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Monday, December 18, 2006
Outsourcing in printing industry and your business
Outsourcing is squeezing many printing businesses out of the market. It is just one the pressure factors a printing business is facing these days. Some people say there are always two sides of the coin and other people say that one’s loss is the other’s find. Let’s look into the obvious.
Outsourcing is a hot issue in other industries too. ICT was all abuzz a couple of years ago about Americans loosing jobs to their Indian colleagues. Nothing changed, really, but the world got used to it and I think it’s good. I’m proud to employ people from all over the globe. I say thank you to people from all over the globe who gave me jobs in the last few years.
Asia . China Australia to the extent that they dispatched a “reconnaissance mission” to find out what kind of threat China
1. Cost
2. Cost
3. Cost
1. Four to eight weeks between the sign off and delivery
Time zone difference, language barrier, cultural barrier, proofing are all easily overcome by agents and print brokers that reside where the customers are. There is not difference to the customer between the local agent and a local printing business.
- anything that can wait a few weeks, no matter how small the run is.
- products that are needed NOW
There are thing that an individual printer can do and there are things that only industry bodies can do.
At the individual business level the best thing is to diversify into products that cannot be outsourced effectively. There are just too many of them to list here. Every printer knows what kind of products customers need “yesterday” and what kind of products can wait for weeks in pre-press without the customer calling back.
The key to success here is turnaround time. If you can print a job on the same day or overnight while still being more or less competitive in the pricing then you are a winner.
Printing industry bodies can help their members in many ways, but they can’t stop outsourcing. It’s a waste of time and will only delay the agony:
- help printers understand if their particular business is at risk and how soon the risk may materialize
- begin to advocate for less printing …….?????? !!!!!!!!!! Did I say that?
This may sound ridiculous, but no, it’s just cynical. The point is to start beating the drums as soon as a big printing contract goes overseas. Take for example some government department issuing a big tender that is likely to be won by a large print-buyer / print-broker and end up in China for the bulk of it. Fine with us, but we’ll ask you a question: Why do you need so much stuff printed? Can you deliver the information in a cheaper and more effective way? Can it be simply published on the website or emailed?
The answer depends on the amount of pressure you put on them. Most likely it’s YES, but some printing is still required. You’ve just scored a win, because the smaller run is more likely to be done locally and ON DEMAND.
At least this is true as far as outsourcing goes. A printing lobby advocating for less printing is a very strange and suspicious thing to happen. Leave it to the greenies. There are 101 reasons why printing should not be done at all and they are the best people to advocate for it. It may sound cynical, but it can be the only way for survival of smaller pockets of printing industry when that mighty outsourcing wave comes.
Printers that move into ON DEMAND and NOW area are going to survive if they enter the market early and build a good reputation.
Time to act!
And if I didn't make you worried with this post I'll hit you hard with an overview of electronic paper. Book publishers and sign makers beware! :-)
For now, take a break, look on the funny side of it
Outsourcing is a hot issue in other industries too. ICT was all abuzz a couple of years ago about Americans loosing jobs to their Indian colleagues. Nothing changed, really, but the world got used to it and I think it’s good. I’m proud to employ people from all over the globe. I say thank you to people from all over the globe who gave me jobs in the last few years.
Aussies got worried
So, printing is heading toOutsourcing benefits
1. Cost
2. Cost
3. Cost
Critical outsourcing difficulties
1. Four to eight weeks between the sign off and delivery
Mitigated outsourcing difficulties
Time zone difference, language barrier, cultural barrier, proofing are all easily overcome by agents and print brokers that reside where the customers are. There is not difference to the customer between the local agent and a local printing business.
What can be outsourced
- anything that can wait a few weeks, no matter how small the run is.
What cannot be outsourced
- products that are needed NOW
What can be done about outsourcing
There are thing that an individual printer can do and there are things that only industry bodies can do.
At the individual business level the best thing is to diversify into products that cannot be outsourced effectively. There are just too many of them to list here. Every printer knows what kind of products customers need “yesterday” and what kind of products can wait for weeks in pre-press without the customer calling back.
The key to success here is turnaround time. If you can print a job on the same day or overnight while still being more or less competitive in the pricing then you are a winner.
Printing industry bodies can help their members in many ways, but they can’t stop outsourcing. It’s a waste of time and will only delay the agony:
- help printers understand if their particular business is at risk and how soon the risk may materialize
- begin to advocate for less printing …….?????? !!!!!!!!!! Did I say that?
Less printing is better
This may sound ridiculous, but no, it’s just cynical. The point is to start beating the drums as soon as a big printing contract goes overseas. Take for example some government department issuing a big tender that is likely to be won by a large print-buyer / print-broker and end up in China for the bulk of it. Fine with us, but we’ll ask you a question: Why do you need so much stuff printed? Can you deliver the information in a cheaper and more effective way? Can it be simply published on the website or emailed?
