Fixing the Local Print Business - The Biggest Target

 
It might be about the local postal store, franchise or independent.  Many years ago someone told me about a company (a start-up at the time) called Mailboxes, Etc. (now The UPS Store)  My original thought was, why use them instead of the post office?  I believed the business concept was flawed - I was way wrong.  Yes, many of these businesses are feeling the strain of the economy and being a franchisee, but the outlook for this group is very positive - just walk into one on any given weekday (especially after 2pm).  The question I have is - can the franchisors bring in higher margin products to more utilize their current foot traffic - and give the franchisee a chance to succeed?

Being a target market for LightsOn Graphics is the wrong phrase; it is much more a prediction. Postal stores provide a convenience that creates foot traffic and business in that it is hyper localized - one stop to send mail, UPS, Fed-X, get the boxes and packing you need to complete your mailing.  They have morphed from a post office box and shipping center to a business center providing copy service, document shredding, limited but critical office supplies, and limited emergency print (copies, business cards).  Just a side note - If you need shredding, buy a shredder.

Offering print and collateral marketing services is a natural expansion to their business; some would say they already do.  I tend to use Postnet in my examples because, not only are they in that postal store target bunch, but they also use a service that, from my research, provides nothing except the satisfaction that they can say, "we have an online print site".  No they don't, but that is just my opinion.  I have interviewed several small printers that use the same system - orderless (like zero) - they stretch to find value in something they pay for every month.  The system they use does provide marketing benefits and a few  convenience tools, but not sales.

Now that the market has been identified, we can start talking about the product and what makes LightsOnGraphics.com different (better) in both product and concept - see our forthcoming blog entries (or see an earlier taste - Fixing the Local Print Business).

In Review - Targets:

1. Postal Stores - because this is where the customers are.
2. Local Quick Printers with poor web presence.
3. Postal Store Franchisors Postnet, Postal Annex, Goin' Postal, etc.)
4. Quick Print Franchisors (AlphaGraphics, Minuteman Press, Sir Speedy)
5. Local Graphic Designers.
6. Vertical Market providers (newly identified)

Thank You For Reading.!.!

Bob

561-371-4113

Local: Competing with the Internet Print Giant in the Evolving Local Print Market and How I Plan to Disrupt (Fix) it.

Introduction
This is about much more than the local printer - it's about "Local" everything.  It's also about the impressions (mis-information) that Madison Avenue style advertisers can create.  The printing business is so typical of "Local"; maybe that is because I know it that way; maybe it is because it used to be so "Local".  I have described in past writings what consumers want: it's "NetBetter".  As a primer to this, one should read my "Understanding the Changing Print Market" article.  This is a long one - I hope you have time.

The Defensive Printer 
The first thing I tell people in business, or starting a business, is to never take your first step with or from a defensive position - wins will come few and far between if you do.  Knowing this, which all printers do (at least today's survivors), why do they still?  There are so many things that can be said when a client walks in and says "... can you match that $3.99 Vistaprint price?"  So many good answers exist that put you on the offense.:

• "We don't produce at that low a quality level".
• "Here is our price, see if they can match it" (I like this one best).
• "Here, lets sit down and try ordering some cards from Vistaprint; I'll match their price for comparable product" (when/if they do this you have won a customer forever).
• Next time you see them ask, "Hey, how much did you end up paying for those $3.99 cards?"
• When someone hands you a Vistaprint card, acknowledge such and show them the differences.  It will point out the importance of first impression and embarrass them in a similar fashion to them ripping their pants all without you looking like a jerk; after all you are only trying to help.  Any salesperson (someone who handles many cards) can "feel" a Vistaprint printed card - and that is never a good thing.

Let's provide some food for thought here.  This will include some research, opinions and some of my solutions.  Happy Reading.

The Price Comparison 

How much did you pay for
your Free Vistaprint cards?

So today I thought I would do a little market research and evaluate some of the pricing of Vistaprint - every local printer's primary nemesis.  So I went in to the Free Business Cards area to get the numbers I have heard people spout.

