SMALLEST TOWN IN THE MOST REMOTE PART OF THE STATE

Printer’s NW Trader goes where regular salesmen dare not go — remotest snow-covered Alaska, the deserts of Arizona, the mountains of Colorado, the rainforests of Washington, and small towns everywhere in our growing 14-state coverage area.

Many readers are small in-plants, garage shops, broker-printers, and mom-and-pop outfits who aren’t on the radar of the big equipment salespeople. Yet they are buying equipment and supplies and using trade partners to fill their needs.

Often the Trader is the one and only way these people stay in touch with our industry.  

Yes, it is expensive for us to mail this way. Postal discounts are given for saturating a zipcode, not finding the one lone printer in a small town in a remote part of the state.

But it’s important to us, and beneficial to you, to find these readers . . .  and to keep them.

Even if our competitors could find these readers, which they can’t, it’s not worth their while to pay extra for postage or to cater to a party of one.

PARTY OF ONE

This is the area where we really differentiate ourselves as a magazine for the printing industry. Each of our readers really is a party of one to us, and we know most by name.

We give them referrals, they tell us their challenges, we hear how they are fighting City Hall to put up a sign, they call to run ideas past us on transitioning their business, they ask how the business climate is “out there,” and much more.
When they move or leave their companies to join new ones, they let us know. Where other magazines might let a subscriber fall off the map, we track them down and make sure their Trader finds them wherever they land.

STABLE IN A SHRINKING MARKET

For this reason, our subscriber base has stayed stable in a shrinking market. Our readers consider their copies of the Trader to be indispensible. They keep them on their desks — reading, highlighting, and using them all month long.
Many people at one location might be referring to the Trader: owners looking to see who has installed what, estimators looking for vendor partners in the Trade Directory listings, sales managers looking for leads, and production managers looking for new and used equipment.

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE OFTEN ARE INFLUENCERS & DECISION MAKERS

Another phenomenon we are seeing is that, due to financial necessity, some of our most loyal readers are taking jobs in other industries. However, they are keeping their subscriptions so they can move back when a job opens up.

In addition, we all know that many job changers are risk takers. By the nature of their personalities, they are influencers and decision makers, whether or not they are owners or managers.

They are the type of readers you want on your side, reading and internalizing your ad messages, and supporting you. Your presence in this challenging time will be remembered by these loyal readers.

To our hundreds of advertisers, thank you for your ongoing support.  Your success is our success! 

P.S. Advertisers! Are you on LinkedIn! I invite you to join my network. Please view my
profile and send me an invitation at www.linkedin.com/in/sandyhubbardpublisher

It’s probably hard to believe that I want my competitors to thrive. Here are a few reasons to consider:

1. First, your competitors are out there selling what you do. Talk about maximizing your sales force! They are selling the benefits of your product or service. When you make a call on customers who have heard from the competition, you don’t have to start at square one to educate them. You only have to dazzle them with why you’re a better choice.

2. Second, having lots of competitors keeps your product or service at the top of your prospect’s brain. We all know that repetition and multiple touch points help close the sale. Use competitors’ awareness-building campaigns to your advantage.

3. When your prospect is thinking about buying, no matter who he is thinking about buying from, it is a good thing for you. Getting prospects in the mood to spend money is hard. Let your competitors do some of that work for you!

4. Having someone to sell against keeps us all motivated. How boring would it be to be the only game in town? Competition creates excitement and keeps our edge.

5. Your competitors can be your allies. If you don’t believe me, look at the most successful print companies in our region. Their owners and key employees attend industry events, network with peers, travel to trade shows together, share ideas, and help each other out. Read David Archer’s article in this issue for more on this subject.

6. Having lots of competitors validates your existence. If there are lots of you, you must be a necessary thing, right? Without your competitors’ presence, you’d be spending a lot of time showing why your product or service is even viable. Let others help you do that.

7. Gives you a ranking. We all know it’s important NOT to say bad things about our competitors. However, we can certainly say with humility and generosity that our competitors are “very good” but we’re “better.” There can’t be a better or a best without someone to compare ourselves to!