The answer depends on the amount of pressure you put on them. Most likely it’s YES, but some printing is still required. You’ve just scored a win, because the smaller run is more likely to be done locally and ON DEMAND.
Greenies are printer’s best friends
At least this is true as far as outsourcing goes. A printing lobby advocating for less printing is a very strange and suspicious thing to happen. Leave it to the greenies. There are 101 reasons why printing should not be done at all and they are the best people to advocate for it. It may sound cynical, but it can be the only way for survival of smaller pockets of printing industry when that mighty outsourcing wave comes.
Print ON DEMAND / Print NOW
Printers that move into ON DEMAND and NOW area are going to survive if they enter the market early and build a good reputation.
Time to act!
And if I didn't make you worried with this post I'll hit you hard with an overview of electronic paper. Book publishers and sign makers beware! :-)
For now, take a break, look on the funny side of it
Saturday, December 16, 2006
The weight of a postcard
The world’s gone digital. iPods, PDAs, almighty-cellphones, emails, txt, you name it.
People are bombarded with electronic messages from all directions. Some are important, some are just unwanted interruption. The value of an electronic message is quite low, unless it’s something really special. The ability of electronic messages to make impact on us is probably lower that it used to be. I don’t have a proof for this, thou.
Well-meaning spam
You get an email with a message of peace and love from some religious organisation. What do you do? Probably mark it as junk without opening.
- it is not personal
- you don’t know who sent it
- you get too much spam anyway
You get an email from someone you don’t know with the same message …
There is a great chance your junk mail filter won’t even show it to you. To you it’s still junk even if it was sent by a real person.
Well meaning junk mail
Back to the real world of printed junk mail or whatever you call a leaflet about peace and love put into you letterbox alongside with all the other sales and specials. I hope you recycle. The chance you read it is tiny.
A postcard
I’d think it’s a different story. You get a postcard. It has a stamp. It says something, it was addressed to your home address, but not personally to you. It’s signed by a person you’ve never heard of. It says “Domestic violence is evil. You don’t own your wife or your kids. They have their rights too. ” And so on, and so forth. What am I on about, you may rightfully ask?
I accidentally stumbled across an article called “What women want... is freedom from fear” in a Malaysian publication The Star.
I’ve been to Malaysia and it’s a beautiful country. It’s a very diverse country, a real mix of cultures and races. Not sure it’s as democratic as other countries, but it’s obviously very civilized and women there want to be more and more independent. It can be pricy. Not every looser can stand it. Here comes the violence.
Some women got organized and printed a small run of postcards highlighting the problem. It was a dangerous undertaking for some of them. They had to keep their names secret.
The cards were placed in trendy restaurants and bars as “pick-me cards”. They had some success in drawing attention and the media. Not enough to change anything. It’s expensive and you just can’t print enough without some mighty sponsors.
They need:
- several catchy designs for their cards
- a friendly printer
- a friendly journo
- a friendly web-to-print provider
What they do:
Set up a simple website on the problem. A few pages will do. Place a link to a web-to-print site with the postcards.
Anyone can come to the site, click on the link, personalize the message on the card or maybe upload a photo of the injuries or something, pay a very small fee (cost of printing the card, presumably + postage), nominate a recipient and click SEND.
The card gets printed by the printer and posted. Someone finds it in the letter box a few days later. Consider the impact. Not the same as an email, isn’t it? Even more so if it’s the wife-beater himself.
It may sound crazy, but may well be worth a try. I “know” someone who will provide a web-to-print service for this. A risky move, I’d say. Someone can easily mount a DoS on the service or try to hack it. We’ll see.
Just to finish on a more peaceful and relaxing note … Have a listen. I really enjoyed this clip.
Cheers,
Max
People are bombarded with electronic messages from all directions. Some are important, some are just unwanted interruption. The value of an electronic message is quite low, unless it’s something really special. The ability of electronic messages to make impact on us is probably lower that it used to be. I don’t have a proof for this, thou.
Put yourself in these situations
Well-meaning spam
You get an email with a message of peace and love from some religious organisation. What do you do? Probably mark it as junk without opening.
- it is not personal
- you don’t know who sent it
- you get too much spam anyway
You get an email from someone you don’t know with the same message …
There is a great chance your junk mail filter won’t even show it to you. To you it’s still junk even if it was sent by a real person.
Well meaning junk mail
Back to the real world of printed junk mail or whatever you call a leaflet about peace and love put into you letterbox alongside with all the other sales and specials. I hope you recycle. The chance you read it is tiny.
A postcard
I’d think it’s a different story. You get a postcard. It has a stamp. It says something, it was addressed to your home address, but not personally to you. It’s signed by a person you’ve never heard of. It says “Domestic violence is evil. You don’t own your wife or your kids. They have their rights too. ” And so on, and so forth. What am I on about, you may rightfully ask?
I accidentally stumbled across an article called “What women want... is freedom from fear” in a Malaysian publication The Star.
