with, and ask yourself, he says, “Does this take away from my value proposition?†Most web-to-print solutions include estimating, preflighting and proofing components. For example, PagePath Technologies’ MyOrderDesk is an eCommerce solution that combines web-to-print, automated...

  • Portal Power
    By Bob Hall - Monday April 11, 2011
    If any of you have logged on to www.quickprinting.com since last Friday, you probably were a little surprised when the MyPrintResource site popped up instead. Don’t worry; no glitches here. MyPrintResource is the new portal for all three magazines in the Cygnus Graphics Media Group—Quick Printing, Printing News, and Wide-Format Imaging. The new site combines the power and resources of all three brands into one “super” location. At MyPrintResource.com you can find all the latest industry news for all segments of the printing and graphic arts industry. You can also access articles from all three magazines, not to mention videos, blogs, podcasts, and much, much more. One of the major strengths of this new portal is the ability to...

  • 'Power On' for Resources Galore
    By Mark Vruno - Wednesday April 6, 2011
    Broadband Internet pipes are chock-full of web tools and online e-business solutions for all phases of your printing business. Power on your desktop computer, laptop or 4G smartphone and there are online tools available today for virtually everything print, from online quoting and colour management to remote proofing systems and media storage. This, of course, is the good and bad of the Internet, which can be a tremendous resource -- but there also is a lot of junk out there. So, how does a print firm owner or manager separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff? Your friendly Printing News editor can help to vet and harvest some high-quality online content.   When it comes to navigating websites, where to start? Not really a search engine...

  • Macro Forces Affecting the Wide-Format Market
    By Denise Gustavson - Wednesday April 6, 2011
    During the GOA/FESPA Americas 2011 show in Orlando last week, I had the opportunity to attend and take part in the FESPA Global Business Forum. Stretching across two days, the sessions provided some topical and strategic information for wide-format business owners. I also had the pleasure to moderate a session (The Digital Debate) on Friday afternoon featuring Frank Mallozzi Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, EFI; Robert Smithson, Chief Executive, Trinity Graphic US.A; Anders Nilsson, Owner, Gamleby Screen; and Professor Qinguo Fan, University of Massachusetts. During the opening session of the Global Business Forum, FESPA's Frazer Chesterman and Marcus Timson presented 10 marco forces affecting the wide- and grand-format...

  • Any Way You Want It
    By Denise Gustavson - Wednesday April 6, 2011
    Is it just me or are we seeing a lot more of the high-end cars wrapped in all sorts of graphics and films? I'm not talking about the high-end cars you normally see tooling about on the highways and byways across the country. Epson America, Avery Graphics, and SkinzWraps joined forces to wrap a Bugatti Veyron during SEMA 2010. Take for example the Seiko "Ultimate Wrap Experience" at SGIA. Each day of the show APE Wraps wrapped a $400,000 Rolls Royce in various designs. Granted it was a demo, but the car certainly was amazing to look at. You can see pictures of the car (and wrap) on the front cover of WFI's SGIA 2010 Post Show Guide. And then a week or so later, SkinzWraps took it up another notch at SEMA. Partnering with...

  • Calvin Klein, QR Codes, and You
    By Denise Gustavson - Wednesday April 6, 2011
    Last week Calvin Klein kicked off its 2010 Fall advertising campaign in NYC and LA. For one short week, Calvin Klein Jeans replaced three of its billboards—two in downtown New York and one on Sunset Boulevard in LA—with a bright red QR code under the words “Get It Uncensored.†View the billboards at: Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/calvin-klein-qr-code-billboard/ Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/5587753/nycs-sexiest-billboard-doesnt-care-for-dumphones Those with Smartphones—a limited market at present—could scan the QR code and view a 40-second Calvin Klein commercial. Obviously, the manufacturer is testing the waters with this new ad—especially since it was up for such a short...

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