Business Management - Industry Trends

Printers and merchants who are benefiting from low-priced paper imports are against the duties; those who have to compete with them are in favor of the duties. It’s not ideology; it’s business. Let’s try to clarify a few things.

If you’ve been following the coated paper anti-dumping case, the final determination by the International Trade Commission (ITC) is due tomorrow, Oct. 19. The ITC has to decide whether the dumping and subsidies have “materially injured” the domestic market. Unfortunately, material injury is not well defined.

Ahead of his testimony today, Terry Hunley, acting president, APP Americas, issued the following statement regarding the U.S. International Trade Commission hearing on certain coated paper imported from China and Indonesia: “The petitioners failed today to prove that they’ve been harmed by importers and they are not entitled to any special protections under our trade laws.

It weighs in at more than 130 pounds, but the authoritative guide to the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, may eventually slim down to nothing. Oxford University Press, the publisher, said Sunday so many people prefer to look up words using its online product that it's uncertain whether the 126-year-old dictionary's next edition will be printed on paper at all.

The current printed edition has sold about 30,000 sets...

The college last fall tested the Kindle in three classes. Students and teachers reported the machine is legible, comfortable and durable but difficult to navigate to specific text points. They also found it cumbersome to annotate and highlight text on the machine, and professors said this led to lower student comprehension.

With its multipurpose capacities, the iPad will be "a lot closer to the breakthrough device we've been looking for for many years," said Martin Ringle,  chief information officer at Reed.

One of the key revelations from the research is that the absolute dollar amount marketers are setting aside for social media is low. The DMA-COLLOQUY survey results show the average social media spend for marketers whose primary objective is to obtain customer loyalty was $88,000 last year, compared to $53,000 for brand awareness and $30,000 for customer acquisition.

Pulp prices are slipping. Will paper prices follow? No. Pulp prices are determined by the supply and demand for pulp, while paper prices are determined by the supply and demand for paper.

For companies that have digital document capability, the addition of wide-format digital is an easy process. They've moved past conventional “print think” where a successful print run has to be in the tens of thousands, and have incorporated a short-run business model with value-added services such as customization and managed distribution.

Companies new to digital imaging that are adding wide-format before digital document printing will have an easy time managing the technology. Their challenge will be refocusing the organization’s business model, and the sales staff usually is the hardest group to convert.

When the going gets tough, catalogers often look at changing their paper to cut costs. According to the recent MCM Outlook 2010 survey on Catalogs, 39.2% of respondents said they had decreased their paper stock/weight in the past 12 months.

Indeed, moving to a lighter weight of paper can save money, says Dan Walsh, vice president of catalog/publication papers at distributor Bradner Smith & Co. Using fewer tons of paper will generally lower your costs.

Reducing catalog paper weight could also potentially lower your postage costs, Walsh adds, depending on the class in which you mail.

Does print lose to electronic media when the price of print goes up? Or is this driven by other forces? To my knowledge, this has never been studied in depth.