I’ve been to Malaysia and it’s a beautiful country. It’s a very diverse country, a real mix of cultures and races. Not sure it’s as democratic as other countries, but it’s obviously very civilized and women there want to be more and more independent. It can be pricy. Not every looser can stand it. Here comes the violence.
Some women got organized and printed a small run of postcards highlighting the problem. It was a dangerous undertaking for some of them. They had to keep their names secret.
The cards were placed in trendy restaurants and bars as “pick-me cards”. They had some success in drawing attention and the media. Not enough to change anything. It’s expensive and you just can’t print enough without some mighty sponsors.
Now, here is an idea
They need:
- several catchy designs for their cards
- a friendly printer
- a friendly journo
- a friendly web-to-print provider
What they do:
Set up a simple website on the problem. A few pages will do. Place a link to a web-to-print site with the postcards.
Anyone can come to the site, click on the link, personalize the message on the card or maybe upload a photo of the injuries or something, pay a very small fee (cost of printing the card, presumably + postage), nominate a recipient and click SEND.
The card gets printed by the printer and posted. Someone finds it in the letter box a few days later. Consider the impact. Not the same as an email, isn’t it? Even more so if it’s the wife-beater himself.
It may sound crazy, but may well be worth a try. I “know” someone who will provide a web-to-print service for this. A risky move, I’d say. Someone can easily mount a DoS on the service or try to hack it. We’ll see.
Just to finish on a more peaceful and relaxing note … Have a listen. I really enjoyed this clip.
Cheers,
Max
VistaPrint - more than the average printer
Just a quick note to respond to John's comment about VistaPrint.
There is no free lunch and it has been proved many times over. VistaPrint is just another example, and by the look of it a nasty one.
First of all, there is a lot of spin about the company itself. I remember the PR they were pushing to investors a few months ago. It was saying something about patents and that they will delay entry of a competitor to the market.
Don't want to be rude, but it's just bullshit. I saw those patents. A pure PR exercise. Read what this guy has to say about investing in VistaPrint.
Another interesting theme about them is ... customer complaints and their unwillingless to resolve them. See this post on wordpress.com
And finally, a few ideas on how they make the money from free business cards.
- sell your details as the most accurate to spammers and scammers (they are very accurate indeed and many people will pay premium $$$ to get hold of them)
- sign you up with a reward programm you never asked for. You get charged on a regular basis until you notice and begin to dispute it. The rumor has it that people have troubles stopping the charges and very few got their $$$ back.
Better Business Bureau ranked VistaPrint the 2nd most complained business
Another collection of complaints against VistaPrint.
In fact, I've been asking around and found someone local who ordered from them about a year ago. This lady told me the quality was below average and she has no intention dealing with them again.
Now, I'm going to run an experiment.I will order from them using a clean never ever listed anywhere email, a brand new PO Box and so on. Watch this space!
Now, follow my instructions:
- log out
- go outside and discovere there is a whole life out there! :-)
If you didn't listen to me and stayed on, there is a really funny website. Enjoy!
There is no free lunch and it has been proved many times over. VistaPrint is just another example, and by the look of it a nasty one.
First of all, there is a lot of spin about the company itself. I remember the PR they were pushing to investors a few months ago. It was saying something about patents and that they will delay entry of a competitor to the market.
Don't want to be rude, but it's just bullshit. I saw those patents. A pure PR exercise. Read what this guy has to say about investing in VistaPrint.
Another interesting theme about them is ... customer complaints and their unwillingless to resolve them. See this post on wordpress.com
And finally, a few ideas on how they make the money from free business cards.
- sell your details as the most accurate to spammers and scammers (they are very accurate indeed and many people will pay premium $$$ to get hold of them)
- sign you up with a reward programm you never asked for. You get charged on a regular basis until you notice and begin to dispute it. The rumor has it that people have troubles stopping the charges and very few got their $$$ back.
Free business cards did you say?
Better Business Bureau ranked VistaPrint the 2nd most complained business
Another collection of complaints against VistaPrint.
In fact, I've been asking around and found someone local who ordered from them about a year ago. This lady told me the quality was below average and she has no intention dealing with them again.
Now, I'm going to run an experiment.I will order from them using a clean never ever listed anywhere email, a brand new PO Box and so on. Watch this space!
Now, follow my instructions:
- log out
- go outside and discovere there is a whole life out there! :-)
If you didn't listen to me and stayed on, there is a really funny website. Enjoy!
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Tough questions for a web-to-print vendor
So, you are facing a choice of buying a system versus using a service. A tough call!
Really, everything depends on the requirements. There is no one straightforward answer either way. What is good in one situation may be unacceptable in the other. We won’t get into too much discussion about this part of the decision making.
What I want to mention in this quick post is specific to web-to-print.
I’m not talking about some text manipulation using a PDF library. I mean something quite complex with multiple user images, texts on paths, clipping paths, conditional formatting, various text effects and transformations. Notice, all that is in the variable part of the template!
