InfoTrends actually has a service within our Consumer Imaging group that tracks trends within photo publishing and photo merchandise. Applications within photo publishing and photo merchandise (at least by InfoTrends’ definition) include photo cards, photo books, photo calendars, and specialty photo prints. These applications are typically sold in a physical or digital retail environment, targeted toward consumers. We expect that by 2014, the total U.S. market for photo merchandise will reach over $2 billion.

A number of service providers from small to large have gotten in the photo publishing and merchandise game over the past few years, creating a more competitive marketplace. Nonetheless, there are a number of areas that service providers can look at to find success and grab their piece of the billion-dollar photo publishing pie.

• Licensed Content: According to research firm EPM Communications, consumers worldwide spend over $100 billion annually on licensed merchandise. That’s a huge market, and fits well within many of the applications in photo publishing and merchandise. Some photo publishers are forging partnerships and deals with major brands, sports organizations, and other companies to blend personal photo content with licensed content. One great example is Josten’s OurHubBub photo book business unit, which has a relationship with NASCAR to create custom photo books that blend fans’ photos with official NASCAR imagery.
• Social Media Integration: Between Facebook and the variety of photo hosting sites like Flickr and Picasa, there are hundreds of millions of users and billions of photos that can be turned into valuable photo products. Many of these services have APIs and development kits to “plug in” or build applications to leverage users’ photos to flow them into photo publishing applications. Companies like MixBook and HotPrints can ingest photos from social networks to create high-quality photo merchandise.
• Focus on Ease-of-use: While price and quality are the top considerations when choosing a company to purchase photo merchandise from, ease of designing and ordering those products can make or break the user’s choice of completing their product and submitting their credit card info. In addition, InfoTrends research has found that once consumers buy a photo book for the first time, it is very likely they will buy another one in the next year. Making your process as easy-to-use as possible can set your offering apart from the rest.

Photo publishing and merchandise presents a tremendous opportunity for service providers to enter adjacent markets with significant revenue potential… if the offering is strong, well thought out, and differentiated. Licensed content, social media integration, and ease-of-use are three opportunities that service providers should be actively exploring.

In a mere 22 months if you print on paper anywhere in the European Union (EU), there will no longer be a choice. Verified legal timber product sourcing, including pulp and paper, will become law.

Regulation (EU) No 995/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 lays down the obligations of operators who place timber and timber products on the market – also known as the (Illegal) Timber Regulation counters the trade in illegally harvested timber and timber products through three key obligations:

1. It prohibits the placing on the EU market for the first time of illegally harvested timber and products derived from such timber;
2. It requires EU traders who place timber products on the EU market for the first time to exercise ‘due diligence’;
3. Keep records of their suppliers and customers.

The Regulation covers a broad range of timber products including solid wood products, flooring, plywood, pulp and paper. Interestingly though, not included among a few other products such as rattan and bamboo are recycled products and printed papers such as books, magazines and newspapers.

The EU has chosen their battles just as the US has with the now familiar US Lacey Act. By excluding printed matter (for now) but including pulp and paper, the EU’s Timber Regulation leapfrogs Lacey in that European printers will no longer be at will to purchase paper without regard for legal harvests, specifically aimed at imports as of March 2013.

The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 is still in the consultation phase, but is written so vaguely that if passed in its present form, is sure to create a (common) wealth of issues. For now, we have to take a wait and see approach. Taking their Bill with a grain of Aussie salt, I wouldn’t expect to see it passed anytime soon.

As a side note in its “Comments from the Government of Canada on Australia’s Draft Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011”, the Canadian government is not amused. On May 6, 2011 the Secretary of the Senate Standing Committees on Rural Affairs and Transport wrote; “In particular, Canada is concerned that the Bill may lead to a requirement (whether explicitly stated or implied) for Australian importers to conduct risk assessments (or the ‘timber industry certifiers’ to do so on their behalf) on any unprocessed or processed timber products imported into Australia. Such a requirement would be particularly onerous for complex processed products made of timber sourced from multiple suppliers…” (like paper merchants and printers).

Which brings us back to the Lacey Act and its implications in the paper and printing industry here in the US. For the time being it seems like no movement on implementation pertaining to US-based paper mills and printers is imminent. That said, with all of the activity on other continents, one has to wonder.

