How Does Print Get Bought? Rules, and Roles, Are Changing

Do you need any printing today? The plaintive cry of the prospecting sales call is but a distant echo of years past. Graphics firms have skillfully adopted the marketing moxie of their clients, becoming indispensable print apparatchiks for multi-platform media initiatives.

But the quest to achieve these indivisible connections to customers is challenged by changes overtaking print supply chains: the explosion in online offerings; rising popularity of Print Buyers Online and Print Buyers International; exponential growth of massive print buying services; the torrid pace of adoption of Web-to-print utilities from Saepio, Printable, EFI, NowDocs, XMPie and Kodak, to name a few.

So it was with a mixture of delight and reportorial self-interest that I accepted an invitation to coordinate the NPES panel on “Print Demand Specifiers” (i.e. buyers) at the late-March Print Outlook 2007 conference in Chicago. To be honest, I had only a vague notion of what the panelists might reveal. Reflecting the speed of print buying today, panelists arrived just in time, as the session's title jelled: “How Print Gets Bought.”

Presenters included Joe Duncan, Leo Burnett senior VP for Print Innovation & Technology, and something of a celebrity in print circles. “We do not know how traditional decision-making in specifying and procuring print will migrate in the communication and ad business,” Duncan acknowledged. His articulate style and outspoken character, and his agency's faith in the print medium ($300 million in annual buys) added gravity to his comments.

Panelist Doug Traxler, VP of Baltimore-based Webb/Mason (15 fulfillment/procurement centers, 259 employees, 85 full-time buyers), illuminated the current goal of his clients: centralize print buys in a single source whose buyers assure uniform quality and branding consistency from 162 certified print purveyors. (Those plants hold $2 billion in capacity, he said.)

Traxler's customers want to be able to buy everything from labels, to packaging, to point-of-purchase and collateral—and escape coordinating the transactions themselves, without managing the transmittal of graphic assets. Traxler noted his firm doubles up on customer service representatives to smooth the process.

Webb/Mason built an Internet utility through which it funnels almost half its print work. Notably, the utility does not give clients access to “work-in-process” status because jobs come and go too quickly, he said. For all the volume, Webb/Mason says it is the seventh largest player in its field.

Then there was Maurice Desaulniers, CAE from SmithBucklin, the Chicago-based association management giant. He spoke of the massive volumes of publications and collateral his firm procures for more than 250 client associations. Handling trade groups ranging from popcorn growers to HP Indigo users, SmithBucklin is intimately in touch with print requirements: annual reports, newsletters, member magazines, etc. Booking more than 1 million conference hotel rooms annually, think of the volume of registration badge blanks alone that SmithBucklin requires. FedEx Kinko's commercial unit developed the utilities for Desaulniers and SmithBucklin to automate print purchases and minimize direct sales contact for much of that volume.

Perhaps most intriguing was Gary Nemcek, president of Four51.com. His firm runs a Web-based community (a kind of MySpace) that has matched 20,000 buying firms with 4,500 print providers. The 520,000 end-users profiled at Four51.com (i.e., multiple individuals from printers and buyers) account for $2 billion in transactions, averaging $1,722 in spending per end-user.

Listeners left with one clear insight: Print buying and selling has been irrevocably changed. Write me, or go to our Website, to download their slides.

bill.esler@reedbusiness.com