A file like this may take a few seconds to open, then every manipulation will take some milliseconds adding to the total time, then generating a JPEG or even worse a PDF file as the final output for printing. We are talking seconds here on a reasonably powerful multi-CPU machine.
Take a log file of a B2B system serving customers in a particular time zone. I bet there will be 2 humps and the rest will be almost flat.
People come to the office, have coffees, go to meetings. The peak in activity is usually between 09:30-11:30 and 13:30-16:00. It’s only 4,5 hrs out of 24!
80% of your orders will come thru within these 2 short timeslots.
Server utilisation
If you think you can serve all your orders using only one server you either going to have very few orders or see people queuing up and some giving up. Too bad. Time to think of the licensing model you signed up to: per site (good), per box (add more CPUs), per CPU (they got you!).
Adding more CPUs solves the problem only to some extent. A 4-CPU machine may only be 50% faster because of all the other bottlenecks. Its cost can be up to 3 times more than a dual-CPU machine. Then here come all the other licenses, unless you are lucky to run it on Linux.
Ignore the sales pitch. Ask the vendor some technical questions and insist on giving you definitive answers and even making them part of the contract.
How long will take to process a template of a certain complexity?
How long will take on a template that is even more complex?
What are the performance indicators on speed of image manipulation?
What is the performance increase if you add 1 more CPU?
What does the licensing say about adding more CPUs?
What is the utilization curve or how does the performance scale with increase in utilization?
Just to expand on this one …
Processing 2 requests at the same time may be 4 times slower, processing 3 may be 9 times slower and so on.
Ask them for statistics from other sites. They are probably selling you a lemon.
If they finally sold you a lemon and it just won't work, there is always a workaround :-)
Happy printing!
Really, everything depends on the requirements. There is no one straightforward answer either way. What is good in one situation may be unacceptable in the other. We won’t get into too much discussion about this part of the decision making.
What I want to mention in this quick post is specific to web-to-print.
First of all, a decent web-to-print is computationally intensive
I’m not talking about some text manipulation using a PDF library. I mean something quite complex with multiple user images, texts on paths, clipping paths, conditional formatting, various text effects and transformations. Notice, all that is in the variable part of the template!
A file like this may take a few seconds to open, then every manipulation will take some milliseconds adding to the total time, then generating a JPEG or even worse a PDF file as the final output for printing. We are talking seconds here on a reasonably powerful multi-CPU machine.
The second thing to understand is the peak in usage.
Take a log file of a B2B system serving customers in a particular time zone. I bet there will be 2 humps and the rest will be almost flat.
People come to the office, have coffees, go to meetings. The peak in activity is usually between 09:30-11:30 and 13:30-16:00. It’s only 4,5 hrs out of 24!
80% of your orders will come thru within these 2 short timeslots.
Server utilisation
If you think you can serve all your orders using only one server you either going to have very few orders or see people queuing up and some giving up. Too bad. Time to think of the licensing model you signed up to: per site (good), per box (add more CPUs), per CPU (they got you!).
Adding more CPUs solves the problem only to some extent. A 4-CPU machine may only be 50% faster because of all the other bottlenecks. Its cost can be up to 3 times more than a dual-CPU machine. Then here come all the other licenses, unless you are lucky to run it on Linux.
What to ask your vendor
Ignore the sales pitch. Ask the vendor some technical questions and insist on giving you definitive answers and even making them part of the contract.
How long will take to process a template of a certain complexity?
How long will take on a template that is even more complex?
What are the performance indicators on speed of image manipulation?
What is the performance increase if you add 1 more CPU?
What does the licensing say about adding more CPUs?
What is the utilization curve or how does the performance scale with increase in utilization?
Just to expand on this one …
Processing 2 requests at the same time may be 4 times slower, processing 3 may be 9 times slower and so on.
What if they tell you that it all depends and so on?
Ask them for statistics from other sites. They are probably selling you a lemon.
If they finally sold you a lemon and it just won't work, there is always a workaround :-)
Happy printing!
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
How to beat global online printers at their own game - Part II
In my yesterday’s posting I listed 3 main weak spots of global online printers:
- poor designs
- small choice of designs when narrowed down to a category or style
- questionable quality (not necessary bad, but it’s not clear what it will look like on paper)
I’d also add one more - complicated interface. It doesn’t apply to VistaPrint, thou. Have a look at OverNightPrints. I find them very complicated.
A completely opposite opinion was expressed by a friend of mine who does a lot of orders with OverNightPrints and thinks that ZetaPrint’s web-to-print interface is too simple.
Enough of yep-yep-yep, bad-bad-bad.
A bit on the positive side for all the other small printers…
Good designs, great choice
It’s unrealistic for a small printing shop to produce thousands of great designs for their customers to choose from. It is plain stupid to tell a customer to go find a designer and get a design done. Very few will ever bother. It is too expensive to provide design service onsite for small one-off runs.
