Blog Archives




 

  • Heidelberg Hypes Hybrid
    By Bob Hall - Tuesday February 22, 2011
    Heidelberg is going hybrid. That’s what the trade press has been talking about since late January when an article in the UK’s PrintWeek raised the subject based on Heidelberg sources. The original piece included some very challenging remarks from one Heidelberg executive about how the new set-up will make current high-end digital production presses “irrelevant.” That’s pretty bold. The new offering is expected to team a Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52 with a digital color output device in the 80 to 90 ppm range—presumably from a current digital vendor. Software would decide which output option is best for a particular job and parcel out the work accordingly. The key, according to the PrintWeek report, is Heidelberg’s Anicolor...

  • Print Works!
    By Bob Hall - Monday February 14, 2011
    Printing Industries Association of Southern California (PIASC) launched its Choose Print campaign last month and it is worth checking out. The campaign is reaching out to some 2,000 key marketing executives in the Los Angeles area via direct mail. It is also encouraging association members to get involved in promoting the campaign by displaying the Choose Print logo on their delivery vehicles, websites, and emails. PIASC describes the campaign as “designed to promote the value of print and to reinforce the fact that print is a recyclable, renewable, and sustainable environmental choice.” The website www.chooseprint.org offers industry statistics, news items, and other resources member companies can use to promote the value of print...

  • Rescue Mission
    By Bob Hall - Monday February 7, 2011
    My father’s last career move was to leave the world of accounting to become a travel agent. He had moved all over the world as an accountant for various conglomerates and defense companies, but his innate love of traveling had not been fulfilled. Thus, the career move. At that time, computerization was just coming into the travel business and he dutifully learned the ins and outs of this new technology, but retained the old knowledge of manual trip planning and booking. When the computers crashed, he was the only one who could write out tickets by hand. He once rebooked a 25-person overseas vacation trip that had run into airline problems, using only the Telex. (Anybody remember the Telex?) I thought about this last Friday during the...

  • Bye-bye Phone Book
    By Bob Hall - Monday January 31, 2011
    It’s another sign of the electronic times, but we shouldn’t be that surprised that the printed phone book white pages are on their way out. According to a story in the EDSF Report newsletter, a Gallup poll in 2008 found only 10% of folks counted on the white pages as their primary reference source for finding phone numbers. That’s down from 25% in 2005. New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania regulators have already given Verizon permission to discontinue printing the white pages and Virginia is poised to do the same. Telecommunications companies in 12 other states have petitioned for permission to cease printing the white pages. Verizon and AT&T will offer electronic listings or a CD phone book. A printed copy will be...

  • Researching the Big "E"
    By Bob Hall - Monday January 24, 2011
    It is very obvious that electronic technologies have had an effect on traditional printing, but this conventional wisdom has sometimes been lacking in solid facts on what that impact might be. Sure, printed mail has taken a hit from email and printed books are being affected by e-books, but just how drastic have such things really been and how drastic will they be in the future? Researchers often speak in jargon, but the aim of a new study by PRIMIR is pretty plain: “The study will provide an understanding of specific technologies that exist today, or are on the horizon, that may impact print.†Among the technologies to be studied are: “electronic reading devices (laptops, mobile devices, e-readers), display technology...

  • Customer Feedback is Enlightening
    By Bob Hall - Monday January 10, 2011
    Each quarter, Survey Advantage polls some 7,000 print buyers to get their feedback on their loyalty and satisfaction. The results for the fourth quarter of 2010 are in and offer some food for thought. According to the survey, top performing printers polled more than 84% print buyer satisfaction. Average printers had satisfaction percentages ranging from 74% to 83%. Poor performers came in below 74%. That’s all well and good, but turning those percentages around, we find that even the top performing printers averaged 16% customer dissatisfaction and more than a quarter of poor performers’ customers were not satisfied. I think having 16% of my customers saying they were not satisfied should be cause for alarm rather than a mark...

  • Behold the Power of Print
    By Bob Hall - Monday January 3, 2011
    The idea isn’t new and the statistics are well known within the printing industry, but it never hurts to re-emphasize that printing remains a powerful communications tool. That is what the Printing Industries Association of Southern California hopes to do with its “Choose Print†campaign, which is due to launch later this month. Print has too often been viewed as an either/or proposition when matched against digital media. As PIASC’s campaign rightly points out: “Studies have shown that printed media can be a significant driver of both online and offline sales.†Other study results have found that: Nearly 40% of customers tried a business for the first time, and 70% renewed a business relationship...

  • Good News for NAQP Members
    By Bob Hall - Monday December 27, 2010
    Ever since NAQP merged with NAPL, there has been a small group of doom-sayers maintaining that the merger would mean the end of NAQP. Granted, it has taken a while for the leadership of NAPL to adjust to the influx of NAQP owners and to adapt programs to match their particular needs. However, just before the Christmas holiday came news that demonstrates that NAPL is making some real strides toward tailoring its offerings to this important industry segment. Mitch Evans, a former NAQP leader and a highly successful former shop owner has been named to chair the NAQP Advisory Board. The board will be charged with creating “programs and editorial content specifically geared to the quick/small commercial printer segment of the graphic...

  • Naughty or Nice?
    By Bob Hall - Monday December 20, 2010
    I was headed toward Detroit when the early December blizzard ate Chicago – and most of the rest of the middle of the country. The good news is that I wasn’t on the 20-yard line of the Minneapolis Superdome when the rubber roof caved in and dropped a couple tons of snow on the field. The bad news is that I was flying toward Detroit and knew that when I got there I would encounter all manner of self-important idiots behaving badly. Why anybody thinks that airlines can change the weather is beyond me. Why anyone thinks that shouting, fuming, threatening, berating, cussing, or otherwise abusing airline employees will do anything to change the weather is equally mysterious. Unfortunately, there are people who are convinced that...

  • 2011 Crystal Gazing
    By Bob Hall - Monday November 29, 2010
    Predicting the future is a tricky business, especially the near future. It’s pretty easy to predict the distant future because you can deal in generalities and not many people will remember what you predicted. Short term is a different story, but here’s my stab at 2011: The economy will continue to improve slowly, but there will still be some rough patches. There will be a new reality show about making reality shows. Printers who used the slow times to prepare for better times will do better than printers who spent the slow times doing nothing but lamenting about how slow things were. Political debate will be reduced to rejoinders such as “So’s your old man” and “Your mother wears combat...

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