Free business cards were for the quantity of 250; 500 are $9.99 and 1000 are $19.99; all these are amazing prices - if this is what they actually cost.  I selected 1000 cards for comparison.

I was first asked how quickly I wanted them - this surprised me.  Your typical local quick printer will have your cards available for pickup in 3 - 5 days at no premium.  At Vistaprint, the following charges existed:

•   3 Day - $26.89
•   7 Day - $17.40
• 14 Day - $10.42

I have never had the luxury of having a customer say "get them to me whenever" so I am going to assume that most people, after going this far in the process, choose the "3 Day" option - after all, they need some cards!!!

Then came my choice of card stocks and finishes.  Now if you have ever felt Vistaprint Cards you know they are uniquely different.  The "Free Matte" stock is very light weight, almost like a heavy paper rather than card stock.  There are multiple levels of premium offering including both stock weight and finish.  I chose the second most expensive choice, which is on a premium stock with gloss finish.  I did not see a more specific description of the stock, but I recall in the past this being a 14pt card stock - a very acceptable card stock.  This choice added $18.74 to the price.

Then came the card's back.  If you want nothing done, it's $2.99.  Have them print "what you want" on the back - its $7.49.  The free version has a Vistaprint Advertisement on the back - How classy is that - sorry, I just laugh every time I see one of those "get your free cards.....".  I chose the $7.49 option.

Total Price for my Vistaprint Free Cards:  $73.11
(albeit I wanted 1000 rather than the 250).

Price sounds like less an issue when you know the facts.

Vistaprint screen image showing
the real cost of their Business Cards

I like so much the way Vistaprint advertises their "Free" and "$9.99" cards that we added a similar (better) product to some of our websites; a "$9.99 for 250" set of business cards.  We considered free, but we don't see the demand for the real low quality stuff especially after someone holds one. The Link shows you how we do it - it's not meant to sell you something - after all you are in the business. Get Your $9.99 Business Cards Here.

The Click Comparison
Wow, who has the time to do this?  Actually it isn't so bad, especially for the B2C market.

I had 15 clicks and each one required some review so it was not like just clicking "next", "next", "next".  Vistaprint is the ultimate in "would you like fries with that" website. We can all learn from what they do, even though I do consider, they do it to an extreme.

It took me just over a half hour to order my first card.  If I had needed to do a second, it would be substantially quicker; probably in the 15 minute range.  This is why Vistaprint owns the B2C market. In B2B, time is money and this is the first thing felt by the buyer or manager.  What if you needed to order a second set (or more)?

One could argue that Vistaprint saves the customer design expenses - it's not about you - ever been to a trade show and you get two identical cards from 2 (or more) vendors?  How can this happen with so many choices?  Popular is Popular. Click.
 
The Quality Comparison
I don't think much needs to be said here. Just feel the difference.  Next time someone hands you a Vistaprint card (I can tell by feel), simply say, "oh, you get your cards from Vistaprint?"  Listen to what they say - it's usually funny - it's always a sales opportunity.

The Vistaprint card is on top.The correctly sized card (2 x 3 1/2) is beneath.
Note the difference in size.

 Why The Local Printer Can't Compete
With a Branded Website

Local will win only if the "Locals" can work together.  Their growth must be about taking back the local and not fighting over someone else's local.  Get back the Vistaprint customer - educate the Vistaprint customer.  There are many branded websites out there (Their site, your name), but they are each unique; like many many small fish fighting for the same food.  There is a need to learn from Brick-and-Mortar examples.  Bill's Hardware can't compete with the marketing and buying power of Home Depot; but it can under an Ace or True Value Logo.  Want more info?  See the articles from May 2012 "Why Branded Websites Don't Work With Any Business, Especially with Local Printing", from April 2012 "Who Me, “Who Three” - Fixing the Local Print Business – Part Three"; and, also from April 2012 "Understanding the Changing Print Market".