Which brings me to my next point. Now that we’ve figured out that our competitors can be an advantage in our selling process, now we must figure out how to be the best, or among the best. And that’s a sales strategy as well. Being the best is hard, hard work. Being among the best sometimes is sufficient.

One way to do this is to change who your competitors are. It’s hard to be the best four-color printer in any market. But if you have a niche within four-color, you are going to reduce your number of competitors. You are also going to reduce the number of jobs you will be quoting, so you’ll have to make sure your closing percentage is higher. 

I believe it is easier to have a niche that targets a specific kind of customer rather than a certain kind of product or process. For example, it might be easier to wrap your head around selling to investers of private cardiac clinics than to think about selling forms to hospital chains. You can really visualize yourself walking into a clinic and having a successful meeting, catering to all the various needs of an affluent investor and a busy surgeon. Those happy customers network with their peers, and their referrals are golden. Carrying a bunch of samples into a hospital and tracking down a purchasing agent (who never networks with anyone) — that’s a tough sell! Being the best in that losing situation won’t win the job; only being cheapest and most willing to turn control over to the customer will.

So I am hoping you will entertain a new outlook about your competitors and where you stand in the pack. I am always happy to brainstorm with you on making your business more successful.

Many people associate screenprinting with T-shirts. But screenprinting on textiles is only one of many aspects of screenprinting. Every day we come in contact with screenprinted items — the drapes in your living room, a suntan lotion tube, your fishing registration, the rear window defogger on your car — but most of us aren’t aware of how they are printed.

The advantages of screenprinted items are durability, chemical and moisture resistance, vibrant hues, fade resistance, and protection against touching and abrasion. In addition, the size and the shape of the item — from a stadium banner to a tiny stick-on thermometer — are not barriers to the process.

What is screenprinting?
Refer to your Pocket Pal, and you’ll get a basic sketch of the process, one that hasn’t changed much since early Chinese and Egyptian artisans achieved the same effects with silk screens.

Today, the process is done by machine (automatic or semi-automatic) or by hand. Fabric or wire (usually a man-made material to minimize screen distortion) is stretched over a frame. Part of the screen is blocked with a stencil, and an emulsion is photo-processed over the rest of the screen, leaving an open area through which the ink will pass. On the press, the screen is brought down over the substrate. The substrate may be paper, glass, cloth, plastic, wood . . . or any of a thousand possibilities. A squeegee draws the ink across the screen. The design is formed where ink is pushed through the screen.

Screenprinters often specialize in one or a few categories which may include decals, point of purchase displays, advertising and promotion materials, industrial or electronic applications, containers, or outdoor advertising including banner and fleet signs.

Signs and banners
From a single counter card to a series of giant banners, screenprinting is not limited by materials of varying rigidity or size. A giant sheet of metal which could not contort through the rollers of an offset printing press can be screenprinted easily.

Screenprinters who specialize in signs and banners often offer complementary services such as steel rule die cutting, laminating, mounting, punching, drilling, collating and packaging.

Advertising specialties
Novelty items given to customers as a promotional aid are often screenprinted with aggressive chemical and abrasion resistant inks. Fingernails, watches and rings — as well as the natural oils on people’s hands — can damage conventional inks. Screenprinting enhances the durability of items which are subjected to constant handling, scuffing or extremes in temperature or moisture.

Decals
Produced in a variety of styles in any combination of colors, decals can be applied to most surfaces. Application defines the type: from slide-off to varnish-on to dry-release or pressure sensitive. Large or small, screenprinted decals — with their heavy deposits of ink for durability and vibrancy — can reproduce very fine detail.

Bottles and containers
Remember those milk bottles on your front porch, way back when? Even today, fired-on decals are practical, as they eliminate the need for relabeling and can withstand the container being reused. The container retains the desired glossy or matte appearance of the decal, even after washing, sterilization and exposure to acids and alkalis.

Fine arts and serigraphy
Serigraphs are screenprints produced by the artist, usually in a limited quantity with each print signed and numbered. Multicolored prints require the artist or his chromist to prepare separate screens for each color — using often up to 30 different screens.

