Bob Hall-A respected voice of the industry for more than 25 years and award winning journalist, Bob has stayed on top of developments and trends in the quick and small commercial printing industry.
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The Written Word
By Bob Hall - Monday December 12, 2011By Bob Hall An op-ed piece in this Sunday’s paper caught my eye with the headline: “Writing: more important than ever” Since I’ve blathered on about lousy writing over the years, I had to read the article. Pointing out that documents written centuries ago still influence our lives (the Bible, the Quran, the Constitution, etc.), the authors noted that technology is spurring another writing revolution with an estimated 30 billion emails and 50 million tweets a day. “Just because writing has become more important than ever does not mean it has become better,” said the authors, one a former university president and one a vice president of the College Board. According to various surveys, less than a quarter of high school... -
Mixed Bag
By Bob Hall - Monday November 28, 2011NAPL’s latest trends report for quick and small commercial printers finds many are getting left behind. Sales have slowed, expectations have dimmed, and owners’ compensation is down, according to NAPL’s latest Quick and Small Commercial Trends Report for summer and fall of 2011. I doubt that this comes as a surprise to anybody. What does stand out to me, once again, is the wide variation between top performers and also-rans. Overall sales were down 0.2 percent for the group, down from a 2.7 percent gain in the last report. Companies that grew still outnumbered those that declined, but by a narrower margin. However, the top 20 percent of the group saw sales growing at 9.0 percent while the bottom 20 percent saw sales dropping by... -
Ebb and Flow
By Bob Hall - Monday November 14, 2011
Yesterday was November 14, which is an especially sad day for me and most other West Virginians. It was that day in 1970 that a plane carrying the Marshall University football team, along with coaches and fans, crashed just short of the hillside runway in Huntington, WV. There were no survivors. I landed at that airport the following week and have spent the last 41 years living in one way or another with the aftermath of that tragedy, as have those friends I met at Marshall. The school fielded a team of freshmen and walk-ons the following year and actually won a game. That was followed by years of futility with losing streaks and empty stands until things started to turn around. In the 1990s Marshall had the winningest football team in... -
Deal With It
By Bob Hall - Monday November 7, 2011Despite some recent signs of slight economic improvements, the overall economic outlook remains gloomy. So it isn’t surprising that quick and small commercial printers expect 2011 sales to wind up flat, according to NAPL/NAQP’s most recent survey of this segment. Back in May, those surveyed anticipated a gain in the five percent range. Maybe springtime puts people in perkier moods than does late fall. However, in looking more closely at the findings, we see that around 40 percent of respondents expect 2011 sales growth, compared to 31 percent who expect sales to decline. So, while the average of the group points to flat sales, a healthy chunk of respondents see sales gains. The point is that averages are just that. Could the economy... -
Catalog Season
By Bob Hall - Tuesday November 1, 2011
I’ve mentioned before that we do our best to keep the printing presses rolling by subscribing to a raft of magazines from Time to Smithsonian to Bark . This time of year we double and triple our contribution to the printing industry when all of the holiday catalogs start showing up in our mailbox. We returned from vacation Sunday and waiting for us after our short four-day jaunt were the following catalogues: Signals, PBS, The Great Courses, Nature’s Jewelry, Catalog Favorites, What on Earth, Smithsonian, Potpourri, Southwest Indian Foundation, Heifer, Wind & Weather, Wine Country Gift Baskets, Wireless, Old Durham Road, Personal Creations , and GaelSong. These all went into the magazine box to join a couple of dozen of...