How about a single design central with web-to-print?
Something with thousands of templates produced by different designers for different occasions. You can choose with the customer right then and there. The rest is easy. The customer would type in details, pay a few dollars online and download a press-ready PDF file. Maybe 15 minutes? OK, make it 20 to have a proper look. The customization shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes. All done while you are busy doing other stuff around the shop.
Sounds too easy and unrealistic. Well, there is no service like this at the moment. Watch this space and pssst … don’t tell anyone. We are busy here making it all happen.
You obviously need to excel in what you do, unless you try to compete on price and loose it in the end anyway.
There is a clear advantage in being local. Your customers can touch and feel that stock. They don’t need to learn the difference between 200gsm gloss and 300gsm satin. It’s so much better to touch it and just point your finger at “This one, please.”.
Of cause the print quality must be good. It must be really good or they won’t come back.
Well, it’s hard to compete with the enterprises of scale on price alone. I’d say that 10% to 20% price difference on a small business cards order won’t make any difference to the consumer. The effect is more psychological here – “VistaPrint is half your price!” and the rest doesn’t matter.
I’d expect 30% difference to be in the range when you can say something about print quality and stock. Anything more than that 30% difference and you need to be a very good salesman to convince the customer.
Marketing online to a local audience using web-to-print is much cheaper than doing it country-wide or globally. The cost per click would be something around $1-$3. Your ad may say something like “Order online with your local printer. Pickup or overnight delivery.”. That would be a better proposition than from some obscure printer without any local contact details.
Thinking of a small town situation (just like the one I’m in) it would make perfect sense to stick a large poster in your front window
100 business cards for $xx while you wait
Choose from 5000 designs
www.your-local-printer.com
A footpath sign and maybe a banner outside won’t cost you much either.
Don’t forget that if you do great funky business cards for one builder then all his mates will come to you too. The word-of-mouth advertising is probably your most powerful weapon here.
And the usual bread and butter of a local printer - small businesses around you. Set them up online. It’s not gonna cost you anything. A small leaflet drop around the CBD with the URL of your website is all what’s needed, assuming you can take orders online.
There is no silver bullet and there is no one simple answer. A design portal with web-to-print can be a powerful tool in your hands. Then it comes down to the quality of your service and how effectively you market it.
And as usual, on the lighter side of things ...
Check xkcd.com for more :-)
- poor designs
- small choice of designs when narrowed down to a category or style
- questionable quality (not necessary bad, but it’s not clear what it will look like on paper)
I’d also add one more - complicated interface. It doesn’t apply to VistaPrint, thou. Have a look at OverNightPrints. I find them very complicated.
A completely opposite opinion was expressed by a friend of mine who does a lot of orders with OverNightPrints and thinks that ZetaPrint’s web-to-print interface is too simple.
Enough of yep-yep-yep, bad-bad-bad.
A bit on the positive side for all the other small printers…
Good designs, great choice
It’s unrealistic for a small printing shop to produce thousands of great designs for their customers to choose from. It is plain stupid to tell a customer to go find a designer and get a design done. Very few will ever bother. It is too expensive to provide design service onsite for small one-off runs.
How about a single design central with web-to-print?
Something with thousands of templates produced by different designers for different occasions. You can choose with the customer right then and there. The rest is easy. The customer would type in details, pay a few dollars online and download a press-ready PDF file. Maybe 15 minutes? OK, make it 20 to have a proper look. The customization shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes. All done while you are busy doing other stuff around the shop.
Sounds too easy and unrealistic. Well, there is no service like this at the moment. Watch this space and pssst … don’t tell anyone. We are busy here making it all happen.
Quality stock, quality print, quality service
You obviously need to excel in what you do, unless you try to compete on price and loose it in the end anyway.
There is a clear advantage in being local. Your customers can touch and feel that stock. They don’t need to learn the difference between 200gsm gloss and 300gsm satin. It’s so much better to touch it and just point your finger at “This one, please.”.
Of cause the print quality must be good. It must be really good or they won’t come back.
Price
Well, it’s hard to compete with the enterprises of scale on price alone. I’d say that 10% to 20% price difference on a small business cards order won’t make any difference to the consumer. The effect is more psychological here – “VistaPrint is half your price!” and the rest doesn’t matter.
I’d expect 30% difference to be in the range when you can say something about print quality and stock. Anything more than that 30% difference and you need to be a very good salesman to convince the customer.
Marketing
Marketing online to a local audience using web-to-print is much cheaper than doing it country-wide or globally. The cost per click would be something around $1-$3. Your ad may say something like “Order online with your local printer. Pickup or overnight delivery.”. That would be a better proposition than from some obscure printer without any local contact details.
Thinking of a small town situation (just like the one I’m in) it would make perfect sense to stick a large poster in your front window
100 business cards for $xx while you wait
Choose from 5000 designs
www.your-local-printer.com
A footpath sign and maybe a banner outside won’t cost you much either.
