Letters, feedback, get it off your chest: 21 April 2010
This week sees more call-to-arms for industry change from concerned readers. But not everyone is doing it tough. Oh, a little bit of housekeeping – we don't publish anonymouos letters. Everyone has to be identified, even if you want your name withheld.
re: So you want to get into wide format? 14 April 2010
Less than half the job is printing it, more often than not!
I have been producing Large Format since the early 90's. To do it well is (in my experience) beyond most current suppliers, let alone a new entrant to the industry.
If you are considering entering this market make sure you can either hire or 'buy' experience and how to, otherwise you will be wasting your time, and money. Buying the equipment and getting a print out of it is relatively easy. Putting it on the correct substrate, laminating it with the best laminate for the job, mounting to the correct substrate , taking it out to a site and installing it – that is the hard part that requires far more than a few pieces of equipment that represent an investment of $40-50K.
Try multiplying this by the learning curve, additional staff / staff training and wastage, additional insurance (for site installations, just in case something falls over or off a wall!). Then there is the factory space required (clean dust free space) and the fact that culture and nature of digital large format simply does not mix with the offset commercial culture. I know, I tried this with disastrous results!
This is not an easy 'add on' for any commercial printer. It is at minimum an independent business unit that needs to be treated as such. Different skill sets from staff, a completely different costing and quoting method, near zero wastage or re-work tolerance. Ask yourself, is this worth it? In reality probably not. Stick to what you do or if you are happy to spend some money, do it improving your current service(s).
Steve Hall
Sunprint Pty. Ltd
Coolum Beach
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Re: Beaver Press gets the chop
Is Fred Van Steel calling me a liar when he says “Anyone who says that they’re not finding it tough is lying”?
Sales are down on last year, hit by bad debts to boot; but we are not finding it tough – it’s all part of business and a well-managed business deals with these things and moves on. We are finding new opportunities in the current climate, maybe that’s because we pay our suppliers, wages, rent, tax etc before we pay ourselves.
I think you can sum up most businesses in this way: those who pay themselves first, and those who pay themselves last (and I know who will be around by the next drupa). The accountants might laugh at this suggestion, but in reality it’s the latter who usually rarely find things tough (and sleep better at night too).
We also make better margins because we are not so desperate to “buy work” (but we can if we want to usually from clients who pay their bills on time). We don’t need to buy new equipment every three years to stay competitive (prepress and digital excluded). We don’t need expensive sales teams that rarely pay for themselves and we deal with the print management firms on our terms (they are not so bad when you’re in the position of power).
Sounds too good to be true?
It’s amazing how far paper suppliers will go to help the little guys who stay loyal and pay their bills on time or how quick you can get a electrician or engineer out (and who’ll discount their time if it’s a big job!)
One thing the accountants in Macquarie Street never think about is that we gain a competitive advantage over the multinationals that their combined purchasing power will never be able to match!
Pay your bills on time! Talk to you paper reps about your business and plans even when times are slow don’t scare them off or let them assume, and always be honest. You will eventually find you will buy five tons of gloss as good as or better than those buying 500 tons per month in indent.
The truth is we could handle another 24 months of a “GFC” and probably come out the other with significantly less competition.
Name withheld.
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In an ideal world it would be nice not to have print managers/brokers but sadly we don’t live in a ideal world and it will never happen anyway.
My main gripe is with the print management/ copiers company, those that sell the big boxes. How can you sell copiers to a printer yet also go into competition against the printer?
Can you imagine Airbus ringing up Sir Richard Branson and telling him after he had just purchased the latest 380: “Oh, by the way Sir Richard, as you seem to be doing so well with your airline and we have seen the passenger numbers increasing, Pierre our clever marketing manager here, has come up with this wonderful idea on starting a no frills airline.
The good news for you, Sir Richard, is the routes that we don’t do as yet, we would like to arrange a ‘sharing arrangement’, so we can send passengers to your airline while we can build market share ... oops! Slip of the tongue there … over a period of time as less risk for us and our shareholders.
The good news, Sir Richard, is you just have to pay us a percentage of your sales to us, it should work really well for all of us. You may even get a mention in our monthly magazine as a preferred partner.”
I wonder what Sir Richard would do, lay back and think of England … don’t think so; you don’t become rich by being a fool!
Name withheld.
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I can’t believe what I am seeing of my beloved industry! Everyone screwing each other for an unrealistic quote/price. You will all perish if you keep it up.
