Print Buying on the Web

But I remain skeptical. Let's just give them, right off the top, the possibility that they can, between them, garner the lion's share of the market for business cards and letterhead. For the most part it's straightforward, repeatable work, well-suited to on-line purchasing.

But the bulk of commercial printing does not fall into the category of straightforward, repeatable work. You know it and I know it. The bulk of commercial printing is one-off jobs: brochures, spec sheets and other forms of collateral, that are anything but a commodity. As Oliver Pflug, CEO of PrintMarket, said to me recently: "Printing is an emotional kind of product; print is custom manufacturing."