Industrial and high tech
When tight quality controls are combined with flexibility and durability, screenprinting meets the demands of computers, circuitry and electronics.

Textiles
Any pattern with a variety of colors can be screenprinted, from your carpet to your pajamas and underwear. Screenprinted designs are bright and durable and can withstand many washings without losing brightness.

Outdoor advertising & transit graphics
Screenprinted billboards not only offer vivid colors (visible from a distance), they also provide durability against weather and sunshine, and can incorporate special effects such as backlighting. Transit graphics include interior and exterior signs on buses, subways and taxicabs.

Summary
Screenprinting is a sensible alternative to other imaging processes for many applications. Today’s screenprinting is an up-to-date, competitive and sensitive graphic arts process, oriented equally to mass production as it is to limited runs.

Copyright 2010, Printer’s NW Trader, Sandy Hubbard, Publisher, 1-800-426-2416. No portion of this article may be re-printed or re-used without crediting Printer’s NW Trader. Special thanks to Jim Wakefield at Cascade Graphics, a trade screenprinting firm in Bend, Oregon, for assistance in preparing this overview.

Acquisitions of local companies by large multi-company conglomerates have been the focus of media attention lately.

In the past, companies were acquired without much fanfare. Today, there is quite a bit of hysteria over the activity of “consolidators” — large firms who intentionally go out looking for companies to purchase. Many of these national consolidators are looking to diversify their offerings to print buyers. Rather than just specializing in envelopes, for example, a company would look at acquisitions as a way to reach a larger share of the entire print manufacturing market. Others are looking to diversify geographically to reach more customers, rather than more sectors.

While we hear a lot about the encroachment of the consolidators (after all, they can afford to hire publicists), the acquisition game really constitutes a very small share of the total number of printing businesses being bought and sold.

I’m not saying the movement of the consolidators isn’t significant, however.

Competition is a good thing in our industry, and it is compromised when these behemoth companies are able to negotiate for better deals from suppliers.

Furthermore, they can snag a print buyer who’s buying one type of item and then service him with their subsidiaries when it comes time to bid on other items. On the other hand, massive companies just don’t maneuver as deftly. Sometimes that can work to a smaller company’s advantage.

Either way, I would say the consolidation “trend” is worth watching but not worth worrying about too much.

In any event, I personally know how distressing is when your own company gets acquired. No one talks about how psychologically destructive it is to play the waiting game, wondering if you will be one of the employees chosen to continue on with the new company. Certainly, there are phases of the acquisition that must remain confidential. Still, employees often hear rumors and begin “stressing out” long before the sale is completed. Once the new ownership is in place (often with assurances that all employees will be retained), the not-so-gentle process begins — that of weeding out the people who “just don’t fit” into the new organization.
What do you think? Are the consolidators sending their shadow over the industry as they crest the horizon? Or are they much ado about nothing? I would enjoy getting your feedback.

   It would be a good day if it was cut into a “plus,” bad if it was an “X.” He held his breath as he unfolded the waxed paper and spread it flat. The sandwich sat there—whole, no cuts. They knew they were supposed to cut it into fourths. And lettuce! What was going on? He tried to slip the offending leaf from between the slices, but it clung to the mayonnaise. In a bold move, he pulled out his penknife and sliced into the sandwich—top to bottom, side to side. No diagonals. There, he thought, I’m master of my own fate: it will be a good day.

   He hoped he was right.

   Last night he dreamed that his customer had seen the trade printer delivering the job, hopped into the truck, and drove off into the sunset with him.

   “That’s not how it works,” his daughter Amy had told him. “Why would a trade printer want to steal your customers? You are his customer.”

   He hadn’t been convinced when Amy had suggested using a trade house to do work that was too big for his presses. She had timed it perfectly to coincide with one of his famous “That’s the last time I send a job to a competitor” speeches. His tirades usually led into a saga about how he couldn’t afford bigger presses with more color capability. This time she was ready.

  “I checked references, years in business, quality of work,” Amy had said earnestly about the trade printer she had chosen. Then she had dazzled him with that “you-can-trust-me” smile he knew so well.

