Monthly Archives: November 2010

Emotional ties that are a bind

By , Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 1 Comment

Emotion. Pride. Ego.

According to Roto Smeets chief John Caris, these are the three biggest reasons why the industry consolidation that bosses at some of Europe’s biggest print groups crave hasn’t actually happened.

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Awesome print going under the hammer

By , Monday, 29 November 2010, Be the first to comment

Dammit. Having failed, yet again, to land myself a Euromillions or Lotto win over the weekend my dreams of having a paddle number at an upcoming Sotheby’s sale will have to be put on hold.

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Printcos of the future will have one thing in common

By , Friday, 26 November 2010, Be the first to comment

Some days, it feels like I can’t move for people telling me that printing companies need to become marketing communications services providers, or some equally snappy definition.

Sure, some of them do. Some of them are already. But I don’t believe it’s a strategy that can be adopted as some sort of universal magic bullet. The future shape of the industry will involve more than one model. Yesterday I visited a printing company that is becoming the embodiment of one such model, the industrial, high-volume business described in an earlier piece on this topic.

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Cloudy outlook with some bright spots

By , Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 4 Comments

Yesterday I was at the heart of Europe. At least, that’s what it says on the signs in Brussels. The reason for heading to the land of luxe chocolates was a conference resulting from an EU-sponsored project looking at the future of the printing industry.

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Quashing the Muppet

By , Monday, 22 November 2010, 1 Comment

Chat magazine. Do you read it? No, thought not. Neither do I, generally, unless I happen to be spending an unhappy hour or two in a hospital waiting room.

The reason I’m asking, is because of a colleague’s recent run-in with a person from the “print will be dead in two years’ time” school of tadpole-brained Muppets who can’t see beyond the end of their own nose.

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Christmas on the cards

By , Friday, 19 November 2010, Be the first to comment

Can you hear that whooshing sound? It’s Christmas rushing towards us apace.

Five weeks today it will be Christmas Eve. Definitely time to start thinking about Christmas cards in earnest. Worth noting, too, are the last posting dates.

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Run lengths revisited

By , Thursday, 18 November 2010, Be the first to comment

Setting the break points for whether a short-run,
non-variable job is better being printed conventionally or digitally is a much-debated
issue.

A fascinating exchange yesterday with Robert Read
and Darren Crane from Cambrian Printers revealed this ‘challenge your
perceptions’ snippet: the company recently printed a run of just 50 sheets on
its ten-colour B1 press.

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Hive of anxiety

By , Wednesday, 17 November 2010, Be the first to comment

Restructuring, job losses, plant closures, changes to terms and conditions… such happenings have become very much the norm over the past couple of years.

Recent news about the proposed layoffs at Southernprint gave me pause for thought about the nature of carrying out this sort of painful change successfully, in such a way that the remaining employees in the reshaped business are still motivated to do their best for it.

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Stamp splurge

By , Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 3 Comments

Yesterday I spent the best part of twenty quid on stamps, in anticipation of the Christmas card writing season. Oof! While I’m not quite in the ‘Who is Gazza?’ league of judgely disconnection with real life stuff, and I know exactly how much two pints of semi-skimmed costs thank-you very much, it is easy to forget how much a single stamp costs nowadays. In my head it’s still something like 27p for some reason.

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Racing, dancing, singing…

By , Monday, 15 November 2010, Be the first to comment

After a thrilling end to the F1 season, one could
imagine there will be dancing in the streets of Milton
Keynes today at Red Bull Racing’s Buckinghamshire HQ.

One could also envisage the likelihood of a bit of
a boost to print as a result, too. At the very least some sort of ‘welcome home
champions’ banner will be required. I’m also thinking about the potential for a
celebratory/commemorative book to be published in time for Christmas – glossy
and stuffed with lots of fab pictures. The perfect pressie for the F1 fanatic
in the family.

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