Yurchak Printing’s service offerings were created to fulfill a need brought about by the digital age. By creating innovative solutions, Founder and CEO John Yurchak, Jr. has built an organization that is a leader in digital short-run book manufacturing. The company specializes in solutions for the production of directories, periodicals, journals, reference books, fine edition books, illustrated books, bibles, children’s books, bound galleys, and university press books. Yurchak Printing deals with run lengths from 1 to 1,500.

It Starts with a Vision

With over 40 years of observing the marketplace, John Yurchak had great intuition about market trends. He notes, “beginning in the mid-1980s, I saw that print runs were getting shorter and shorter. As volumes got smaller, the equipment I used – along with the associated plates, negatives, presses, and high labor and finishing costs – got to be very cumbersome. With the advent of digital printing in the 1990s, I saw a new opportunity to compete with short-run offset work. I saw a new market opening in short-run book publishing.”

Keeping Up with the Changing Market

End-users of hardcopy reference materials include colleges, universities, accounting firms, attorneys, and the medical field. Publishers want to print smaller quantities on demand to eliminate costly storage. There is also intense pressure to keep content up-to-date, requiring continual content modifications and driving shorter runs. According to Yurchak, “Even with all the information available on the Internet, there is a niche market for quantities ranging from 10 to 1,000 that require a short turnaround time. People want loose-leaf, hard-bound, and perfect bound reference materials.”

Lightweight Stocks with Blazing Speed

Yurchak went on to say, “We partnered with Océ for a number of reasons. With our focus on reference materials, printing on lightweight paper has become our specialty. For continuous printing on lightweight paper, Océ was the unquestionable choice.”

A flexible and powerful workflow was key for the quick delivery of a variety of jobs. Océ automated the book production software capabilities, providing Yurchak with a more hands-free, lower-cost approach. This translated into fewer errors, less manual handling, greater service consistency, and more accurate monitoring.

 The best print quality is critical for Yurchak customers. The company uses a variety of Océ devices, including the ColorStream 10000 Flex with Hunkeler Finishing, VarioPrint 6250, and VarioStream 9230 with Hunkeler Finishing. Yurchak explained, “Charts and graphs are important for scientific materials, but math books require clear images for formulas. We need quality without compromise, and Océ has delivered.”

 John Yurchak, Jr. had a tremendous vision when digital print was still in its infancy, but Océ has helped his company move to the next level. He concludes, “Océ hardware and software solutions have helped us create an exceptional business in the highly competitive world of digital publishing.”

Learn more about Yurchak, Printing Inc. by watching the video below!

• Monochrome books with color covers
• Color books with color covers
• Different finished sizes for books with perfect binding, case binding, or saddle stitching

The books themselves may use one or more presses to create the book block and another type to create the cover. There are laminators, trimmers, multiple types of binders and camera devices to integrate between the trimmers and binders to verify quality throughout the process. At the end of the production line, regardless of printing type or finish size, the completed book order must come together for packing and shipping in the most efficient manner.

The goal of book printing workflow is to allow each order to navigate through the complete production, finishing and shipping process with the minimum amount of human intervention and the highest level of productivity and quality. In addition, there is a need for tight integration with MIS, web-to-print and JDF/JMF communications protocols.

Like many well-orchestrated processes, the true beauty in book printing workflow often is found in the front end planning. Like a chess master, the workflow solution needs to be able to look at the whole board (the book order) and see 15 moves ahead to know what sorting, grouping and batching is going to enable the highest productivity for that day’s orders. An effective solution will allow batch management of all jobs prior to the start of printing grouped efficiently by size, imposition, run length and color and finishing requirements.

Real time quality control and reporting is critical as well. Bar codes are used to identify and track each job from start to finish, matching book blocks with covers and enabling routing through finishing, fulfillment and delivery. If any part of a job is damaged or produced at lower than acceptable quality, the barcode can be scanned and a reprint of the necessary components or the complete book itself can be automatically generated. Meanwhile the order entry system is continually updated so that inventory levels, order status and even the end customer can be kept informed. When book printing workflow is fully tuned to the production environment, it delivers thorough and integrated job management resulting in significantly increased productivity and cost savings. In fact, many book printers compete mainly on the strength of their workflow management capabilities.

Consider too that all of this complex choreography may be conducted using devices from completely disparate manufacturers to produce orders coming from a myriad of sources. In some ways, book printing may seem simpler than the complexities faced with data-driven transaction print or personalized direct mail – but when it comes to workflow, they wrote the book.