Our Solution and Plan to Disrupt

We Love The
ACE Hardware Business Model
(We Will Improve That Later)

Our solution at LightsOn is to provide a uniform online collaborative brand; much like Ace Hardware or True Value Hardware does for the local Brick-and-Mortar hardware store.  When  you visit LightsOnGraphics.com note The local info (Your local info) on the right.  Our objective is to fill that with people in that local's graphics business.  Our plan is never to take your local business, we don't want the business from the phone call that the website generates, we simply want the business from the website - the order you would have lost anyway - with the local referrer/printer/designer getting an attractive commission.  Our Objective is to recreate the "Local" printer the way ACE Hardware recreated the Hometown hardware store.   How will we do this?  Read more.  Who Me, “Who Three” - Fixing the Local Print Business – Part Three. 

More to come.

Want more now?  Local Printers, Local Designers, Local Postal Stores - collaborate with us, collaborate with each other and Brand Local - turn the LightsOn in your home town. Call or email for more information.

Click

~Bob Leonard
rleonard@LightsOnGraphics.com
561-371-4113 

Local - Net Better

Quality, and How it is Marketed and thus Perceived will Define Success.

There are many definitions of quality in business.  The ISO 9000 definition is the "Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements". "The standard defines requirement as need or expectation".

Quality is something a product has when it is reproduced the same over and over and over to a defined set of specifications.  Some companies maintain quality by producing the product in one place.  Some companies maintain quality with well defined and well engineered systems.

Consumers buy quality - they know what to expect because of the quality.  This does not mean that the consumer is getting a better product. or even good product; the consumer just knows what they are getting. Having a better hamburger is not enough to compete with McDonald's just as having a better print product is not be enough to compete with Vistaprint.

Followup on "Who Me, Who Three - Fixing the Local Print Business" Can the Local Printer Survive?

 There is an economy of scale that the local quick printer (franchise or independent) needs to have to survive.  Read my blog entry "Who Me, “Who Three” - Fixing the Local Print Business", it will provide some further background and insight.

The local printer's first issue is utilization of assets which means increasing it's business.  Since they have higher end and more capable equipment than the new competition (office product stores and postal stores), they have a bigger financial mouth to feed.  Reduced copy business revenue and traffic and then losing some of the higher end business to online printers has made this difficult and their future questionable. It will require some aggressive creativity for these businesses to continue as an ongoing entity.

The local printer needs to aggressively network to two groups, the graphic designer and the local postal stores and signing them up as partner/affiliates (sound familiar).  This will require very attractive commissions be paid to the partners; so attractive that they wont want to do it with anyone else.  As it is said in the venture capital business, "Do you want to own a percentage of something or 100% of nothing".  It's a strong argument.  This is one of those areas where I can tell everyone the answer, and for one reason or another (can't execute, too busy, don't have talents beyond retail, etc), its doesn't happen. Let's just say they need to begin to collaborate with each other more aggressively.

The franchisors should be all over this as they need to help (save) their franchisees.  BetaGraphics (our make believe franchisor) needs to do more than educate, but actually push their local franchise into partnering with local graphic artists and postal stores, basically offering satellite franchises (BizOps) and relationships to the local BetaGraphics.  These people are looking for a solution that the local quick printer has.

What you read is the why our business model at LightsOnGraphics exists.  A player needs to unify the fragmented local market or the local market will ultimately disappear causing everyone to lose; quality will suffer (as it already is) and prices will ultimately rise.

Bob Leonard
561-371-4113

Collaborative Marketing Efforts Make The Impossible - Probable.

One misconception I have found in talking to prospective partners and affiliates is that they think we are selling them a website - we are not.  We are simply partnering to bring local exposure (everywhere) to LightsOnGraphics.com in exchange for the local exposure of the partner and affiliate resulting in local foot traffic, additional revenues and commissions (commissions from LightsOn Graphics).

LightsOn Graphics' business objective is to increase traffic to the LightsOnGraphics.com website, and the local partner/affiliate to appear when the user traffic is in their locale.  It is not to drive traffic to (or from) a local area. The results and objectives are achieved through collaboration and not brut force.

Taking this approach gives the local printer and postal store a chance to compete for the market which is slowly being lost to the major online printer(s) as described in this past blog entry - Understanding the Changing Print Market. 

