In today’s eXpert Row article by David Dodd, "Success With Personalized Print: A (Somewhat) Different View," Mr. Dodd quotes what he calls TrendWatch GA’s "rather bleak assessment" of the variable data print market, taken from our July eXpert Row column. He suggests that the outlook for variable data printing is not as "bleak" as we suggest, and offers five steps for getting started in this business. By taking these steps, he implies that commercial printers with digital presses will be able to successfully compete in this marketplace.

We agree that, if digital printers are able to take Mr. Dodd’s five steps and implement them successfully, they have an excellent chance of being successful. Where we disagree is in the ease of the task.

In order to ensure success with variable data printing, shops with digital presses must change their implementation, their skill sets, and their perspectives. This is more difficult than it might seem. In our Special Report Digital Printing: The Good, the Bad, and the Not So Ugly, we noted that a paltry 3% of the creative marketplace -- potentially the bread and butter for digital printers -- see digital printing as a top sales opportunity. With this in mind, how many digital printers see "selling to designers and creatives" as a sales opportunity? Thirteen percent! With awareness so low among creatives, you might expect digital printers to be banging down their customers’ doors, offering to show them how digital printing can offer them new marketing opportunities and solve problems for their businesses. Instead, it is digital printers whose interest suddenly appears paltry.

Now, if this level of gap exists within the broader category of digital printing, how much more so the gap for a narrower, more niche subset of digital printing like variable data printing?

What Mr. Dodd has laid out is an excellent theoretical foundation for ramping up a variable data printing business. In theory. In his summation, he writes, "Commercial printers can compete effectively in the one-to-one marketing services industry if they are prepared to invest the time, energy, and resources that are necessary to build sound business models, craft effective business strategies, and develop or acquire the required skills and competencies."

Unfortunately, Mr. Dodd simplifies when he says, "if they are prepared." The problem is that they have not been prepared.

The exception is among profit leaders, who, as we describe in our report Value-Added Services: Will the Real Value-Added Please Stand Up?, have a different mindset about their selection and implementation of services than other printers. According a recent PIA Ratios report, the difference in average profits between PIA’s 2000 profit leaders and the rest of the industry was, at the time of the report, 9.3% versus 3.3% for the industry as a whole. And when industry consultant Bob Rosen separated out the profit leaders from the overall average, comparing profit-leaders to non-profit leaders, non-profit leaders’ average profits dropped to zero. There is a reason that profit leaders are profit leaders. And it makes all the difference in the world.

What do profit leaders do differently? In part, they focus on applications, not technology. They are focused on customers, not simply the press. They have what we call in our value-added report a "customer-centric" business philosophy rather than a "manufacturing-centric" business philosophy. And this business philosophy makes sure that huge disconnects like the one just described don’t happen on their watch.

By definition, profit leaders are in the minority. Most printers are still in the manufacturing-centric mindset, and when it comes to variable data printing -- which is part of a value-added service model -- this is a real problem. You don’t just go to a seminar and come out with a new value-added, profit-leading mindset. The ability to internalize a value-added business philosophy and re-invent your business is not something you do at the drop of a hat.

As a result, far from being the conclusion of an article, Mr. Dodd’s five-step list ought to be the beginning. What’s important is what comes after this statement -- the details of making this happen. And when printers get into those details, they will find them to be far more complex and difficult than this simple statement implies. Are these steps impossible? Of course not. Just ask the profit leaders in the industry, but much more needs to be considered than is implied.

Sure, printers can be successful with variable data if they make the right capital investments, invest in the right skill sets, re-invent themselves with the right business philosophy, create the right applications, develop the right relationships with clients, re-focus and re-train their sales forces, and roll up their sleeves for intensive customer education and market development. This is a true "value-added services" business approach, which will be needed to successfully compete and be profitable. But once printers start trying to implement these steps, they'll find them to be far more difficult than Mr. Dodd makes them out to be. It’s not that they are impossible, or even discouraged. It’s just unrealistic to make the process sound too simplistic, which provides a false expectation.

Dodd's approach is what we call "pie in the sky." This means the highest level of potential. The ultimate possibilities. The theoretical goals and aspirations that we can strive for. The "pie in the sky" approach is important, but it must be tempered at some point with frank realism about who can and should be investing in them.

For example, we recently heard a story of a digital printer who tried for two years to get its variable data business up and running. The printer was committed to, and sunk a tremendous amount of capital in, the technology of variable data printing and hit nothing but stone walls. This is because his geographic and demographic market wasn’t -- and isn’t -- suited to variable data printing. And no matter how much time, energy, and resources he sinks into it, the market still isn’t going to be right for his business. It took two long, financially draining years for him to figure this out.

This is the danger when a promise -- any technological promise -- is long on glamour and short on details.

At TrendWatch GA, we are bullish on the business-savvy and technical skill of today’s commercial printers. But does this mean that all, or most, will pull off variable data? The answer is no. This fact has nothing to do with capabilities. It’s because the market simply isn’t for everybody. It takes a special combination of skills, commitment, business philosophy, and -- most importantly -- customer base, for this business model to make sense. Without being sure printers have the right combination of these things, launching into variable data printing would be a bad economic gamble in an environment where printers can ill afford one. If you are going to play in this market, you’d better make sure that it’s the right market for you to be playing in.

So the differences in opinion between Mr. Dodd and TrendWatch GA aren’t doom-and-gloom verses the positive underside. It's stark realism versus pie-in-the-sky potential. Both are good. Both are important. And both are important together. Pie in the sky shows us the absolute ceiling we can reach if all the planets align. But the reality is that for most printers, the planets won’t align. If variable data printing and its benefits for clients were really as straightforward as many make it out to be, Chromapress would still be around and Indigo and Xeikon would still be independent companies. This is not to suggest that there is not huge potential for these services. There is, provided all the challenges are clearly understood in implementing them and they are adopted to solve client problems and not just expanded into the service menu. They must be implemented as a true value-added service.

We all have a different role to play. Someone gives the stellar possibilities. Others help them wade through these possibilities with an eye toward the stark realities of the implementation -- good, bad, or indifferent -- and help them decide what they can (and are realistically willing) to do based on facts from extensive research. Pie in the sky and stark realism: two roles, two approaches -- both valid. But when it comes to variable data printing, ultimately the service provider must be the judge.