The 7 per cent Solution of G

You can still buy the printed book or the movie version on Amazon, we checked

Yesterday, we were doing some research and entered this question in the algorithm's jaws:  "Size of Commercial Printing Industry."

One gets back all kinds of results ranging from $79 billion dollars to about 100 billion dollars.  Big, by anyone's yardstick.

And that got us thinking about a discussion with a printer-friend who told us about learning that his best customer, a business that accounted for 20% of the printer's annual revenue was now in bankruptcy and full liquidation. Gulp.

These are harrowing times in our big but battered global graphic arts industry,  And we hope that every printer, great or small knows exactly the per cent-age of revenue attributed to your top ten customers.  Maybe you have one firm that is throwing off  5 per cent or 7 per cent or God forbid, 20 per cent of your overall revenue.  If so, stay close to them, very, very close.

And the same would apply to any one of your top ten key clients.

The solution for keeping a client that accounts for 7 per cent of revenue, is to look for every possible means to stay close to them, visit them, thank them, reward them and build out the relationship so masterfully that you can anticipate ways in which your products and services can help them sell more to their clients.

In these wickedly fast times, folks have a penchant for pulling in their horns a little, they cut marketing dollars at the exact moment when investing in an ever closer relationship with key clients is crucial.

We have firms in Toronto and Detroit, in Vancouver and Seattle and in New York and Iowa and California and overseas too who are still working on their International Gallery entries for 2010.

We accommodate them as one of those entries might be a 7 per cent Solution of

There are a few firms that always submit entries and haven't so far in 2010, so we ask them why, (we try to stay close to our key clients too!)

For most, the answer is centered on TIME, they are running super lean and are just tuckered out.  A few offer the canard that they didn't print anything of quality this year (oh oh!) but most just say, they need time.

So we suggest that you remember how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

Identify your top 3 customers, look through what you have done for them this year, and select one or two projects you recall the client seemed very proud of, and presto, the hard work is done, you have executed a smart marketing strategy, and should you win an award on behalf of a most assuredly delighted client, well you will thank your lucky leprechaun you found some time.  Remember this happy picture of Mike Kenna from Printery Communications presenting an award to an important customer?

(of course if you go through what you have done for your top 3 clients and still can't find anything of any quality, just maybe there is a different problem....)

Last Friday, Kevin Sperrazza from Power Print in Connecticut contacted us looking for a printer in Orange County California who could tackle a post card printing project, as you might surmise, we could direct Kevin to half a dozen firms whose work we became familiar with due to their entries in past International Gallery events.  And in every case, we closed the e-mail connections with the true observation: Gallery can be Good for Busine$$!

Also on Friday, we collected a number of entry parcels from firms like MWM Dexter in Springfield, Missouri, and Hawk Embossing in Concord, California, and JRS Print Solutions in Calgary, Alberta and Esprit Graphic Communications in Kennewick, Washington.

If awards aren't important to customers, and employees and owners and the local press too, then why do so many (and probably most) printing firm websites present a visual depiction of awards won?

http://www.hawkembossing.com/awards.php#images/awards/158.jpg

So gentle reader, check the clock, check the revenue reports and relax.  You have time, and you need to do this thing, this 7 per cent Solution of G.

Here, for the final time this season, is the 2010 Call for Entries.  The deadline (really truly doubly final deadline) is 31 August.

"Excellence, Watson, we reward excellence, it's elementary my good man!"

http://blog.americanprinter.com/kob/

In a message dated 8/4/2010 4:04:52 P.M. Central Daylight Time, steve@copresco writes:

I have entries! Now I need to fill out the paperwork and send them.
What's my dead (as in, after that, you're dead) line ?

***************************************************
Steve Johnson   630/690-2000     fax 630/690-8182
Copresco         Digital On-Demand Printing
http://twitter.com/copresco
***************************************************

"August 31st my good man," thus sayeth Holmes to his little known side-kick the loopy lawyer leprechaun named Lucky.