Don’t forget that if you do great funky business cards for one builder then all his mates will come to you too. The word-of-mouth advertising is probably your most powerful weapon here.
Corporates
And the usual bread and butter of a local printer - small businesses around you. Set them up online. It’s not gonna cost you anything. A small leaflet drop around the CBD with the URL of your website is all what’s needed, assuming you can take orders online.
Conclusion
There is no silver bullet and there is no one simple answer. A design portal with web-to-print can be a powerful tool in your hands. Then it comes down to the quality of your service and how effectively you market it.
And as usual, on the lighter side of things ...
Check xkcd.com for more :-)
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
How to beat global online printers at their own game - Part I
You probably all heard about VistaPrint. You must have, if you ever searched for some kind of printing in a search engine. VistaPrint usually comes on top. If you are lucky enough to be from the Antipodes (that’s us, Kiwis and Aussies) there is a chance you heard about TheOnlinePrinter. These two pay anything up to $14 per click in Google to be at the top of the search, but their prices are hard to beat.
They know how to do printing business online. VistaPrint is listed in Nasdaq and seems to be doing well. The OnlinePrinter is a more modest operation, but looking at the resent revamp of their website it cost them a few dollars. Money well spent.
So, they have the money, they are at the top of Google Ads, their prices are unbeatable and they take orders online. This is just the right mix to attract a small business for something like business cards or a small promotional item. Do small local printers stand a chance there?
Not the way they operate at the moment, but not all is lost.
Awful designs
They must be paying their designers peanuts coz they obviously got monkeys. All designs look the same with very small variations. They are quite bleak and unattractive.
Limited number of designs
There are 28 business card categories totalling approximately at 1,400 designs. Sounds like a lot, but in fact it’s not. I would have real troubles choosing anything decent there.
Questionable quality
As a consumer, how do I know what it’s going to look and feel like on paper?
How would I know the difference between 200gsm and 350gsm?
Most people won’t even know what that means!
The site looks cheap, the designs look cheap, the price is low … what shall one think? The card will look cheap as well.
This may not be necessary true because I heard they do really good quality on good stock. Never seen that myself, thou.
Their strong point here is giving away free business cards. It’s an awesome word-of-mouth advertising aproach.
So, we got VistaPrint on 3 points.
This website has a lot of promises, but is similar to VistaPrint in style. They offer approximately 120 business card designs that looked even worse than Vista’s. Then I had to use Flash plug-in to customize it like in a desktop publishing application. Hang on a minute, mate …. I’m a plumber. What do you want from me? If I could do designs I wouldn’t be a plumber. I don’t want and cannot customize and align and do what you ask me to do. Just can’t be bothered!
So, we got The OnlinePrinter on a few points as well.
Now it’s time to exploit these 3 weaknesses to your own advantage. More on this in Part II.
And while you are waiting there is a little bit of screen printing. Not for faint-hearted! :-)
I like the application of AmericanExpress there :-))
They know how to do printing business online. VistaPrint is listed in Nasdaq and seems to be doing well. The OnlinePrinter is a more modest operation, but looking at the resent revamp of their website it cost them a few dollars. Money well spent.
So, they have the money, they are at the top of Google Ads, their prices are unbeatable and they take orders online. This is just the right mix to attract a small business for something like business cards or a small promotional item. Do small local printers stand a chance there?
Not the way they operate at the moment, but not all is lost.
First of all, let’s look at the weak spots.
VistaPrint weaknesses
Awful designs
They must be paying their designers peanuts coz they obviously got monkeys. All designs look the same with very small variations. They are quite bleak and unattractive.
Limited number of designs
There are 28 business card categories totalling approximately at 1,400 designs. Sounds like a lot, but in fact it’s not. I would have real troubles choosing anything decent there.
Questionable quality
As a consumer, how do I know what it’s going to look and feel like on paper?
How would I know the difference between 200gsm and 350gsm?
Most people won’t even know what that means!
The site looks cheap, the designs look cheap, the price is low … what shall one think? The card will look cheap as well.
This may not be necessary true because I heard they do really good quality on good stock. Never seen that myself, thou.
Their strong point here is giving away free business cards. It’s an awesome word-of-mouth advertising aproach.
So, we got VistaPrint on 3 points.
The OnlinePrinter
This website has a lot of promises, but is similar to VistaPrint in style. They offer approximately 120 business card designs that looked even worse than Vista’s. Then I had to use Flash plug-in to customize it like in a desktop publishing application. Hang on a minute, mate …. I’m a plumber. What do you want from me? If I could do designs I wouldn’t be a plumber. I don’t want and cannot customize and align and do what you ask me to do. Just can’t be bothered!
So, we got The OnlinePrinter on a few points as well.
Now it’s time to exploit these 3 weaknesses to your own advantage. More on this in Part II.
