21 replies to this topic

[eddie b]

I am new to your site, so please forgive me in advance for posting a simple question like this...but...
In my past 2 years of becoming a supplier to the Ad Specialty (ASI) industry, I have been working to educate myself on who/which came first: the advertising specialty distributor that sells (and understands) printing or the printing broker that can (and will) sell ad specialties?

We are a commercial printer that for 9 years has only sold calendars (stock and custom) to this industry. We have been trying to position ourselves as a source for the "other side"...general/commercial printing...you know...ink on paper.

After attending all 5 ASI shows this past year 2008, it seemed to be a difficult conversation for most Distributors to understand that printing could be considered a promotional product for them to attempt to sell.

In attendance at most of these shows would be a small percentage of true print brokers. These folks understood exactly what we were talking about. These seem to be our best leads for new business.

With the new year 2009 just 2 months or so away, is there something I am missing, or will we just have to continue to keep providing education/enlightenment to the masses?

Moderator: Too long of a question?
Too close to a sales pitch?
Please let me know if I broke any rules, as this is my first posting. :confused:

Thanks.

Eddie B.

[royster13]

I think pretty much every other industry picked up "promotional products" before we realized we had competition (many thought were invincible).....If you look at trade magazines for printers, sign makers, trophy shops, commerial laundries, etc. etc., you will see ads for promo product suppliers....

PS....Eddie, welcome to the "dark side"....

[eddie b]

Thanks for the quick reply...(deep breath) The Force is strong in you!
Ed

[bdail]

Hi Eddie - and welcome to the group.

We sell alot of printing in our office, mostly because one of my salespeople was a print broker in his past life and is able to understand all the ins and outs of the business. It's a great profit source for us and usually leads to other promotional product sales as well.

I would say that it is common for new folks to say that this is the ASI industry. It is not. ASI is a supplier, just like you are. If you need to find out more about the industry, I'd recomend checking out PPAI- http://www.ppai.org which is our non-profit trade association. They also have an extensive book section which can give you all kinds of pertinent information.

Barbara

[eddie b]

Barbara.
Thanks for the note, and yes...education is the key to teaching distributors how to sell our capabilities. I am sure your salesperson has been a tremendous source for your other staff members.
Equally, my education of how the industry as a whole works has been somewhat overwhelming.

Our efforts have been lead by a vet of 30+ years as a supplier. His previous company sold out to...dare I say it...Norwood.
He has only represented our company as a stock calendar company that can print custom calendars as well. Sometimes, opportunities have fallen in his lap and he's helped Distributors with true commercial printing ventures. When this happens, they have fallen in love with him.

FYI, we have attended the SAGNY show in the North East for many years.
We have just officially joined PPAI and will be at the Vegas show in January.
PSDA is the next possible venture, but their show is this week. I will not be attending and we have not joined...yet.

Best to you.

Eddie B.

[jacquez]

Eddie,

Welcome to distributor talk!:)

Today the promotional product industry is a little like the make up of USA. We are a real blend of trophy shops who also sell PP, business form sellers who sell PP, embroidery shops who sell PP, promotional product only distributors, PPD who also do embroidery and on and on and on. We I started (many many years ago) in this business most of us were selling calendars, thermometers, pens and a few other "advertising specialty" items. As the industry grew it assimilated many other products and "sellers" into this great industry.

Is that 30+ industry veteran my old friend Spencer Browning? You have a real source of industry knowledge in Spencer. His knowledge is priceless.;) Tell him I said, Hi!


Jacque

[bdail]

And Eddie - no problem at all with you saying Norwood - alot of good folks have come from there. Their new President, Paul Lage, is an old friend who is doing an amazing job of righting that ship.

Barbara

[admaven5050]

Eddie,
You might want to see if PPAI still has the Calendar Council. It might be a good starting place for you to get a better handle on the industry and gain some valuable contacts and possibly industry mentors.

[Cyncor]

Interesting post Jacque. In Canada we are taught that the US is like a melting pot (conform or die) and that Canada is made up like a tossed salad (everyone is unique but we need all the parts to BE a salad).

As for print material, we stumbled into that arena and the percentage of our business in print is growing significantly each year. It is definitely an avenue of profit for us.

[CBuerki]

I for one would love to sell printing on paper as that is a far much larger market in this area than for the traditional promotional products. The roadblocks I've run into to date are:
1. Not understanding the printing industry vocabulary.
2. Not having access to graphics support that understands the industry.
3. Not knowing the difference between paper 1 and paper 2
4. The significant costs involved to ship paper from printer to customer
5. Not knowing how to price competitively.