Kev-bo Keane-O -- Qwerty Query

Matthew Alexander is president of Colour Innovations in Toronto and is an IAPHC member, his website has a section titled: "Do Printing Awards Matter?" and the section goes on to answer in a compelling manner with a resounding affirmative YES They DO!

They matter to customers, employees, owners and the press.

The photo shows IAPHC Member John Robinson, president of Artcraft Label in Burlington Ontario Canada, his wife Edna and two members of their team in front of their International Gallery Awards Wall of Fame.

Kevin, I sent an entry off yesterday. Should arrive on Monday in MN.
Your efforts motivated me to enter.

Just wanted you to know.

ScottCappel

Sorrento Mesa Printing
7398 Trade Street
San Diego, CA 92121-2422

So you can see gentle reader, that entries are still enroute from every corner of North America and indeed the globe.  Printing awards matter, and you still have time to pound out a message on your QWERTY keyboard:

"Hey Kev-bo, can I still send some award winning submissions you persistently and patently bald cuss?"

iPhone and Going Postal Cardashian

The wonderful graphics industry website in the UK (Print Week) had an article online Monday (5 July 2010):

http://www.printweek.com/news/1014127/ADP-launches-postcard-app-iPhone/

The opener to the article by Jez Abbott revealed:

"Advantage Digital Print (ADP) has launched an iPhone app that enables users to create and upload postcards that the company then prints and sends.

Post cards created on the iPostcard app are sent via FTP at 4pm every day and are then printed on 300gsm card on the Dorchester printer's Xerox iGen4 press.

They are given a UV gloss finish, collected by Royal Mail at 5.15pm and sent anywhere in the world. iPostcards cost 99p for UK and £1.49 for worldwide delivery."

Wait a minute, we said, wasn't there a Illinois printing firm that had done something similar ??? and Google agreed, and reminded us of the PixyMe app for the iPhone:

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/pixyme-app-drives-sales-of-virtual-physical-postcards/

Note especially, the image personalization feature of the PixyMe app, and that in addition to printed postcards, the messages can be sent via several social media platforms.  Frank DeFino Jr. at Tukaiz is a heckuva marketeer, and he may have been one of the first to create an iPhone app for post card production, but by no means was he the only one; Kevin Kurz, president of PrintYourLife.com in Tucker, Georgia got his app team rocking in 2008:

http://www.printyourlife.com/About.html

And in that red sauce (ersatz?) state of Bolonga, Italy, your iPhone can hook up with Postino courtesy of:

http://www.angurialab.com/

 And in fact, ADP is not alone in the UK, TouchNote.com is also in the field:

http://www.touchnote.com/all-about/about-touchnote/more-about-the-company/

What we like about all of these efforts is the presence of mind (and probably a few freakishly smart IT felleristas too :) to not be run over in despair by the onrush of new technology but rather to leverage it to build new markets, and new opportunities.

And since a moving picture always tells the story rather well, here's a You Tube video featuring the legendary Apple Macintosh software developer Bill Atkinson showing his post card app for the iPhone.

Cheers,

Kevin Keane

Gallery and Google analytics

A simple search command:  "International Gallery" is entered into the maw of the algorithm driven super-duper computers and presto:

http://www.merrillcorp.com/news-releases_2398.htm

and

Whether for reasons of corporate pride, or honoring the teamwork of dedicated employees or, perhaps most important, saluting a valued client, market savvy designers/printers/finishers and more understand the connections their clients make between award winning promotion and comprehension of the clients marketing vision.

Our Mission-Mandate at the IAPHC, The Graphics Professionals Resource Network is to Educate/Promote/Inform/Connect all members with the global graphic community.

Educate:

We belong to an ever growing list of social networking groups related to the graphic arts and we are "likers," (formerly "fans") of many printing and graphics company Facebook Pages.

One of the LinkedIn Groups we like best (and highly recommend to you) is Market Your Printing Company, a group started by Mary Beth Smith.

