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  • So You Want to Be a Marketing Service Provider
    By Karen Hall - Wednesday August 4, 2010
    In a recent conversation with QP columnist Nancy DeDiemar she mentioned all the excitement about printers becoming marketing service providers (MSP). Nancy observed that some people will jump on any boat that floats down the river if they think it will get them out of having to actually go out and sell something to someone. The funny thing about the whole MSP concept is that it requires printers to take selling to a whole new level. Later it occurred to me that this whole MSP concept is reminiscent of the on demand printing frenzy that passed through the industry a few years ago. All of a sudden, everyone had to be an on demand printer. The funny thing was, if you really stopped to think about it, they already were. Bob used to say in his...

  • Need Your Input for QP 2011
    By Karen Hall - Tuesday June 22, 2010
    Bob and I will be traveling to the Florida office next week for Quick Printing’s annual planning meeting, along with our two sister publications Printing News and Wide-Format Imaging. As part of that event, we have to present the editorial calendar for 2011. Some issues are set in stone, so no worries there. In April we’ll publish QP’s Annual Franchise Review, June will see another edition of our Top 100, and December will host the Company Capabilities advertorials. That leaves nine months in play. Most years we end up filling in the blanks with subjects such as monochrome and color digital output devices, mailing services, offset, sustainability, prepress, and finishing. Of course, we always leave some wiggle room...

  • Endings
    By Karen Hall - Wednesday June 9, 2010
    Monday was one of those days that just leave me feeling sad. That was the day I heard two pieces of unrelated news that, taken together, paint a somewhat poignant picture. The first item was that Steve Johnson is resigning as executive director of NAQP. The second was that Townsend Industries is closing. After leading the association for more than 10 years, most of you know Steve’s name, even if you don’t know him personally. He’s a great guy—quick with a laugh and deeply committed to the industry he served. He guided the association through some seriously troubled waters. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with three leaders of NAQP—Tracy Poyser, David Steinhardt, and Steve...

  • Overwhelmed
    By Karen Hall - Wednesday June 2, 2010
    People are so adaptable...up to a point. Speaking strictly for myself, I usually discover that point when I'm about two steps past it. Business requirements today are such that we feel the need to do more and more just to stay in place. For anyone in the media, the world we once knew so well and traveled so easily looks like an alien moonscape these days. The situation is much the same for printers, too. Everyone's talking about inkjet, you have to consider the environmental impact of your work, and labor laws are something else to contend with. There is confusion about what the new healthcare legislation will require of employers, and there are plenty of people who want to give you the answers. The problem is their answers are all...

  • Top 100 Observations
    By Karen Hall - Tuesday May 18, 2010
    I just finished crunching the numbers for this year’s Top 100. As expected, the totals and percentages are pretty scary. 2009 was a pretty scary year by any standards. But there are some intriguing details that might go unnoticed if you just look at the statistics. One of the things that impressed me was that a number of printers who, despite a decrease in overall sales, were actually able to increase productivity last year. When sales fell off, they also decreased the size of their staffs, which resulted in a higher sales per employee (SPE) on the year. That’s indicative of how they got to be in the Top 100 in the first place, and how they remain in the list year after year. They operate their companies using sound business...

  • Not So Hidden Treasures
    By Karen Hall - Monday June 15, 2009
    In tough economic times such as these, everyone is looking for an edge. Printers are lucky because they have so many tools and resources that are readily available. The problem is many printers seem to be more interested in griping about their problems than in actually using the very tools that could help them solve those problems. The majority of printing companies are using some type of estimating software package, but very few of them are using all of the business tools that those programs offer. The pricing function is still primary, but today’s versions have morphed into full fledged MIS systems that can track workflow, equipment depreciation, and inventory, keep you in touch with your customers, and handle all manner of accounting...

  • Is Recovery in Sight?
    By Karen Hall - Monday June 8, 2009
    During a group conversation today, an optimistic salesperson said, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like things are starting to turn around.†Another party said she didn’t really get that feeling, but was glad that someone could say they did. Still another member of the group offered that he’d heard a couple of printers saying that they felt like the economy was starting to show signs of recovery. Last week, NAPL sent out a press release titled “Despite Signs of Recession Bottoming Out, Industry Sales Continue to Nosedive.†It delivered the glum news of the first quarter had shown the worst quarterly sales declines since the association began tracking these figures more than 20 years...

  • Unplugged
    By Karen Hall - Monday June 1, 2009
    It seems like everyone has an iPhone or a Blackberry. We IM, and Tweet, and stay in touch 24/7. We seem to be doing a whole lot more work than we ever did before, but I’m not at all sure what we think we’re accomplishing. I find myself wondering how much of that constant communication is useful and how much is just background noise.   Have you ever paused to think whether your life is better now than it was before you were “connected†every minute of the day? Are you happier or more content? Do Tweets really enrich your relationships? Has this constant activity made the world a better place?   Or are you too tired to even think about the answers to these questions? I seem to hear that complaint from a lot of...

  • The Great Flood
    By Karen Hall - Monday May 4, 2009
    Monday morning I walked into the office that Bob and I share only to discover a soggy mess. We’d had steady rain for five or six days and Sunday night brought a veritable frog strangler. All the waterproofing and precautions that we took to correct this situation 10 years ago have held the rains out of the office until now. My first thought was, “I hope Bob backed up those files he was working on.†Sure, all of the electronics are well off the floor, but you just never know. You know? I wasn’t worried about my own files because I knew I’d backed up everything before leaving the office Friday evening. As it turns out, all the information was safe—no need to rewrite entire articles or any of the other...

  • QP is Mobile
    By Karen Hall - Monday March 9, 2009
    Do you own an iPhone? If so, there's a cool feature on the Quick Printing website that can keep you connected to all the latest information no matter where you are. On the QP homepage, scroll all the way down to the bottom and you'll find three buttons. The first one lets you sign up for QP's RSS news feeds. The second one is +My Yahoo, which lets you add QP to your Yahoo homepage. And the third one is +Add to Google, which adds QP to your Google homepage. When you land on the QP website, there's so much to see that you can easily get distracted before you make it all the way to the bottom of the page, so I just thought I'd let you know. Cool, huh?

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