Crouser & Associates Performance Group program helps printers prosper through on-site assistance as well as twice yearly group meetings. Reply to this message for more information by Email or call (304) 342-5100. Crouser Report OnLine is the Copyright Thomas P. Crouser. Material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written consent.

Crouser Report November 1995

Volume 6 Number 11 Copyright Thomas P. Crouser, November 1995

Dear Friends. . .

If you were a farmer, wouldn t you be concerned if your cash crop was tobacco? Well, many suggest our black and white cash crops are just as poorly positioned. This is especially true of retail printers without a sales program and without an understanding of the new technologies. Our strategy may pay our bills today, but we need to think long term.

Long term, we need to know about the soil on our farm and what fertilizer goes best with it. In printing, we should know regular direct mail is our fertilizer and the sales call is our version of weeding.

Long term, we need to know about the trends effecting our relationship with our customers. Today s trend is communicating, specifically by e-mail. Sure, there are printers who do not yet have a fax machine available to customers 24 hours a day, so to suggest all should be using e-mail may seem a little premature. Quite the contrary. A 24 hour fax is a minimum performance requirement today as is at least a minimal access to e-mail.

Specifically, get a computer with a modem. Sign up on America OnLine, at a minimum, and get to know e-mail and what it can do. That way, you ll be able to at least discuss it with your customers instead of asking them for advice. Knowledge of computers, file types and communications abilities is the most important new weld to a customer since someone got the idea of keeping the customers negatives and originals on file.

And long term, we should also know tobacco is a particularly labor intensive crop and corn is not. The skills needed for digital technologies is different than phototype. We must assure that we and our people will have the needed skills. In the military, I saw a lot of air crew members retiring when the assigned aircraft was changed. Why? Many had too many years invested in the old planes and just didn t want to go through another transition. Well, the same is true of printers.

Now, I didn t say go all out, spend your money and your time playing. I am saying you need to take a few bucks and acquaint yourself with the basic technology which will transfer files between you and your customers. It s fun. It s not that expensive. And it is an important part of your future. For those more adventurous, an account with an internet provider will give you more globe trotting options.

And as a final note on connectivity. Should you be connected to America OnLine, CompuServe or the internet through a local access provider? My response is yes. There s no reason a shop can t be connected to all three and even more. The central point is where are your customers connected? As of now, it s a simple matter to transfer files from America Online to America Online or CompuServe to CompuServe. What s nearly impossible for all but the gurus is to transfer from an internet address to America Online for instance.

And, when you re connected, send a message to me and include the word subscribe in the body copy. I ll sign you up for the Crouser Report OnLine which includes the early edition of this newsletter plus much more. Send your message to me at: tomcrouser@aol.com or crouser@ibm.net.

Who s Getting Rich In Cyberspace?

There is a lot of misinformation going around about how much money can be made on the internet. Let s listen in to a recent conversation.

Subject: Re: Net success stories...?
Please excuse me if this topic has been covered before, I m a newby. I m interested in success stories about commercial use of WWW. I ve heard about a florist that supposedly made millions on the Web. Is this true? Are there any other such stories that you may be aware of? Thanks in advance.


Tom Lynch of Abundant Internet Solutions provided one response:

The florist you are probably speaking of is 1-800-Flowers. They, by most accounts, have one of the more successful online sites (also on AOL, not just the Internet), but have yet to make millions, as far as I have heard.

However, there are plenty of businesses that have very successful sites. The question is, what is success? There are few (if any) people who are millionaires by running a business exclusively on the Internet. However, there are those that have increased the revenue of both large and small businesses tremendously on the Internet.

Virtual Vineyards is a wine site that is strictly on the Internet, and (they) are making a very good living. One of our client s sites, Barkley s Gourmet Dog Biscuits, went from selling thousands of dollars worth of gourmet dog biscuits in dog shows to selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of dog biscuits on the Internet.


The best results, so far, have come from small businesses. The percentage increase in distribution and exposure from an Internet presence greatly outweighs the percentage increase that will be felt by an established larger company. In addition, after placing companies on the Internet for almost two years, I can tell you that being on the Internet must be in conjunction with a solid conventional marketing, promotion and sales strategy. Few sites are unique enough to stand out that prominently in a crowded medium. If you have any more questions, send me an e-mail.

Tom Lynch
Abundant Internet Solutions
e-mail: abundant@is.net




Tom Lynch said, being on the Internet must be in conjunction with a solid conventional marketing, promotion and sales strategy. I see printers who have no money, who aren t making money, and who do not sell anything to anybody now deciding they will make their fortune by getting on the internet. Wrong. Okay, some one person might make some money with this strategy - - -holes in one in golf are possible. However, it s not probable. As an extension of your regular selling efforts, an internet address and web page is certainly a plus. Just don t ignore what you should be doing in the first place!