Last month, Scott Cappel, owner of Sorrento Mesa Printing Company in San Diego asked members of that group to evaluate his new website.  He offered a useful tool (EDUCATE) and two new friends of ours, Patrick Whelan of Great Reach Inc, and prepress guru/visionary Gordon Pritchard weighed in with some useful nuggets too:

PROMOTE:

Making publicity work for you and your firm is made easier when you have newsworthy news to share,  And winning awards is a time tested model to get your name in lights, as it were.

Millmar Paper's Xtreme Coated Cover Wins Best of Show at On Demand
After winning both gold and silver ADDYs at the 2009 Philadelphia Ad Club Awards Show, Xtreme Coated Cover's For Xtreme Ideas Only swatch book has claimed yet another prestigious award, being recognized with a Best of Show in the Innovations in Paper Usage and Substrates category at the 2009 On Demand Conference & Exposition. The award and the awards show were presented in partnership with InfoTrends, a leading market research firm.

Matt Feldman, president of Millmar Paper is an IAPHC member, and we have congratulated him for the above publicity, and of course encouraged him to enter the Xtreme Coated Cover swatch book in the 2010 International Gallery.  IAPHC member Jay Mandarino's CJ Graphics often enters swatch books printed for such firms as Neenah Paper,  Trina May and Laura Weber of GPA, Specialty Substrate Solutions entered a swatch book for the GPA Ultra line 2 years ago, and won Gold. (GPA is a new Association Partner Program {APP} patron member of the IAPHC and we thank all our friends as that very busy company.)  Lisa Richards, then marketing VP at Central Lewmar Paper entered a swatch book printed by Pomco Graphic Arts in Philadelphia in the 2008 International Gallery and it too won Gold.

Every one of of the aforementioned firms obtained publicity from their Gallery successes.  You need to PROMOTE your firm in good times and in bad, and we think that it's an essential yet little comprehended benefit of entering the International Gallery.  We know everyone is time pressed and over stressed, but Promotion has power with prospective clients.

Patrick Whelan, as we have noted before, assists printing companies and IAPHC member firms such as Twill Printing in Berkeley Heights New Jersey(George Twill, company president is our member connection) and Foster Printing in Michigan City Indiana (Gene Toepfer, Director of Sales is our member connection.)

Both firms use an excellent monthly e-newsletter service provided by Patrick and we often republish them to the IAPHC LinkedIn Group as it is sooooo easy to do that trick when the Share button is included right in the e-news.

And in so doing we promote Twill and Foster and Great Reach too!

We have also said, that we like Twill Printing's e-newsletter because one sees pictures of George, his brother Peter and other key managers along with their direct e-mail addresses.  Because that time pressed phenomenon applies to your customers and your prospective clients too, making it easy to find you, and using a picture to make a human connection just makes good business sense.

A photo of the handsome crew at Twill, note the array of International Gallery Awards on the wall behind the team.

The other day we visited a dentist whose team were all grads of Mengele's Musee of Molar Misery,  As we waited in abject apprehension, we picked up a magazine called Cabin Life.  And right there in the masthead of this niche publication produced by Kalmbach Publishing in Milwaukee was this:

Winner 2 Gold Eddie Awards

Winner 17 Gold MMPA Awards

Winner 2 Gold Ink Awards

Winner Premier Print Award

and we suddenly had a new Gallery prospect and of course can promote Kalmbach Publishing too!

Hemlock Printers Ltd based in Burnaby, British Columbia is one of the most heavily decorated printers in the annual International Gallery events, and of course other competitions as well:

www.iaphc.org/images/iaphc/Documents/sappipressrelease_0510.pdf

In our opinion, the most market savvy printers clearly recognize that awards success enjoyed on behalf of clients and their favourite projects will pay dividends of client loyalty and continued patronage.  And that's a value proposition hard to beat.

