In previous installments of this series on pricing, we looked at The Proven Path to High Profits and The Power of the Hit Ratio. In this installment, let’s look at pricing the “new stuff.”

New technologies, new equipment, and new applications can play havoc with traditional pricing, and the “cost accounting” approach may not be entirely compatible. Let’s look at a few of these new applications in turn.

You’ve bought a digital press with inline finishing capability. It really does the job and it’s a real breakthrough for the production of short-run saddle wire products. Also, because it’s digital, it also opens the door to variable-data printing. Now you have to decide how to price what it produces. If you see it as an exercise in cost accounting, you’ve started down the wrong path. You will wind up giving away its advantages to people who were already paying for short-run work at offset prices. You will also not get paid for the power of VDP in driving reader response.