And while you are waiting there is a little bit of screen printing. Not for faint-hearted! :-)
I like the application of AmericanExpress there :-))
Monday, December 11, 2006
My new hobby – junk mail collection
Hey folks, how’s your letter box coping with the tons of pre-Christmas junk?
Mine is splitting sides.
I watched a steady stream of junk delivery boys and girls stopping at my letterbox labelled “No junk mail”. Never mind. At least I recycle.
I weighed it at the end of the day - about 300grams. A quick search on The Net returned a document by a Resource Conservation Alliance. Here are some facts:
Paper produced worldwide: 300 million tons or 40% of logged trees (legally logged only?)
The US consumes 4 million tons of copy paper, 2 million books, 350 million magazines and 25 billion newspapers annually.
Junk mail: 90 billion pieces per ann in the US alone.
Where does it all end up?
To the tip - 40% of all solid waste is paper (for US municipal landfills).
These numbers are not supported by any research in the paper I obtained, but what I believe is there are too many trees being logged. So, my new hobby is …
Not sure what I will do with it and what my … will say about the endless boxes with fire hazard in the garage.
On the lighter side of things, I discovered that I’m a possession of 2 cute envelope openers if you believe what you see here …
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Mine is over. 12 past midnight, Monday. :-)
Mine is splitting sides.
I watched a steady stream of junk delivery boys and girls stopping at my letterbox labelled “No junk mail”. Never mind. At least I recycle.
I weighed it at the end of the day - about 300grams. A quick search on The Net returned a document by a Resource Conservation Alliance. Here are some facts:
Paper produced worldwide: 300 million tons or 40% of logged trees (legally logged only?)
The US consumes 4 million tons of copy paper, 2 million books, 350 million magazines and 25 billion newspapers annually.
Junk mail: 90 billion pieces per ann in the US alone.
Where does it all end up?
To the tip - 40% of all solid waste is paper (for US municipal landfills).
These numbers are not supported by any research in the paper I obtained, but what I believe is there are too many trees being logged. So, my new hobby is …
I will collect every piece of junk mail put into my letterbox in 2007
Not sure what I will do with it and what my … will say about the endless boxes with fire hazard in the garage.
On the lighter side of things, I discovered that I’m a possession of 2 cute envelope openers if you believe what you see here …
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Mine is over. 12 past midnight, Monday. :-)
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Disruptive Technology - Part II
Is web-to-print market overserved?
I'd say that it is.
Look how many offers are out there and how much they changed in the last couple of years.
There was almost no change. The same vendors are offering the same web-to-print products. Everyone who could afford to buy them had already done so.
Most of those web-to-print products grew from MIS solutions and come as add-ons. You can't really get web-to-print on its own. They want you to buy the rest as well. Very-very few printers actually need an MIS. Even for those who do, it doesn't always make financial sense as the ROI is often questionable.
Does web-to-print require learning new skills?
No, not for the end users. A good web-to-print service is very easy to use.
Everyone these days is familiar with basic concepts of filling in a form in a web browser and submitting the data to the server.
Then it all comes down to how usable the interface is.
The designers may need to do a bit of learning or a lot of learning.
My opinion that there should be as little learning as possible. It should be all intuitive enough to be learned or discovered along the way.
Does web-to-print open new avenues and opportunities as a technology?
Take for example an Australian telco Telstra and their New Zealand off-shoot TelstraClear.
They implemented a voice recognition system for their customer service. It used to be "Press 1 for ... press 2 for ... "
Now, it takes a 30 sec introduction, then a long question and then 3 to 5 attempts to tell the damn stupid thing what you actually want. Try it with any accent or speach impediment!
What's the change for the end user? Did it enable any of us to get thru the menu faster? No way!
Can we call it a disruptive technology?
Well, it difinitely disrupts the state of mind whoever trys to use it.
It's not the same with web-to-print.
I'd say that ordering business cards via email or phone is most unnatural. I want to see what I'm ordering. I feel much better when I pay for something I can see and like it before I part with my $$$.
Web-to-print definitely brings more balance into the process. I can see what I'm ordering and I know it will be very close in print to what I see. I'm the one in control making it look the way I want.
A template based web-to-print allows unskilled people to do the work previously done by skilled people only.
Designs should be done by designers, those that can make it look nice. Most of people can't, no matter how hard they try.
Now people can pick a professional design and personalize it with their data and imagery. The key here is that the layout, colours and fonts remain the same way the designer designed it. Whatever I type in it still looks good!
So, what's the conlusion?
I believe that an easy to use and affordable web-to-print service is a disruptive technology, but there are some pitfalls ...
I'll talk about them next time.
I'd say that it is.
Look how many offers are out there and how much they changed in the last couple of years.
There was almost no change. The same vendors are offering the same web-to-print products. Everyone who could afford to buy them had already done so.
Most of those web-to-print products grew from MIS solutions and come as add-ons. You can't really get web-to-print on its own. They want you to buy the rest as well. Very-very few printers actually need an MIS. Even for those who do, it doesn't always make financial sense as the ROI is often questionable.