   I’ll try it, he thought as he bit into a fourth of his sandwich, just this once.

   Of course, if everything went smoothly, getting the trade discount would mean he could make a nice little profit on the markup. And, having a trade printer do the work—or part of the work—opened up markets he couldn’t serve before.

   “I want to meet him, face to face,” he recalled saying.

   He and the trade printer had discussed the menu of services, who was responsible for what, how the job would get from point A to point B, turnaround, discounts, confidentiality . . . and that he would call the trade printer when he was ready. (“I don’t want you bugging me all the time, man,” he had said. Amy had rolled her eyes.)

   When he finally made the call, he was pleased to discover that the trade printer had a lot of experience with the type of job he was bidding.

   “You’re lucky,” the trade printer had said. “We see this type of work at least once a week. When we first started running these things, we had a heck of a time with scuffing. But, all the bugs have been worked out already. You should have it late tomorrow.”

   Later, the trade printer had called back with suggestions on how to set up the job more efficiently next time. “It’ll save you a little money,” he said. “By the way, we can score it for you. But it’s your call, man,” he chuckled. “I don’t want to bug you.”

   So, here he waited, chewing a sandwich that had horseradish on it, for goodness sake. Were the people at the deli on drugs?

   “Boss, you gotta see this,” someone yelled from the loading dock. He tried to swallow, but the sandwich was dry, so dry.

   He looked out his window at a wrapped skid, sitting by itself as the rest of the job was being off-loaded. He had a fleeting thought that it looked like a giant sandwich.

   “Dad, phone,” murmured Amy as she headed down the stairs to the dock.

   “This is Connie at the Sandwich Store. Honey, ya’ll probably think we’re crazy. We delivered the wrong sandwich. We got yours right here, cut just the way you like it.”

   He looked out the window at Amy, down on the loading dock and waving a press sheet triumphantly. It was going to be a good day.

   For a list of trade professionals in your area, consult the Northwest Trade Directory in every issue of Printer’s NW Trader magazine. The Northwest Trade Directory lists a wide range of trade services including trade printing— which can be found under the “Litho Trade Printing” and “Letterpress Trade Printing” headings. This story is fiction by the way, but it could be true, couldn’t it?
  

The folks who write press releases don’t choose one word to describe their products, they choose them all.

Each year, when we research the products for our Annual All Products Issue, we slog through stacks of press releases written by PR hacks for a nickel a word.

Some marketing professionals are great. They know who they are because I have told them what a relief it is to read their material.

Others, however, believe quantity is better than quality.

Their masterpieces include:

• Superlative-laden, man-on the-moon product descriptions

• Non-specific performance ratings (we love the phrase “up to” a certain number of impressions per hour. That could include one impression. Or none.)

• Protracted (and entirely fictional, in my opinion) quotes from corporate mucky-mucks who drone on about the company and its market position. Zzzzz.

And what’s the deal with product re-releases?

When manufacturers aren’t drawing enough attention with old products, they add a geegaw or doohickey, put a decimal point after the product number (version 5.137435A) and hold a press conference.

Or how about the PR writer’s favorite: the product “launch.”

I envision the Queen Mum, in white gloves and a floppy hat, christening the machine with a bottle of champagne.

What would I like to see in product announcements?

• Truth.

• Crisp, clean communication.

• Interviews with the behind-the-scenes inventors or developers, not the CEO.

• Down-and-dirty quotes from the folks who beta-tested it, not from the marketing department.

• Realistic assessments of how easily it can be incorporated into your workflow, not an engineer’s fantasy of super-compatibility.

What would I settle for?

• Short.

Put it this way, if I were paid a nickel a word for what I read each month, I could share the wealth, and we’d all be happier.

Zap! Boom! Pow!

When it comes to Ink, Paper is the considered the Arch Villain. It used to be that Ink’s nemesis was Water. These days, Water is simply Paper’s sinister sidekick.

Yet Paper is not inherently bad.