Bob Leonard

Talk - Demo - Talk - Demo, etc... and Loving It

 I am enjoying the reception and feedback I am getting from postal stores as we prep to sign up our second phase of "BetaLocals".  They so clearly understand new business opportunities and the value of a referral and a customer.

The biggest obstacle seems to be developing an understanding of collaborative relationships and marketing as well as collaborative branding and collateral.  Read our thoughts on collaboration and then what the local printer needs to do.  Learn a little more about collaboration at Wikipedia.

The print stores are going to be a different animal as we start to roll that out in a couple weeks.  Because of the tightly reined in and restrictive UFOCS, we may have to limit our sales effort to the franchisors.  The "why's" on why they should will be the subject of a forthcoming blog entry.

Bob

“Who Four” - The Biggest Target - Fixing the Local Print Business – Part Four

"Who Four":  The local postal store, franchise or independent.  Many years ago someone told me about a company (a start-up at the time) called Mailboxes, Etc. (now The UPS Store)  My original thought was, why use them instead of the post office?  I believed the business concept was flawed - I was way wrong.  Yes, many of these businesses are feeling the strain of the economy and being a franchisee, but the outlook for this group is very positive in my opinion - just walk into one on any given weekday (especially after 2pm).  The question I have is - can the franchisors bring in higher margin products to more utilize their current foot traffic - and give the franchisee a chance to succeed?

Being a target market for LightsOn Graphics is the wrong phrase; it is much more a prediction. Postal stores provide a convenience that creates foot traffic and business in that it is hyper localized - one stop to send mail, UPS, Fed-X, get the boxes and packing you need to complete your mailing.  They have morphed from a post office box and shipping center to a business center providing copy service, document shredding, limited but critical office supplies, and limited emergency print (copies, business cards).  Just a note - If you need shredding, buy a shredder.

Offering print and collateral marketing services is a natural expansion to their business; some would say they already do.  I tend to use Postnet in my examples because, not only are they in that postal store target bunch, but they also use a service that, from my research, provides nothing except the satisfaction that they can say, "we have an online print site".  No they don't, but that is just my opinion.  I have interviewed several small printers that use the same system - orderless (like zero) - they stretch to find value in something they pay for every month.  The system they use does provide marketing benefits and a few  convenience tools, but not sales.

Now that the market has been identified, we can start talking about the product and what makes LightsOnGraphics.com different (better) in both product and concept - see our forthcoming blog entries (or see an an earlier taste - Fixing the Local Print Business).

In Review - Targets:

1. Postal Stores - this is where the customers are..
2. Local Quick Printers with poor web presence.
3. Postal Store Franchisors Postnet, Postal Annex, Goin' Postal, etc.)
4. Quick Print Franchisors (AlphaGraphics, Minuteman Press, Sir Speedy)
5. Local Graphic Designers.
6. Vertical Market providers (newly identified)

Thank You For Reading.!.!

Bob

561-371-4113

Identifying Potential Clients - Those That Have "Bad" and "Really Bad" Web Presence

The "Who's" have been identified.  For the local printer there seems to be only two types of web sites; "Bad" and "Really Bad".  The classifications are limited to printers, but since that is the subject of my white paper / business plan, it is here.  This is obviously going to sound self serving to LightsOn's business model, but identifying these weaknesses and niche / cracks in the market are part of any business and execution plan.

The "Bad"
Several large trade printers provide local printers with branded websites at little to no cost.  The local printer gets a good site that brands themselves.  The trade printer gets many local representations of their products. Why don't theses "Bad" websites work?

• Products are limited to what the trade printer supplies (the trade printer that provided the branded site for the local printer).
• The local printer has limited price control (None IMHO).
• Local printers buy from multiple trade printers.
• Branded sites do not help to promote service nor foot traffic to the local printer.
• Branded sites have failed for the local printer in the market place. 

The "Really Bad".
This one is kind of funny to me because many of these sites are only for the purpose of being able to say: "yea we have a website too" (IMO).  Actually, they are much more, but the much more in about preservation of business rather than growth and new business. Regretfully, when you are in defensive mode, and your competition is on the offense, there is only one direction for the ball to go (there are very few interceptions in business).

