In summer 2004, a TrendWatch Graphic Arts survey reported that about half (49%) of design and production firms said that their jobs for digital printing had increased. This is up from 36% a year earlier. This article will compare affordable large format laser printers which can handle the short-run 12”x18” work.

The Xerox Phaser 7750/DN comes in four versions: the 7750/B; the 7750/DN, which adds a network card, automatic 2-sided printing, and 384 MB of RAM; the 7750/GX adds 512 MB of RAM and a 1,500-sheet paper draw; and the 7750/DXF adds a finisher and an upgrade to a total output capacity of 3,150 sheets.

The degree of success that you achieve in business will ultimately come down to the degree of depth of your conversations. Business is, essentially, nothing more than a conversation. If you lose the conversation with your customers, you will eventually lose the business. If you lose the conversation with your team, you will eventually lose the business. If you stop engaging in personal conversations with yourself through silent reflection, eventually your business life will suffer. The more you can keep engaging in thoughtful and stimulating conversations with all those you surround yourself with, the more you will find business success as well as the personal satisfaction.

Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters

MAIN IDEA

The benefits of differentiation have been overstated. Instead of wanting something unique or even a cutting edge product, most customers simply want a quality product at a fair price which does what it promises consistently well. Therefore, to prosper, don't obsess over trivial points of difference, gimmicks, branding or outside-the-box thinking. Instead, do the basics well. Get close to your customers, understand what matters most to them and then deliver that better than your competition.

Congratulations, your “Pre-Press Buzzword Secret Decoder Ring” has arrived!

As a pre-press “techie”, I speak in buzzwords and acronyms all the time. I could say, “We can't RIP that PDF/X-1 because the JDF is missing and we can't run OPI in our TIFF/IT workflow.” If I lost you with that sentence, read on, because I'm going to decode what I just said by giving you a quick tour of the buzzwords that you'll be hearing – and eventually using. This will prepare you for a visit to the Graph Expo or Print Ontario and survive a sales pitch from your suppliers.

Many printers regard staff as a cost of doing business. This perception is incorrect. A cost is an outlay of money for necessities to get things done — items like rent and office supplies. You should economize on costs as much as possible, since they do not affect the value of your core product or service.

By contrast, your staff is an investment — the most important investment your business ever makes. An investment is an expenditure for the purpose of producing income and it affects the value of your product or service substantially. So economizing on your investment in staff — by paying less than market rate for skilled positions, for example — misses the point. Rather, investments are judged by their potential return and have the capability of increasing profits by much more than the initial financial outlay they require.

The beauty of a trade show is the sheer volume of people it attracts. Lots of visitors should mean lots of business... if you play your cards right.

There are two ingredients you need to master to increase the amount of business you can take away from your next trade show: pre-show promotion and staff training. Let's take a look at each and examine how it should be integrated into a winning show plan.

Pre-show Promotion

Exhibitors often ask why they should spend resources promoting the show. After all isn't that the show manager's job? The answer is, yes the show manager does promote the show but their promotional objective is to attract quality people to the show. As an exhibitor your objective is slightly different. Your need is to attract quality people to your booth.

The latest in printing technology and product advancements were showcased at the Graph Expo and Converting Expo last month in Chicago. The crowds were up significantly from last year and attendees were upbeat and eager to invest in new equipment. One exhibitor, Steve Thistle from Robert E. Thistle Ltd., reported selling three pieces of equipment within one hour! Other vendors I spoke with were equally pleased with their overall sales and lead generation. This optimistic mood would indicate that our industry is on the rebound. Check out our photo spread on page 22.

This month's cover story will give readers a small peek into the growing pressures of global competition. Vincent Mallardi, a well-known industry player, makes his case on how foreign presses, labor and immigration are changing the rules of competition in the printing industry. And this is only the beginning. As China continues its economic re-structuring to compete in the global community, the impact at home will have far reaching implications. Can we effectively compete? Mallardi thinks so… but only if we break out of our cultural biases.

Monitor profiling and soft-proofing has reached a level of maturity where it can be implemented into almost all areas of digital imaging. Personally, I don't understand why anyone involved in this business would dream of not using this technology. Given the choice to see on screen an accurate representation of how the document will print or to “go by the number” I know which I would choose.

Can monitor profiling and soft-proofing offer you new tools to improve your business? Is it possible that monitor profiling will offer your customers a value added service? Definitely. Shorter turn around times, reduced number of hard proofs, better client satisfaction, predictability and consistency are just some of the significant benefits.

A few years ago, I outsourced a design project to alleviate the pressures of the day. In my haste, I failed to give the graphic designer specific parameters of what was needed. Two weeks later when he delivered his mockups – along with an invoice – I was aghast. His simple design was certainly not exceptional and did not, in my estimation, justify an invoice that was heavily weighed in charging for that ambiguous activity called “creative”.

Throughout my years in the newspaper environment, designing advertising and other print media followed a standard formula. Since the cost of ad design was included in the purchase of the space, we could not afford to give the designers the luxury of inspiration time; they had to produce a wide variety of compelling ads in a limited time. Fortunately, good graphic designers in a deadline-driven environment are by their nature, creatively inspired; it's part of their skill set. And for those moments when creativity took a holiday, there were thousands of advertising mockups available as starting points. But artistic creativity is not the point of this article.

It's said that if you put your money into your head – in the form of knowledge and skills – no one can take it from you.

True enough, but if you've built a business around your personal knowledge and skills, you might one day be wishing that someone would come along and take it – by purchasing your business, that is. Unfortunately, some businesses literally aren't saleable because their value lies solely in the personal knowledge, skills, reputation and contacts of the owner.

In these cases, you can't separate the business from the owner – they are one and the same. While the business may be very successful, it's not worth anything in terms of market value because the knowledge and skills are personal and nearly impossible to transfer without a very long management transition period, e.g. several years.

There are many examples of this and they tend to be businesses providing services rather than products.

Rising costs and shrinking government benefits are making it increasingly challenging for Canadians to build a nest egg that will let them retire in style. If you plan to retire earlier than the “standard” age of 65, the challenge becomes even greater.

It doesn't mean you have to give up your dream of early retirement. With careful planning and some special strategies, you can overcome the hurdle of fewer income-producing years to enjoy a prosperous early retirement. The planning begins right now.

Changing expectations