He had a normal upbringing, nice parents, a good education. But he got into trouble when he started hanging out at the printing plant. It got worse when he stopped doing acid. (He heard it would make him more attractive and give him a longer life . . . )

Somewhere between seven and 14, he changed his pH and began a wave of headaches that would plague all aspects of the printing industry, from cutting (and dulling precious blades) to printing (and affecting the formulation of the fountain solution from one end of the run to the other, causing toning, tinting and emulsification — not to mention cussing).

And then there’s the color issue.

When Paper fills out the “optional” portion of his voter’s registration, he checks the box marked “caucasian.” But he’s really 40 shades of white, some bluish, some yellowish, some grayish, some “off.” Ink doesn’t stand a chance of correct matching unless he knows exactly what shade of white Paper is going to be today.

And what about this: Paper has the audacity to have varying opacities!

A lightweight or not-so-dense sheet can make Ink look washed out. With the right tools — calibration, color proofing, densitometers, paper samples — we can overcome this audacity . . . I mean opacity.

And did we tell you about finishing school?

Yes, Paper can be coated, uncoated, or even (nightmare!) coated-one-side. Ink goes crazy, absorbing into the sheet on some jobs and refusing to dry on others — or doing one thing on the front of the sheet and something else on the back. And when Paper is feeling “dull,” his matte coating causes Ink a new set of problems. As Paper absorbs Ink’s solvents, varnishes and waxes, the pigment is left on Paper’s surface — causing smearing or scuffing. Ink gets blamed for the mess!

Should we even bring up the subject of hickeys (and the equally disgusting-sounding word “picking”)? Yes, sometimes it is Ink’s fault (tacky, tacky, tacky). But other times, these problems are caused by Paper dust, Paper surface material or poor pressroom housekeeping.

Luckily, Ink has some tricks to fight back. Your ink manufacturer can guide you on specific inks, formulations or additives that can help with these problems, as well as guidance on the proper measurement of paper opacity and other paper characteristics.

What does Paper have to say about all of this? Stay tuned for the sequel … in the never-ending battle between Ink and Paper.

I’m not implying that they gossip about you or that they say complimentary things about you (although they may). What I mean is this: the way your employees behave to customers — in person, over the phone, in writing — is a statement about you and your company.

Of course, courtesy and respect of customers should be a given; each person should know that it is his or her responsibility and that it is expected.

Sooner or later, however, most companies end up with some type of guidelines for customer relations. These companies recognize that it is not just the president or the salesperson or the estimator who needs to know how to interact with customers. For example, when a customer enters the pressroom to do a press check, everyone from the press operator to the custodian to the customer service rep to the ink room manager should know how to make a good impression.

And once the guidelines are in place, employees know that rude behavior is not sanctioned and will be dealt with if it is chronic.

However, there has developed a grey area where rudeness is expected, tolerated and even venerated. Consider the people in our companies who are our network administrators, our prepress gurus, our website masters, our techno prima donnas.

Some are great, don’t get me wrong: they’re true wizards and nice people as well.

Others fall into a category I see in every city, in every region. They are people who think they can operate outside the laws of decency. They don’t believe they should treat customers with respect, dignity and courtesy. In fact, many of these people verbally abuse your customers, intimidate them, tell them their work is garbage and unsalvageable, tell them they are too busy to worry about their petty problems, tell them that “that’s just the way the system’s set up,” tell them that they hate this stinking job and they’re just waiting for a job at Google. 

Furthermore, as technology evolves, these are the employees who end up spending the most time with your customers! What astounds me is that owners and managers who normally would not tolerate this type of behavior in other employees, can come up with a dozen excuses to justify it.

1. We paid a high price to get these folks.

2. We don’t understand anything they say.

3. We don’t understand their jobs.

4. They work odd hours, and we never get to see them so we can chastise them.

5. We’re afraid that if we reprimand them (or gently outline our standards of dealing with the public) they will leave.

6. We’re afraid that they’re just a temper tantrum away from quitting, since that’s how we got them in the first place.

7. They’re pioneers in the digital realm and should not have to be reined in by customer relations.

8. If they’re short term employees (hired guns and renegades) who are only in your face long enough to establish a system and then get out, their effect (and damage) on our customers supposedly will be insignificant. 