Sampling of their customer sites:
A PostNet Site

I am not sure where to begin - what I do know is, the printers that use this product are our target.  They so obviously want more.  I always tell them to ask themselves - Have you ever received an unsolicited online order?  - Not one where you told the customer to go there and upload their files.  Some local printers actually pay for this ....  and wow, I will be asking them all... "who owns your domain name?"

No wonder Vistaprint is winning.

bob

Fixing the Local Print Business – The LightsOn Solution – Part Two – "Who" is Invited to Dinner.

Previous blog entries have outlined the changing market, the problems (as I see it), and solutions with general business examples that were somewhat vague, non-specific and non-committal; this entry begins changing that.  As I always note, these blog entries are my white paper outline / business plan.

To be specific in our “how’s", "why’s" and "who’s”, we must define a specific “who” and then the “why” – Those are the easy parts; “how” is the magic part - I am going to pretend I have that answer too (No, I did not major in Dr. Seuss in college (RIT BS ’79 - - UnivDayton MBA '83).  Dr. Seuss's microscopic creatures were "whos").

The biggest obstacle to get over (common amongst all the ‘who’s’) is that they can bypass us and draw a higher gross margin (we pay 30%) – let’s pretend that is true, which if it mattered, I would argue, but it doesn’t. If the phone rings to one of our affiliates, we tell them, take the order and bypass the website – it is all about the service you provide.  Our objective is not to get your customer, but get the Vistaprint customer to come to you.  You will come to us most of the time as our program is ‘priced right’, but this is not the entry for defining this.

The Who’s

‘Who One’: Independent and Freelance Web & Print Designers.  This is by far the easiest group to identify and get to – the problem is, it is individuals, each one, needing to go through the learning and training process individually – remember, we are not selling a product, but a collaborative process.  Some of these ‘Who One’s’ just do design, some partner with a printer, some broker the work themselves and some (our favorites) broker through us.  By the designer affiliating with us, not only do they make the 30%, but they stand to get new clients as well being our local affiliate. The most important thing here though, is that they have made it easier on the customer, the print buyer, who now has one less vendor to deal with saving them time (and thus, money).  Remember, printing is a service business – sell service with the product – your client will love you more for it.

‘Who Two”:  Independent local printers, marketing and promotional product firms.  Much like the ‘Who One’s’, but typically have a larger base and physical location.  To be a Local Primary Affiliate / Partner, they must be at least this.  The best thing about this group is that they are happy with 30% of something (because they understand the ‘why’s’) versus 35%-40% of nothing.

‘Who Three’:  The franchise local printer and the local independent printer.  When I first conceived this concept, this was my logical and obvious 1^st choice – the problem comes with the bureaucracy of the franchisor, current UFOC stringencies and an attitude of defeatism (maintain business rather than get more).  This is a slow process, but will have one soon – they seem to understand the opportunity when we talk about mini-franchisees (our secondary affiliate) to their retail franchisee (our primary affiliate).  This is the only area when we may have an exclusive grouping, even though not an exclusive LightsOn affiliation.  These local print franchisee’s understand this and us better than anyone else.

‘Who Four”:  The local postal store, franchise or independent.  These businesses are winning purely on the market’s force, with little knowledge or expertise – and they are everywhere.  The only stores with more organic foot traffic are the Apple stores (but it’s Location – Location – Location).  I would venture to say, they are the water cooler of the 2010s – where busy (key word = “busy”) small business people pass almost daily.  Most, if not all, are already in the low end print business.  Just one funny note – I was in a postal store the other day (doing research) mailing a package and the client ahead of me requested EDDM help – He sent them to a local printer to get their brochure printed and said “come back when you have that and we will handle the EDDM”.  That customer never came back as the printer surely closed the loop and did the EDDM as well (many are today).  I shook my head thinking “box of rocks’…. Shame on the franchisor for inadequate / incomplete training (or simply not keeping the franchisees up-to-speed).

For more information about how the LightsOn Graphics affiliate program works go to www.LightsOnGraphics.com/affiliate_long/.

Blog entries (expanded insight) specific to “Who Three” and “Who Four” coming soon – Stay Tuned.

Bob