My travels take me from coast to coast and north to south here in North America working with over 100 clients in 200 locations per year. From ten-employee in-plants to billion dollar corporations, there are common themes that seem from my perspective to permeate every facet of the paper and print-space.

Necessity may be the Mother of invention, but it’s also the Mother of reduction, the Mother of consolidation and ultimately, the Mother of efficiency. The past few years of recessionary behavior has proven to be a Petri dish of sorts that prove this hypothesis.

Common to every nearly enterprise is the realization that certain functions have had to be reduced or eliminated in order to survive. On the M&A level this means economy of scale and centralization of management, marketing, accounting and human resource functions. Within the same organization, lower level elimination of redundant or non-value added positions has become the norm. I’ve walked in the door of many a facility where “ring the bell/buzzer/phone” for front desk service is now in force where before, the duty of the receptionist was just that; to receive.

If there is a front desk person it is frequently a CSR or AR/AP employee whose new workspace happens to be visibly at the front door of the establishment. The same goes with many other positions where value is perceived as being intangible and can therefore be eliminated and delegated internally to the wearers of many hats who are any enterprise’s new survivor class.

The other trend I’ve seen is that along with staff reduction coinciding with the amount of work coming through the door, where say a full 3 shift operation has been forced down to 2, a new and interesting problem has arisen. When the workload is steady, which is a lowered expectation these days, the available labor pool is being tailored to be able to handle the volume, however now there seems to be more of an optimistic trend among print buyers and advertisers.

It’s what I call the “loosening of the purse-strings syndrome.” As the economy and consumer confidence levels elevate slightly, print buyers are a bit more confident and optimistic. Over the past six to twelve months, my clients, generically now have the problem of not having labor available for those spikes in volume when they occur. In a way this is a good problem to have, since they now feel like they have weathered the economic storm and are now emerging as a more efficient enterprise through all their tribulations.

In some markets an interesting phenomenon is taking place. Where similar facilities with similar capabilities and equipment have either survived or failed, there is a glut of skilled labor. In some cases these spikes are handled by employees working for more than one company-  not that this hasn’t always happened to some degree. It just seems that now there are a lot more skilled operators willing and/or able to be engaged on-call. The problem here is that this is usually more of a mature labor pool, so with regard to longevity, an arrangement such as this is not self-sustaining. No one seems to want to be so optimistic as to ramp back up to former levels, so this conundrum will continue for the foreseeable future.

I don’t pretend to be an economist. I’ll leave that job to Dr. Joe. That said, I do ask the same basic questions wherever I go. How’s business? Have you had layoffs or reductions in the past year and if so, by how much? Have things stabilized? Are you bringing staff back on? Are your customers a bit more optimistic? Are you?

Of course the answers vary, but on average they are: tolerable; yes; yes; yes; yes; yes. It is encouraging if anything, that there is a pervasive optimism out there. In my book optimism equals confidence. Confidence equals risk-taking, albeit cautiously, risk-taking equals spending. Spending of course raises the economic tide overall, and a rising tide lifts all boats.

So ultimately in the printing industry, especially in the areas of growth such as digital printing and integrated media, I’d like to believe that because of all this spending on infrastructure, equipment and new labor, i.e. emerging skill sets, are about to take a quantum leap based on the demand for printing in our brave new world. A renaissance if you will.

To move forward and be the cause of change, mills, merchants, printers and brokers must again refocus their marketing efforts on a now more optimistic print-buying public, who will have a bit more money to spend as long as they are convinced of the ROI once they have been educated, again, by their vendors of the benefits of print.

So, in the end, you can talk about GDP, unemployment, print shipments and the calculated risks of either doing or not doing something to change the game all day long. All I’m saying to sum this all up is that anecdotally, we seem to collectively be climbing out of a casualty-ridden hole, a bit wiser, a bit stronger, but non-the-less gun-shy. In many cases the casualties have been necessary. It got rid of some of the low-ballers to hopefully create a more level playing field where the survivors can compete fairly on a level playing field, charge a fair price and continue to continue on now that the ball is rolling again.

What do you think?

In the world of digital print and paper, “nirvana” is a press that is capable of producing offset quality at a competitive cost on the same papers that printers use on their offset presses.