9. If our customers are afraid of them, they’ll think we’re cool and smart and technologically advanced.

10. They’re misfits who never learned social graces, so we should feel sorry for them.

11. If we try to hire someone else, the new person may be really obnoxious, and, worst of all,

12. Everyone does it.

In the end, however, it boils down to you, the employer. Because each and every person who deals with your customers needs to know what your ground rules are—whether you express them directly, in a meeting, in a memo, or in a handbook.

I have kept the following clipping for years because it echoes what I believe about customer service, and because it especially applies now that we have begun to make excuses for our techno-nerds.

It is written by Ned Thomson, president of Thomson-Shore*, a book printing firm in Dexter, Michigan. Thomson says: “Our belief has always been that a company’s success should rely on every employee’s individual contribution. Each employee . . . press operator, receptionist, president, janitor, etc. . . . each person has an opportunity to influence what the customer thinks about our company, and those collective impressions determine whether we succeed or fail. We believe quality is not just the appearance of the book we print but it also the way we respond to a customer. It is how fast we return quotes, how fast we answer the phone or return your calls, how we respond if there is a problem, how we respond if a customer asks a questions or seeks advice, how quickly we ship . . . all those things that we would like to have done for us if we were the customer.

“It may sound corny,” adds Thomson, “but the ‘Golden Rule’ can be a pretty good thing to keep in mind when you conduct business — because customers will respond to it.”

*Printer’s Ink, Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 1992, published by Thomson-Shore, Dexter, Michigan.

Every day I scanned the classifieds before I headed to work, looking for that elusive never-advertised film director’s job, never dreaming that the printing industry would end up to be more appealing than the bright lights of Hollywood.

Before the print shop owners hired me full-time, they sent me to a class to learn the basics of design, layout, typesetting, daylight camera work, plate burning, and printing on a duplicator.

Flash forward.

My husband and I are cleaning the basement. “Do you still want this?” he asks. Inside a musty box are two volumes and a notebook with dividers: my training manuals for the little print shop.

Needless to say, I wanted to keep them.

As I perused the notebooks, I came across a plastic organizer filled with my old supplies: a pica pole, a proportion wheel, a halftone exposure chart, my set of Exacto knives, non-repro blue pens, typesetter codes and commands, and my trusty E scale.

Seeing the E scale took me back instantly (oh no, now we’re having a flashback within a flashback!) to memories of my neighbor at the time, a bubbly actress who spent a lot of time at auditions and little time on screen. I won’t say she was ditzy, but you get the idea.

One day she picked up my E scale and held it at arms length. “What are you doing?” I asked. She squinted at the scale.

“This eye chart is easy,” she announced. “E . . . e . . . e . . . e . . . “

I tell that to younger people in the industry, and they don’t see the humor. I guess I should explain that an E scale is a transparent sheet with a whole bunch of letters on it — all being the letter E – ranging from very big to very little. It helps you gauge what size type you need to match. An anachronism now, for sure.

When I look back at everything that little shop did to take a customer’s job from idea to printed piece, there were definitely some steps that we don’t have to worry about today. Camera work has evolved into customer-provided files; typesetting is a breeze these days; fonts issues are (almost) a thing of the past; and options for plateless printing are many.

Yet most of the concepts I learned in that course still serve me.

I still use a proportion wheel and a pica pole. I still use design principals for determining leading, headlines and white space. I still know how to copy fit, so when a writer submits hard copy for a story, I can quickly calculate how much room I need to allocate on the page.

As far as the E scale . . . I haven’t used one in years. But, then, I already know I’m nearsighted.

If you’ve never visited Oblation Papers’ Pearl District Store, you’re in for a treat. On-site letterpress printing and papermaking. Gorgeous cards and wrapping papers. Great gifts. Totally fun place to do your Christmas shopping. Put your favorite publisher on your shopping list!

Mr. Robert Basel – thanks always for your help in promoting Printer’s NW Trader magazine and www.printerstrader.com.

Welcome to Chapel Printing, who is advertising their letterpress services and expertise in our upcoming print and online edition.

Let me know your Portland area Letterpress news, classes and events, and I will spread the word!

– SANDY