Hi, this is Frank Romano from WhatTheyThink.com.  Welcome back to another episode, of whatever this is.  

Several things that I found that were rather interesting.  Quick Printing Magazine.  Quick Printing Magazine does a survey every year of the number of Quick Printing shops, both worldwide and in North America, and they give the statistics for each organization; how many shops they have, etc.  Well just like the rest of the industry there’s a downsizing going on in Quick Printing.  And so the number now stands at the end of 2009 at 2,153 shops from the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven or so franchisors that are out there. 

When most people talk about small printers, they think franchised and that’s the number though.  The number of small printers is 20,000 or so, but the number that are franchised is low.  Fed Ex office doesn’t count because they own all of those stores, so you really can’t put them into the mix.  And this doesn’t include, of course, Staples and Office Max and all those kinds of office people. 

No email from office people, please…

I really think that franchising is good because you get into the business and you’ve got a safety net.  You’ve got an organization with expertise.  They teach you had to manage, they teach you how to run the shop.  They support you; they get you discounts on equipment.  I mean, I think it’s great. 

Now, what happened in the past is someone who had saved up their money would then enter into a Franchise Agreement, build the business up and then pass it on to someone else, or live off the money in some way, shape or form.  Today a lot seem to want to just get out of it.  Well they really shouldn’t.  It’s gonna come back.  The need for that, that franchise shop, is still there, it’s still strong.  It’s just that the economy has taken its toll on a number of shops that are out there. 

So, when you look at the percentages here in terms of what they do, you can see they’ve entered wide format, they’re doing much more with color then they’ve ever did before, mostly because of digital printing.  Offset is still there, but not as big a percent as it used to be.  And then mailing has entered into the equation.  So franchise shops have gotten into many new areas, and I hope that they do better over the next few years. 

Franchisee, fee free to send fan mail…

There’s an article that was in The Economist that says, “The cat is out of the bag.  Printing costs is an issue.”  Thank you very much.  The reporter, Ed Crowley, although they don’t call him a reporter, he an analysis ****.  Oh, that’s interesting.  And he talks about “managed printer services.”  As you know, it’s a very hot topic.  The companies that make digital equipment or used to make copiers have entered into the print management services business.  Yes, there’s a lot of opportunity there, a lot of organizations want to cut costs. 

Xerox is doing a great job with these new ads they’re running on television where they’re using the customers that they deal with, the clients they have for managed print services and other things as part of the Xerox promotion.  What’s interesting is they’re talking about a study that’s coming out and they got some advance information.  And they said that this whole management services area is growing at 25% per year and that the market size will be $60 billion by 2014.  Sixty billion dollars by 2014.  Now, by 2015, it will be $7.50. 

Reminds me of my old paper route…

Because once you have cut my printing costs, there’s no going back.  Now, what are you going to do for me next?  If you get it down to zero, you gonna – the printers are going to pay me at that point in time?  So, I just look over the horizon and say managed print services is a great business right now, what will it be later?   Much smaller. 

We’re used to that, aren’t we…

The Postal Service has a magazine.  It’s called Deliver, and they mail it.  It’s a good thing; I don’t want to see it in electronic form from the Postal Service.  There was a line in here that I liked very much.  It was talking about – it was quoting an article from The Huffington Post, but more that anything else, it’s talking about marketers and email.  And the quote is, “Email is, efficiency without effectiveness.”  Now, that’s a great quote because that’s what it’s all about.  A lot of companies go to email because it’s easy to do.  It’s cheaper than printing and mailing.  And so therefore, they go the easy route.  And what do they get for it?  Almost nothing.  The return rate, the reply rate, the response rate on email is so much lower than on printed mail. 

do I ever respond to all your hate email?  EXACTLY…

I’ll tell you.  Marketers of America and the world, you know, go ahead and use your email because the few that are the smart ones will realize that print stand out.  Print makes you look at it, gets you involved engages you and therefore creates a response.  The marketers don’t understand that.  They’re going by their company’s rule, cut costs, cut costs, cut costs.  No.  If you want to grow your business, you have to invest.  Use print.  Print makes a difference. 

i still won’t respond to printed hate mail…

In the same article, by the way, they have a little chart here about the growth of non-food coupons that are distributed by direct mail.  And that has grown from 54% in 2005 to 59% today.  They’ve got a little chart that shows that.  So more and more coupons coming to us by direct mail, which is a good thing.  Coupons spur you into an action and I think coupons is an important part of any marketing program if you can use that. 

In any case, that’s all my opinion.  Thank you very much. 

Next time…

I just went around RIT here to see if there was anything interesting and I found this…