 For the most part, coated and uncoated offset papers run reasonably well with toner-based digital laser printing, but toner is expensive. Now, the next generation is here: low cost, high speed digital ink jet web presses made news at Drupa in 2008, Print09 last year, and IPEX this year. These are the Océ JetStream, the HP T300, and the Kodak Prosper, presses that are capable of commercial production output volumes with variable data.  Xerox also introduced a new production inkjet technology at IPEX, and while this technology is not yet commercial, it is  promising.

 Now, the challenge is paper.

Inkjet inks have high water content, and tend to soak into uncoated papers or sit up on coated papers where they may smear. For uncoated papers, HP and International Paper introduced ColorLok technology for desktop printers. This technology involves a calcium chloride-based chemical that is added at the paper mill and adds minimal cost. With the introduction of the T300 color inkjet web press, HP followed up with ColorPRO, a similar technology for inkjet presses. Abitibi Bowater, Georgia-Pacific and Stora Enso all produce ColorPRO qualified papers. The ColorPRO program requires that mills meet quality standards audited by HP. The HP T300 can also apply a “bonding agent” that enables printing on ordinary uncoated paper.

Coated papers, however, remain a challenge.

The list of available coated papers for ink jet is limited (see Table 1). HP’s ColorPRO technology is not designed for coated papers, nor is the bonding agent (although some coated papers do work better with the bonding agent.) Océ, HP, and Kodak are all working with the leading coated paper manufacturers. Appleton Coated reports that they are jointly developing high-speed inkjet coated media with HP, and the first such product is the Utopia Book Inkjet 45 lb. Matte Text.  Appleton Coated also offers coated papers in matte and dull finishes for direct mail and commercial printing applications. The Utopia Inkjet family, including Utopia Book Inkjet, does not require the use of the bonding agent. Appleton Coated has also worked with Kodak to qualify this grade on the Prosper press.

NewPage is also working on coated inkjet, and is working with glossy papers. I saw some beautiful books printed on NewPage 80 lb. Gloss Inkjet with the HP T300. This sheet is specially formulated for the HP T300 and is available on an inquiry basis. Other weights and finishes will be available as market demand increases.

Table 1 Coated Inkjet Papers

 The two market areas that are finding the most immediate traction are books and direct mail. For books, waste factors are high, logistics are expensive and returns remain a major factor. Digital solves these problems, and even though paper costs may be a bit higher, the economics remain favorable. Digital book printing can be a one-off printed by Amazon or by a digital book printer like Lightning Source, but for these “new generation” digital ink jet presses; this is about medium length runs and keeping the printing cost under control, while slashing inventory and logistics costs. For direct mail, the economics are equally compelling. It is much better to print 500,000 copies of personalized, targeted direct mail and get a response rate of 8 to 10 percent than to print a million copies and get a 2 percent return.

For now, the installed base of digital inkjet presses is small, but as the base grows, run lengths at the mills will lengthen and costs will come down. This will provide a stimulus to demand for digital print, and the range of applications will increase. The new presses have been described as “disruptive technology,” i.e. technology that will change the rules of the game. And ultimately, these new rules will mean more digital inkjet papers.

 Jack Miller is Principal Consultant, Market-Intell, a supplier of strategic consulting and “Need to Know” market intelligence in paper, print and packaging. He can be contacted at jack.miller@market-intell.com     

It is generally accepted that digital printing costs less to both you and your customers in terms of both time and money in specific situations, and although this can be true, the question here is how does power fit into the equation?

Hybrid printing facilities have a variety of options when it comes to jobs that at the outset seem more efficient through the use of one technology over another. Do you run it offset or digital? Preprint shells and imprint data or run an otherwise black-only variable data color job on a digital color press? Sure, time and cost can be calculated in terms of BHC and necessary turn around, but for each piece of equipment what is the true cost of the power used to run it?

The power it takes to run digital versus offset equipment can and should be measured on an isolated basis. There are many permanent and portable power meters and data-loggers on the market generally ranging from $600 to $3000 for a three-phase-capable unit. This cost can be viewed as a quick payoff investment to get a true picture of how much power is consumed by each piece of equipment in the shop for a specified duration, either under load, idle or “off”, provided the results are utilized to proper advantage.

For instance, platesetters, digital presses, cutters &c. all are under idle power when not in use. By calculating the idle time power draw and then isolating a production run under full load, a true picture of the actual cost can be achieved. Now how about warm-up time? Obviously a cutter doesn’t have much of one, while a digital press does. Most shops have these machines powered up all day long, idle or not. How much money could be saved by turning off idle devices when not in use? Of course the same can be said for idle workstations, lighting and climate control, but that’s not the focus here.