INFORM:

We thought Gordon Pritchard's comments above with regard the Sorrento Mesa website were interesting.  We visit websites of printing and graphic arts firms all around the world on a daily basis.  We wonder why more firms don't see the implicit reality of today's e-commerce world.  If you want to INFORM clients You Have to Put  a FACE on IT.

Gordon says he would like to know the people he might be working with.

As just noted, Twill Printing makes a human connection just by including a picture.

This correspondent can win accolades in the homely visage awards but think about this gentle reader, when you bump across a Facebook profile or a LinkedIn profile which has no picture, are you intrigued? or somehow a little frustrated that you can't really connect with an empty box.

Just today, we saw an awesome illustrated article on WhatTheyThink.com and wanted to congratulate the printing firm in question, but there is no way to make a connection, no individual persons are listed on the firm's website, no e-mails, and of course no pictures, ergo no human connection.

And of course we get the obvious objections, you don't have your e-mails on your website so you can avoid spam, and you don't show all your employees and their e-mails and their pictures as staff turnover means you would have to update your site regularly.   Uh huh, and so?  Aren't you sending an unintentioned message (resembling the bird) to a world which is ever more connected, and visual, and digitally enabled in a gazillion ways?

By the way, if you visit Sorrento Mesa's website or that of CJ Graphics, you will see that two very different printing firms are very much alike in the pride they take in marketing their award winning prowess.  Maybe because both firms are acknowledged to be great marketers themselves?

CONNECT:

The best (i.e., worst) excuse we get for not entering the International Gallery?

"Oh, we really don't print anything of quality here."

Uh huh,

Reminds one of the fishing guide who tells his customers, "you have to bait your own hooks, I can't stand those icky worms."

Awards won are a very important form of testimonial for the trustworthiness of a firm.  That's why you see so many news releases, pictures and stories all over the IAPHC website under the International Gallery button and sub-sections.  And again we salute the firms and their press releases at the beginning of this post.  It matters pilgrims!

Another interesting objection we hear is that, "well, our clients only care about awards won in a local competition."

Uh huh.

And all of your customers refuse to sell to a client if they are located in another city or province, or God Forbid, another country?  NOT!

Local awards are huge, and we salute any firm who supports local or area competitions.  But let's not miss the cachet of an International Award in the eyes of a delighted client.  This is a global economy, act Global (enter the International Gallery) and celebrate Local!

And so we come to the globe trotting goodness of Gallery, as we CONNECT one designer/printer/finisher with a particular skill set we learned about by virtue of our close review of every single entry, to another party located somewhere, but almost never local, with an expressed urgent need to do business with our specially skilled provider no matter where located.

Thus, in recent weeks, Jeff Mayer in Hopewell Junction, NY needed a web printer in the SW quadrant of the US.  Mike Smith in Vancouver needed a printer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  Kevin Sperazza in Connecticut needed a silk screen printer in Orlando, Florida,  Cindy Johnson in Moline, Illinois needed a provider of printed 'puff magnets' somewhere in the Midwest section of the US, Roy Stout in Lexington, Kentucky needed info on printing removable tattoos and it mattered not where the provider was located.

In every case, we could CONNECT them with a solution thanks to past International Gallery entry participation by XYZ firm.

That then is the lastest/bestest reason to enter the International Gallery, it can be unexpectedly good for business if we connect you to a new client located somewhere, anywhere.

We do understand that time is the enemy, and so to make entering the 2010 International Gallery as simple as possible, we ask you to click HERE to download an easy to complete, MS Word version of the Call for Entries to the International Gallery.  PLEASE NOTE that the ship to address, as noted on the Call for Entries has changed.

Aimee Brown of Teldon Print Media in Vancouver BC told us this week she is readying "many cartons of sure fire winners" and we look forward to their receipt.  You just never know when some additional EPIC Connection may arise.  In 2008, Teldon entered several pieces for a firm called Resort Trades:

Cheers,

Kevin Keane