And the beat goes on. So, I don't do it but I see a lot of it around.

Chuck

[royster13]

Chuck I hear you...I have myself convinced I can not produce digital files, although the files I send to TradeNet work fine.....And TN uses presses very typical of those in many other shops....I had a good run on envelopes for a while but lost interest and most of my clients....

[EagleMountain]

eddie b said:

...We are a commercial printer that for 9 years has only sold calendars (stock and custom) to this industry. We have been trying to position ourselves as a source for the "other side"...general/commercial printing...you know...ink on paper.

Welcome to DT Eddie!

I came into the PP end from the layout/design side, brokering a lot of printing in the process. I believe it helped a great deal on the p'product side, at least from the pre-production angle.

I'm always on the lookout for a good wholesale printer with broader capabilities than the gang-print types. Please post your contact info, website, etc.

Hope to see more of your posts in the future!

[eddie b]

Thanks to everyone for all of the replies and the warm welcome.
It is overly helpful to hear from the all of the different markets, Canada included...
I am in the process of writing my next post, and it relates to the "green" side of your (our) industry.

Eddie B.

[reynolds]

I too would be very interested in expanding our company's offerings to print sales.
Not sure how to even go about that and as Chuck mentioned have some major reservations that we could be competItive in the market.

It seems to me that all printers are entering our market.

Chuck's concerns above are the same as mine.

Cheers,
R

[eddie b]

To Chuck and Matt.

Based on the issues posed by Chuck, and I can assure you each is a valid concern for someone new to selling printing, I will try to give brief explainations that hopefully won't be too daunting or overwhelming.

Each point is directly related to knowledge that can only be gained by experience. (Ever heard that before...)

I'll try to address each point for you and give a quick explaination in the limited area of this posting.

1. Not understanding the printing industry vocabulary. As with any industry, we do have numerous terms that can seem odd: sheetfed, line screen, PMS, FSC, PDF, recycled content, digital, gang runs, Quark/Indesign/Photoshop, gloss, dull, offset, cover, text, etc... The more time you spend around this business, the more these will become familiar terms. Many of these terms relate to any other type of printed product you'll ever sell. Just like learning to sell coffee mugs, and having to know the different types of ceramics or plastics, understanding the manufacturing side of the printing product will take some time.

2. Not having access to graphics support that understands the industry. Chuck: Are you talking about graphic designers? If so, having a good freelance designer to use as a sales partner is helpful, and yet selling the design side of any printed project opens another complete set of questions. Most good designers have a working knowledge of the printing process. Many can be considered print brokers as they will sell printing to their clients as well. Having a decent working knowledge of how graphic files are prepared will either require taking a class at a local design school/college, or many years around this part of the industry. If you do get involved with handling the designing of a brochure, one piece of adivse that should serve you: Let the professional designer do their job. Let the client have their say and feel free to have an opinion, just keep it to yourself. More than likely you'll be better off. (*I have a family full of designers and they shoot my ideas down every day!)

3. Not knowing the difference between paper 1 and paper 2. As with selling any new garment, textile item, cap, pen, etc...learning the options available takes time. Paper is no exeception. The grade, weight, finish, and color are all imperitive to know when specifying a print project to a printer and when requesting an estimate.
Most printers will have their favorite sheet/brand that they use daily and either inventory as a "house" sheet, or know they can get their hands on easily.
It is good to know that: (A) paper is bought by grade similar to gasoline: Premium, #1, #2, #3...and the price of each grade drops just like gas; (B) paper is also bought by weight: very light weight 60# uncoated/offset is similar to copier paper; very light weight 60# gloss text is very similar to a magazine text pages; very heavy uncoated paper is similar to some business cards or business reply cards; very heavy coated paper is similar to some catalog covers or menus; © paper is bought by finish: gloss, dull, matte, uncoated, etc...and (D) paper is bought by color, and yes there are multiple shades of white! Colors are usually associated with uncoated papers and this really brings in a whole other world of questions.

4. The significant costs involved to ship paper from printer to customer. This question is in play with anything sold to anyone in any industry...especially today! Having several good regional sources that you can count on helps ease this concern somewhat. Shipping a large job to California that is printed in Florida will increase your budget, and could cause you to lose the project. However, I have heard from several high volume print brokers that say freight is a very small concern to them. Regardless of where they are printing, freight costs are going to be in play. Many roll the cost into their selling price and never blink. Again, these conversations were with some pretty seasoned and successful print brokers.

