Here’s a riddle. What do the following job titles have in common? Production Coordinator, Sr. Production Specialist, Print Project Manager, Publications Manager, Assistant Manager of Operations, Marketing Services Specialist, Corporate Sourcing Manager etc. about 120 titles in all. Answer: they all buy print. And not incidentally, but as the major part of their job. These are the titles you will find on the attendee list of the Print Oasis Print Buyers’ Conference and Exhibit in Arlington, VA last week. With the number of attendees and exhibitors exceeding those of last year, I think the conference is successfully addressing this identity crisis of sorts. Suzanne Morgan, the founder of printbuyersonline.com and the conference, is providing a center for education and exchange. After all, print buying is multi-billion-dollar industry. There should be more respect.

Consolidation: Not the Kind You are Thinking of
Morgan opened the conference with the results of the most recent Trends in Buying Print report, gathered from a subset of the membership of 4,000 spanning agencies, corporations, publishing houses, associations, non-profits and design firms among others. Most are seasoned buyers of 7-10 years tenure and buy a total of $4.2 billion annually. There was some good news in the report, such as 42% expecting an increase in print purchases in the next 6 months (mean increase was 20%.) And there were some surprises—such as 36% expecting an increase in quality in the next 12 months, 66% rating their company’s success in capturing the costs of producing print projects as "very good to excellent" and 23% saying they would be conducting press checks more often.

Expectedly, there is a rise in the use of pdfs internally, a big rise in receiving soft proofs from suppliers while proofing and digital printing are at the top of the list for self-education. Also expectedly are print buyers’ two greatest challenges-- time savings, and quality with good prices. The third, proving the value of the print buyers, is good to hear and long overdue. They need more recognition and support in their organizations. The most stunning news to me was that 48% of the buyers consolidated their print suppliers in the past year.

A Pain Greater than Quotes: RFQs.
This trend toward consolidation was later the topic of a panel moderated by Robert Wagner, Manager of the Creative Segment at Xerox. According to these panelists--Diane Hake, Black & Decker, Robert Kashan, CEO, EarthColor (NYC); Tom Arnold, Director of Marketing, PBM Graphics (NC); Kim Adams, Director of Marketing Communications, AIG Annuity Insurance Company (TX)—consolidation is a win-win situation for the company and the printers chosen. We know there’s safety in diversification, and we also know there’s being spread too thin. It seems that in a response to market conditions and a desire to drive down costs, many companies have determined that fewer providers will be better.

It seems that printing has been identified as a high budget item (got that right) with inefficiencies that can be improved. So, companies are changing the way they are doing business with print providers. As Adams of AIG said, "Fewer vendors mean you can get to know each other and form a relationship." Adams presented an amazing example of consolidation—from 3500 to 35 vendors. (The 3500 was the result of 12 or more acquisitions over 3 years and lots of maverick buying.) According to Kashan of Earthcolor, "Consolidation provides a platform for a printer to grow stronger. When the vendor can count on an amount of business they can buy better equipment, hire better people, streamline inefficiencies and employ best practices which will streamline inefficiences and help reduce costs." It is also a surprise that consolidation is not happening through enterprise software or an Internet procurement service, but through traditional RFQs and RFPs.


Just When You Thought School was Over…A Report Card for Printers
Since margins for printers are quite low these days, many providers are seeing the benefit of getting more business by being selected as one of a few suppliers. But RFQs are no easy process. Says Kashan, "We had to embrace the RFQ process completely or not at all. It is grueling." Earthcolor set up a team of from estimating, production, management and sales that meets weekly and fills in the RFQs., each worth millions of dollars.

They now respond to 50 or 60 per year. After the huge set of questions is answered, the "personalizing" begins—presenting before groups of financial, accounting, procurement and marketing people, plant tours etc. And, after selected, printers receive regular report cards measuring their performance on quality, timeliness and how they work with the departments and other vendors in the corporate system. According to Kashen, "Companies want printers today to manage the process with various departments, ad agencies and direct marketing companies." Is it worth it? He definitely thinks so. At the heart of the RFQ process today is the print buyer.

Here’s a Switch
A printer who is dedicating time to RFQs today is also looking over the client as much as they are being looked over. Kashen says Earthcolor will do research and evaluate each looking for "financially healthy clients, secure in their business standing and serious about vendors, not just issuing RFQs to drive down the price with their current vendors."

Print Buyers Want Respect
Three print buyers from Delaware Investments in PA echoed some of the sentiments in the Print Trends report. Cynthia Bittle, Sr. Production Co-ordinator, Karen Barnaby, Manager-Production Services and Bonnie Rockhill, Production Coordinator, agreed it is hard to prove your value when "many don’t know what we do." With a combined 37 years of print buying experience, they nevertheless described an uphill battle of trying to educate internal clients on the latest technologies and not being given a free hand to use their expertise.

For instance, these print buyers like to use more digital printing for fast turnaround and pursue the value of customization for some of their documents. They were impressed with the presentation by Xerox, given after the Keynote, on the high print quality of the DocuColor iGen3. They would begin their tour of the exhibit halls by examining iGen3 samples at the Xerox booth. Cynthia, Karen and Bonnie agreed to meet with me again at the end of the conference and report on what new impressions they may have gained about the world of print buying.