Time and time again I see the industry as a whole being kicked in the guts for a price! I totally agree with “no to print brokers” but they are not all bad. The smaller ones are great and I’ve dealt with a few, but my biggest problems are with the big print brokers who send our quotes overseas for a $30k cheaper quote.
They couldn’t give a toss about the industry as their bottom line is their only concern. All the while the consumables for the machinery are going up, as are print and plate chemicals, but the printed product that everyone wants quickly has to be cheaper and delivered ASAP. Well not for long! Take a real hard look at what happened to the textile industry of yester-year boys and girls and you will have a glimpse of what our industry will be in a short time to come.
Band together my fellow printing colleges to get rid of these middle men preaching; we must conform to changing printing climate expectations when the industry as a whole is the same, more modern machinery, but the basics unchanged. These so-called ‘broker boffins’ are making it harder for everyone but the basic print shop is basic, simple, staining paper the easiest and quickest way we can apply paper, ink, and water to dry. While were at it, let’s tell all our customers also, with conviction, that you pay for your product on delivery.
Why you ask. Well if you go to Coles, or whoever your choice of shop is, and tell them at the till you will pay for your just-obtained shiny new goods at 30 or maybe 60 or even 90 days and have a slight cash flow problem, what do you think your chances are of taking them home there and then would be?
And one last thing, you obviously think “it wont happen to me”, well guess again. It’s times like these now we need a change for the better, not for a few measly peanuts.
Name withheld
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Re: PaperlinX pulls the plug on Burnie paper mill
We got our initial PaperlinX shares out of Amcor and bought some more because they seemed to be run by people who knew the paper business. As someone who has been employed, and therefore made my small amount of capital from publishing and printing, and therefore from paper I felt it important to be investing in that industry's future.
Sadly PaperlinX have changed into a marketing company and might as well be based outside of Australia, maybe the Netherlands or Ireland.
It's sad. Those about to lose their jobs in Burnie should know that not all shareholders are just in it for the short-term gain. It's as if Print21 announced that they'll make more money, become an entirely different kind of magazine and therefore plan to introduce page-three girls.
PaperlinX is no longer a company in which I have any confidence; they said they were one thing and became another. I expect to lose what remaining investment in them we have.
Gordon Woolf
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Re: Major paper price hikes headed your way
After the rounds of price increases the print industry endured in 08 to early 09, which were to the tune of around 30 per cent we will need these further increases at the moment like a hole in the head. Don’t the paper suppliers read the volume of print companies going into voluntary administration of liquidation?
What I find laughable is we were told the previous round of increases were due to the dollar getting down to 65 cents in February last year, that I can appreciate; however, before this crisis the dollar has now been hovering between 90 – 93 cents for a good two months or so.
Printers, please put your hand up if you saw a price decrease in your paper costs as by my Year 10 maths, the dollar has appreciated by over 40%. We wrote to the managing directors of all our suppliers not long ago this year articulating this point. Out of 10 only three came back to us; two of those three being from the paper industry and both (in my view) gave wishy-washy reasons for the lack of decreases. We feel that being overly generous perhaps shipping costs as a component of landed paper and other mill increases could have been 15- 20 per cent, so what happened with the other 20 – 25 per cent?
I guess at least they responded; however, the suppliers of consumables and a leading world press manufacturer (most notably) did not warrant us important enough for a reply, nor did they warrant us important enough to even discuss a reduction.
I wonder if they will jump on the bandwagon again like they normally do, Iam guessing they will unless more of you speak up in a collective way. Perhaps it’s something the PIA may wish to do for its members.
Now, for mind the funniest part: all of this is coming as we have been forewarned about in Print21; there is an 8 per cent medium-term supply issue with pulp and that means that we get a price rise now of 5 per cent with bigger rises to come. All under the guise of a dollar that continues to appreciate and is heading for parity and please don’t bring the Euro into it either as that has now appreciated nearly 30 per cent in the same timeframe.
Gee, sounds fair to me ... Remember suppliers 40 per cent in your favour and rising?
Richard Holland
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Re: CPI Paper expands after company reorganisation
Interesting article but it does not state the obvious that nearly all the ED people have left because of the restructuring or made redundant in the merger. Some really good people have taken an enormous amount of industry knowledge out of this company and they will continue to struggle for many more years to come.
CPI have all but destroyed Edwards Dunlop Paper an icon in the paper industry what a shame.
Sian Hughes
Ex employee