5. Not knowing how to price competitively. This is one of the areas that you have to know your customer, be somewhat familiar with their budgets, know who your competition is, and also "see the big picture". If you can add the ability to sell printing to your existing good clients, and you can realize a decent margin (10-15-20%) you are doing more than making a buck, you are becoming a more important resource to them. You generally won't see much higher margins than these, as the world of printing is competitive. What you will hopefully see is an increase in overall sales, again due to your being more than just the promotional products source.
One thing else, several of the recent projects we have produced for our existing distributor clients have been $10K, $20K, $50K and up. These were specific successes for them. Additionally, over half were reprints from past years or new 2009 versions of product catalogs.

Please don't take these notes as any form of "gospel". These are just my personal thoughts after selling print for 20+ years and also from being associated with many successful printing brokers during this time.

Something else that will surely be a concern for someone new to print... how can you trust that a printer won't take your business by selling direct. Other than taking a leap of faith, your choices are to deal only with trade printers or find a commercial printer you can trust.

As a commercial printer, we are in the "gray area" of this industry. We have numerous distributor/broker clients nationally who use us as a trusted source. These clients represent around 20%+ of our annual sales. Our reputation with these distributors is impeccable. We will not call your client direct or compromise your relationship.
We do however have a much larger segment of our local/regional clients that we deal with direct, and these folks account for roughly 80% of our annual sales.

My personal effort is to grow the broker side of our business. This is due to the change in business climate, an aging sales staff at my company that is rapidly retiring out, and an understanding of the need to sell more printing with less people on staff. Our sales people of the future are the distributors and print brokers.

One last thought, understand that the printing industry is broken into several categories: commercial printers (like me); strictly "trade printers" who only deal with brokers or distributors; forms printers; label printers; envelope printers; large format; digital; direct mail; and on and on...To learn more about the "trade" side, research the PSDA. They are an industry/trade group based solely in printing brokerage. Their web site www.PrintJunkie.net is devoted totally to this field.

Good luck and I hope you are able to gain some insight from these "long winded" notes.

I look forward to more involvement with each of you, or at least hearing of your successes in offering printing as part of your product mix.

Eddie B.
(*If you haven't noticed...I am a teacher/writer at heart.)

[royster13]

I kind of like the idea that TradeNet only has 2 kinds of paper....Good thing because even that confuses me....

PS....The long winded posts are great....So long as your name is not "Steve" you should be okay.....

[CBuerki]

Tradenet makes it real easy for us sales-types to sell their product line. I've purchased the book, "Getting it Printed" from Amazon.Com and it's a big help to decipher a lot of what you are referring to.

Last week one of my customers asked me to print 500 pcs of a 4 color data sheet for her, so my first thought was to set something up in Corel Draw, which I have and which I am familar with, at least to create something, but when it'd come to outputing into files for printing ... well....I ain't got that skill. My initial thought was to create something and have it color copied by one of the local copy capable houses in the area, but she didn't want that. She was way ahead of me on what she wanted but I have s sneaking suspicion that when she gets to the botton line on the estimate she's gonna be giving birth to kittens. So, I referred her to one of the local printers.

Chuck

[reynolds]

Thanks Eddie, some useful information.
Post #3 was very informative to me as I have heard these terms but you nicely referenced them to real world examples.

We do have an art dept. on staff here and of course right now there is not enough work to go around so this is the type of thing we should be investigating further as a company.

Thanks,
Matt

[Cyncor]

Chris can Eddie have a prize for the longest and most valuable print training session on DT to date!!!?

I have Cyncor umbrellas I can donate :)

[eddie b]

Cynthia...wait until we start a discussion about something I am passionate about and really know something about! LOL!

I appreciate the kind words.
The world of printing can seem overwhelming to some distributors. I maintain to nearly everyone I talk to about adding print to their existing product mix, if they can understand selling USB's, zillions of options of garments, floor mats, writing instruments, glass wear, etc...with a little education and time, printing can be understood as well.
The trust and faith that their existing clients have in them to deliver other goods is the perfect chance to "test the waters". A simple question to an existing client about them getting a chance to provide a budget on the client's catalog, brochure, etc... is all it takes.

I hope this line of thinking is read by all and understand I am not positioning my company as the ONLY good source for the above type work...though we are a really good source and appreciate the chance to be involved...
We are not the local short run letterhead, envelope, business card shop that most people will cut their "teeth" on in printing sales.

I am sure there are more notes to come.

Eddie B.