!!! Check Out These Web Sites of Local Printers !!!

Now, two examples of how local printers do it. Peter Peck is quite heavily into this internet thing from the look of his web site. His printing business pages are located at: http://www.tiac.net/biz/pep/SPI.html and his home page can be found at: http://www.tiac.net/biz/pep.

Peter says, I have been fooling around with the www stuff since January and it has a way of growing. Most interest (in the site) has been by other printers. Its just too early for a small localized printer to benefit. But I am sure that two years from now everyone will use the net to promote and conduct business - after all the printing business is mostly all electronic now at the front end. You can reach Peter via e-mail at pep@tiac.net.

Another site to check on how printers do it belongs to Ernie Bentley of The Copy Shop (recently renamed Old Town Printing) in Christiansburg, Virginia. His site: http://www.bnt.com/CopyCenter. Note: address is case sensitive.

Ernie said, A number of printers have discovered us (already). Not many new customers (from the web), but a significant number of established customers now e-mail their files to us for printing.

Letterpress Mail List: Okay. Maybe it s just curious to me, but one of the active mailing lists on the internet is LETPRESS, the Letterpress Discussion List. Here, those who use letterpress as a profession (don t mention antique dealers or artsy-craftsy types) discuss equipment, techniques and type faces. Why curious? Cause it s the latest technology (digital, communications) being used by printers from around the world to discuss a prior dominant technology (letterpress printing). To subscribe, send e-mail to LISTSERV@unb.ca; in the body of the message, type SUBSCRIBE LETPRESS followed by your real name such as: SUBSCRIBE LETPRESS Jane Q. User. Growth for Growth s Sake?

??? Purchase Equipment and Sales Will Come ???

During our Milwaukee seminar this summer, I was asked whether I agreed with the statement one consultant allegedly made that if we just purchase equipment, the work will come. Well, no I don t agree but I do agree that in a rapidly growing market, this can seem to be true. Think of this. A local growth rate of 7% per year will mean the market will double in 10 years! At 8%, it will double in 9 years and 9% growth will double the market in eight years! Believe it or not, but the number of local printers rarely increases fast enough to keep up with the demand in situations like this, so the concept of buying the equipment and it will be filled up is probably true. Problem is, of course, this is not true in a more sedate growth market and is absolutely not true in a market which is shrinking and excess capacity is being created just by not doing anything.

Having a hard time getting good counter help?

Never really occurred to me until Pamela, my wife, pointed it out, but many printers expect their counter people to be production planners. Generally, it s hard enough finding a person qualified to be a production manager, but when we require counter people to do complex production planning because our estimating system requires it in order to deliver a price. . .then we have really complicated our own life. This is especially true in printing because rarely do we train customer service people in the first place.

A participant in one of our group meetings last month questioned why some others were having a bottleneck in pricing and estimating. He said they used The Crouser Guide and his sister, who recently joined the company, was accurately pricing jobs her second day. They looked like they were going to say, Yes, but obviously you don t get the business. I short circuited the question by pointing out the person using the book had 22% net owners compensation and the two struggling with complex estimating systems had less than 9%. The recent 1995 NAQP price study conducted by John Stewart found those using price guides made slightly more money than those using computer programs or those using their own methods. Reason? I suspect it goes like this. Those who spend too much time on price (through very detailed estimating programs) end up selling it to their regular customers for less without increasing their customer base. Those who put their time in sales activities increase their customer base and sell it for more.

How do you know if your estimating program is too complex? If the price on 1,000 8.5x11 s is different if printed on different presses, then your price is based on production standards; your customer service people have to know lots about production planning before they can price; and you probably have a higher cost for direct materials than the industry average.

NOVEMBER TRAVELOG: Am delighted to be able to present a full day s session on Power Pricing on Saturday, November 11th to the Capital Area Chapter of NAQP in Washington, DC. And, I m grateful to be able to be with the New Jersey Chapter of NAQP on Saturday, November 18th where I will present a session on 5 Reasons Printers Stay Poor. Pamela and I will be with you also during their always successful trade show. Hope to see you there.

Happy Trails,

Tom Crouser

P.S.
Economist Burton Klein examined fifty major innovations developed in the American economy over several decades. He determined none of the innovations came from a company that was an industry leader at the time of the innovation. Crouser & Associates Performance Group program includes two on-site evaluations by Tom Crouser each year along with two group meetings. Management training is held during the group meetings along with participation in a meeting with non-competing printers. Join others who have decided to run their business instead of the business running them. Reply to by Email to Tom Crouser for more detailed information or call Clark Workman at (304) 342-5100. Or fax (304) 342-5187 or contact crouser@ibm.net. Return to Crouser Index
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