On the other hand, offset presses, with the exception of associated compressors, chillers, agitators, recirculators, UV units, thermal oxidizers… well, you get the point, along with folders, stitchers and some types of packaging equipment do not draw active power when not in use. They do however draw at the very least phantom power. In all cases, the question comes down to whether there’s a warm-up time, and how much power that activity consumes and whether or not a lockout device should be employed to completely power down when it would otherwise be “turned off”.

Once the true power consumption costs are calculated for any given piece of equipment how could this play into your organization’s strategy? Here are some thoughts:

1. Benchmark costs for power used for jobs on specific equipment;
2. Track unused idle time and phantom power draw, and find ways to eliminate the same;
3. Report on isolated power consumption as part of a formal Life Cycle Analysis (LCA);
4. Use power consumption as an evaluation tool to cost one technology over another;
5. Integrate power isolation metrics into upper management’s continuous improvement dashboard;
6. Incentivize and empower employees to reduce energy use;
7. Empower customers to make the choice of technologies partially based on energy use;
8. Integrate a power reduction strategy into the organization’s sustainability reporting;
9. Normalize power conservation into the organization’s DNA;
10. Become a champion and tell your story to the masses.

What other ideas can you come up with?

“We chose Baker & Taylor because of its extensive distribution network, its incredible ability to manage the logistics of shipping and handling a large number of small orders to multiple locations, and the completeness of its printing package,” said Willem Meiners, PublishAmerica co-founder.

On Monday B&T inked deals with Fordham University Press, University of North Carolina Press and Penn State Press to provide print–on–demand services.

The TextStream digital printing service was announced on October 13, 2009 at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Baker & Taylor partnered with RR Donnelley which provides printing and finishing for the service.

Yesterday, Xerox announced a joint sales and marketing agreement with On Demand Books wherein the Xerox 4112 Copier/Printer will be integrated with the Espresso Book Machine – a fully integrated solution that prints, binds and trims books with full color covers on demand in retail locations and libraries. The Espresso Book Machine can produce paperbacks in variable combinations of trim sizes between 4.5″ x 5.0″ and 8.25″ x 10.5″ for a production cost less than one cent per page and can produce a 300 page book in about 4 minutes.

If you watch this video released last September by Google you will notice the EBM has the Xerox 4112 print engine.

While the Espresso Book Machine has the potential to be a game changer, one Australian bookstore has taken the machine off its store floor to make room for traditional book merchandise. Print21 reports the EBM at Angus & Robertson in Melbourne, Australia failed to engage customers:

Patrick Gaskin, business development director at RedGroup Retail said that the decision to take the machine out of the store was due to logistics. “Space is at a premium in that store so the EBM was removed to make room for Christmas trade,” he said.

Staff from the Bourke Street store said that the machine had been moved to a warehouse. Currently, there is no option for anyone wanting to purchase or print any of the 100-plus books previously offered by Angus & Robertson.

Print21 cites low print and finishing quality of a sample they had printed at the Angus & Robertson:

The quality of the books printed, however, was disappointing. After paying $30 for one title, Print21 received a book with a chipped spine, off-centre titles and text that was almost too faint to read. A problem with the EBM also meant that the book had to be printed twice.

The EBM was originally configured with a lower end machine from Kyocera when it first came on the market.

“College professors around the country are flocking to this new technology,” said Courier Chairman and Chief Executive Officer James F. Conway III. “Using Highcrest’s software, they can create a textbook that contains only the information they want to teach from–eliminating waste and reducing costs. By bringing Highcrest Media to Courier, we are placing ourselves at the forefront of this trend as a strategic resource for a key customer base. Highcrest’s expertise fits perfectly into our vision and portfolio.”

In an article at WhatTheyThink Andy Tribute writes that the world of publishing has hardly been impacted by developments in digital printing. Almost all the developments have been aimed at short-run commercial printing, variable data printing, and web to print operations. It would appear that this year will see the start of a change as book publishers look to digital printing to change their business models to reduce their capital tied up in inventory. In the article Tribute asks “Is 2010 the Year for Digital Printing for Publishers?”

The biggest impact digital printing has brought to publishing is the ability to support mass customization of printed products. A lack of workflow applications has hindered the ability of print providers to offer mass customization to publishing clients. The Courier acquisition is a perfect example of a need to provide workflow to drive mass customization and digital printing applications.