Last month I talked about Deliver Magazine, a desperate attempt by the Unites States Postal Service to garner more business from companies by eliciting the virtues of direct marketing. Within the pages of Deliver, there was good information to be had, but I could hear the faint sound of Nero playing his fiddle in the background. I really didn’t pay the subject much attention after that post.
A couple weeks back, I ran across PrintIsBig.com, a site designed and hosted by Keen Print, a software company that specializes in e-commerce solutions for print shops. Ok, so Keen is a much needed asset, especially since many print shops are so worried about paying the rent, they hardly have time and money to build an adequate site. Print Is Big, however, is a interactive infographic that gives tidbits of information about the realities of the print industry and how important it is.
Print is Big comes off a lot less flippant than Deliver Magazine, but still with a sense of desperation. I get why Keen created the site, mostly to help the businesses they service. I’m sure they’ve seen hundreds of print shops go under in the last few years with the entire world in both an economic quagmire, as the push to move everything toward digital. I don’t envy Keen’s position; I’m sure they’re sweating their own micro-economic upheaval.
Jump ahead again to today where I get a linke from a friend for PaperBecause.com, which basically makes the exact same arguments as the other to entities above, but with a bit more detail and attention toward paper itself. The creator of Paper Because is none other than Domtar Paper, Canada’s largest paper milling corporation.
Although I don’t think the work I do personally will ever be effected by these problems, it does give me pause. If the USPS, Keen Print and Domtar Paper have sites dedicated toward this, how many other companies are with them? If there are more sites like this, perhaps this desperation is a lot more frantic than we assume. Could we be on the precipice of an industry collapse? These sites would have you believe otherwise, but I can’t help but wonder if their trying to convince us, or convince themselves. Time will tell.
Vitaly here from Keen. Thanks for the thoughtful post. I wanted to share with you and your readers our intent behind our “Print Is Big” campaign.
We put the eye-poping (positive) numbers and research together in a form–we think–is a lot more interesting today. You are right, the industry has been very defensive on the topic and has frankly been out-marketed by companies and groups who have a vested interest in taking dollars away from it. The boring academic approach only interests the industry echo chamber; all while campaigns like “if you want to save the environment, don’t print this email” defy all logic (consider the paper industry is basically agriculture and the definition of sustainable) but have taken hold due to smart and simple (mis)information approaches.
It is no denying that the print industry is going through secular changes. In 2008 and 2009 there was quite a bit of consolidation as the bad economy thinned the herd (print traditionally tracks GDP). There are new on-demand-printing technologies that are giving customer the ability to order in smaller batches more often (while the providers have to deal with an increasing per-order overhead). And of course the publishing segment is pretty much S.O.L… which coincidentally bleeds negative perception on to the rest of the industry, in which many segments such as packaging are actually growing quite aggressively.
Overall print is one of the biggest and most important industries around, but it is not sexy. The top of the industry food chain is unfortunately populated by folks closer to the end of their careers vs. the beginning and print company owners are buried in the day-to-day minutia. Most importantly, we know the need for print will remain strong by any measure for decades to come and there are a number of companies taking advantage of the relative lack of capable competition. We started Keen because we see that ecommerce and print/Internet hybrid products and services as the future for this Industry… and frankly no serious competition on the technology side exists. We started the campaign to help the print service providers have some properly framed ammunition to promote themselves and their trade against the everyday antagonistic bombardment their customers and prospect receive.
We’d love to hear what you think with the added context!
Thanks for swinging by, Vitaly. Wow, now that’s a true rebuttal comment, and I appreciate it. Working for one of the largest publishing conglomerates, I totally get where you’re coming from, and the idea about the folks at the top definitely resonates with me as well as others in our company. I’m not spry chicken, but I definitely see the need for change; incorporating digital is a necessity, but the print side could benefit so much by letting go of some old ideologies about how to make magazines, specifically the heavy catering toward advertisers, and get back to making quality publications that people want to hold in their hands. This is obviously only one side of the print industry problem, but the one that hits closest to home.
I also agree that the service you offer is unique in the industry, and much needed. So many print shops could benefit from having an web infrastructure that allows them to reach outside their normal circle of influence, and one that offers some interesting design solutions is also welcome. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left a printer’s website never to return because the site was so bad, I had no confidence they would print my work well. Of coure, by democratizing print across the web creates its own set of problems, mostly competition and heavy price cuts from the bigger shops who work on volume, but every shop out there should be able to step up and compete a little.
I am by no means an authority on the print industry, but I do feel that a major shift in how we do business is coming. It might not happen in the next few years, but with newspapers dying a slow, painful death and direct mail right behind them, it’s only a matter of time that the industry shutters (and maybe collapses in on itself) from the void of those two print juggernauts. It’ll be interesting to watch, that’s for sure.
Thanks again for chiming in.