Letters, feedback, get it off your chest: 23 February 2011

And still the sales debate continues, while James Cryer is accused of alienating scientologists in his opinion piece on carbon trading. Why not write in and have you say, too.

Re: Letters, feedback, get it off your chest 16 February 2011

In asserting that “... print managers and some sales people don’t understand print”, Michael Arimatea is simply restating a mentality that has been around in this industry for decades and it explains why so many good printing companies are no longer around. The world has changed.
 
In 2011, clients are not interested in knowing about saddle stitching, drawn on covers and section sewing. Why should they? They engage print managers and sales people in printing companies who have that expertise and can advise them with options and costings.  If sales people don’t know how to guide the client through the complexities of print, the smart ones will ask the production guys who will gladly support them.
 
Companies with a big print spend contract print managers to take a holistic view of their communications needs including creative services, print buying, inventory management, warehousing, logistics, reporting and many other associated areas where real savings and efficiencies can be made and passed on.
 
Yes, there are print managers who employ order takers who don’t come from the industry, but even that shouldn’t be a problem if the printers they partner with provide their expertise rather than complain about their lack of technical knowledge.
 
I’ve been in this industry in many different capacities for over 45 years and have enjoyed all the challenges it’s thrown at me. I try very hard not to bore clients with the technical industry knowledge passed on to me in the mid sixties. I prefer to solve their problems, not educate them. I wonder how much technical knowledge Michael has about his clients’ industries?
 
John Crichton

Re: Carbon tax or trading – just so much hot air
I struggled through the bulk of James Cryer’s rant, waiting with bated breath for him to say something substantive about climate change, its mitigation or the role of the printing industry in the whole issue.
 
My heart leapt when I finally reached a paragraph beginning “So what’s my solution?”
 
Unfortunately his solution seems to a less efficient variation on the approach proposed by a consensus of the world’s keenest minds.
 
Emissions pricing concentrates the onus and inconvenience in the larger end of the corporate sector who are in a far better position to manage it than small business and private individuals.
 
Far from being a simpler solution, a consumption-based tax sounds to me like a nightmarish labyrinth of ever-increasing regulation as we have item after item added to the schedule of goods and services – plastics, fertilizers, electricity, IT services, aluminium, paint, ink, toner – that ought to be taxed because … hmm let me think … they increase carbon dioxide emission.
 
James appeared to miss the point that a price on emissions is a price on consumption, as it raises the cost of processes that emit carbon dioxide, discouraging us from buying so much of the product or service affected.
 
I do, however, agree with one point: we consumers will not change our behaviour unless it starts costing us more to do the wrong thing than it does to do the right thing.
 
Peter Lawrance

This is not a bad article. It's written with passion and offers some solutions and speaks in common-sense terms.
 
My only disagreement is you alienate scientologists like myself, and any other who may happen to stumble across it, such as my printing friends, for no other reason than prejudice, comparing us, of all people, to Jim Jones. How do we know they weren't even doing LSD experiments in that group: http://mendonews.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/922/
 
Certainly Scientologists with a world wide anti-drug campaign (www.drugfreeworld.org) and human rights campaign (www.humanrights.com) and so on, cannot be related to such.
 
As far as printing goes, why not look at the state of the art printing facilities we do have; being it's your field, you may find it interesting.

Re: Members have their say on new look PrintNZ
Perhaps far greater involvement and encouragement in local seminars and especially industry trade shows like Printtech would help raise print’s profile and place in the media landscape?

Kevin Trye