Does web-to-print require learning new skills?
No, not for the end users. A good web-to-print service is very easy to use.
Everyone these days is familiar with basic concepts of filling in a form in a web browser and submitting the data to the server.
Then it all comes down to how usable the interface is.
The designers may need to do a bit of learning or a lot of learning.
My opinion that there should be as little learning as possible. It should be all intuitive enough to be learned or discovered along the way.
Does web-to-print open new avenues and opportunities as a technology?
Take for example an Australian telco Telstra and their New Zealand off-shoot TelstraClear.
They implemented a voice recognition system for their customer service. It used to be "Press 1 for ... press 2 for ... "
Now, it takes a 30 sec introduction, then a long question and then 3 to 5 attempts to tell the damn stupid thing what you actually want. Try it with any accent or speach impediment!
What's the change for the end user? Did it enable any of us to get thru the menu faster? No way!
Can we call it a disruptive technology?
Well, it difinitely disrupts the state of mind whoever trys to use it.
It's not the same with web-to-print.
I'd say that ordering business cards via email or phone is most unnatural. I want to see what I'm ordering. I feel much better when I pay for something I can see and like it before I part with my $$$.
Web-to-print definitely brings more balance into the process. I can see what I'm ordering and I know it will be very close in print to what I see. I'm the one in control making it look the way I want.
A template based web-to-print allows unskilled people to do the work previously done by skilled people only.
Designs should be done by designers, those that can make it look nice. Most of people can't, no matter how hard they try.
Now people can pick a professional design and personalize it with their data and imagery. The key here is that the layout, colours and fonts remain the same way the designer designed it. Whatever I type in it still looks good!
So, what's the conlusion?
I believe that an easy to use and affordable web-to-print service is a disruptive technology, but there are some pitfalls ...
I'll talk about them next time.
Friday, December 8, 2006
What am I doing here?
Hello world!
I started this blog with a particular purpose of writing on one interesting technology. It's called web-to-print. I have a little vested interest in it, but I hope it won't skew the overall picture.
A very interesting thing I heard this morning. I had thought that web-to-print is an emerging technology. Not any more. They way Zetaprints presented it it's called a disruptive technology. There is an old (2004), but I believe still valid article in CIO about it.
I'll try to get someone else explain it here in more details.
That article sets some criteria for a disruptive technology. Let's see if web-to-print qualifies, according to professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School.
Is web-to-print seen as a threat or opportunity?
Depends on how you look at it.
If you blow a few hundred thousand dollars on a monster like EFI - it's an opportunity. You may or may not utilise it, but it feels good and you can tick that box in your CV before you are fired for wasting shareholders' $$$.
If you are a small local printer and you go and something basic like printable or even better go and get yourself a web-to-print service at a fraction of a fraction of cost of that EFI monster you become a threat. First of all you are a threat to your immediate competition. Second you become a threat to that large printer that spent all the $$$ on EFI.
Response from the "leaders"
If you are a disruptor they try to replicate you, but what they don't understand is that it's not just about the technology. It's the entire model, the approach, the mindset. It's about being new and wedging into the existing market. So, they suddenly all decide to go and offer web-to-print services instead of good old sales.
Well, if you are that disruptive technology then they should fail. If you are just an inovation, then they should be able to nick it and the world forgets about you.
Iguess only time will tell.
Is the market overserved?
it's a tough one ...
I have to think about it...
I started this blog with a particular purpose of writing on one interesting technology. It's called web-to-print. I have a little vested interest in it, but I hope it won't skew the overall picture.
A very interesting thing I heard this morning. I had thought that web-to-print is an emerging technology. Not any more. They way Zetaprints presented it it's called a disruptive technology. There is an old (2004), but I believe still valid article in CIO about it.
I'll try to get someone else explain it here in more details.
That article sets some criteria for a disruptive technology. Let's see if web-to-print qualifies, according to professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School.
Is web-to-print seen as a threat or opportunity?
Depends on how you look at it.
If you blow a few hundred thousand dollars on a monster like EFI - it's an opportunity. You may or may not utilise it, but it feels good and you can tick that box in your CV before you are fired for wasting shareholders' $$$.
If you are a small local printer and you go and something basic like printable or even better go and get yourself a web-to-print service at a fraction of a fraction of cost of that EFI monster you become a threat. First of all you are a threat to your immediate competition. Second you become a threat to that large printer that spent all the $$$ on EFI.
Response from the "leaders"
If you are a disruptor they try to replicate you, but what they don't understand is that it's not just about the technology. It's the entire model, the approach, the mindset. It's about being new and wedging into the existing market. So, they suddenly all decide to go and offer web-to-print services instead of good old sales.
Well, if you are that disruptive technology then they should fail. If you are just an inovation, then they should be able to nick it and the world forgets about you.
Iguess only time will tell.
Is the market overserved?
it's a tough one ...
I have to think about it...
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