Web to print

Last Thursday, besides rain, I remember for the visit to Telford. Thankfully, the GPS system worked fairly well and I arrived at my destination promptly; only running around one round about twice to weigh up the pros & cons of the gps instructions. Having ignored the lady on the machine sat nav I arrived at the Ricoh factory. The venue of the seminars on web to print.

Today was a sponsored by Whitmar publications event on Web to print. One item I learnt during the day was that customers don't care about web to print. (Web to print? I forgot to say what it is. It is a software system that allows customers to order on line. Vistaprint are experts at it.) So they don't care, yes, that makes sense; its easier to ring up and say could I have 500 business cards. Web to print sales people emphasize the downside of traditional systems, the to-ing and fro-ing between printer and customer. From the customer's point of view the advantage is that the responsibility for errors is left with the printer. Even today this was highlighted as one of our customers had us design the art work; they were to send the completed art work to an on-line printers; we then 'wasted' much time helping the customer sending their art work to the on-line printers. several variations on the art work, emails left right and centre, phone calls to the on-line printers customer support. Web to print companies cope by stonewalling and fobbing off customers.

I was told that Vistaprint has a 20% complaint rate, true or not it hasn't stopped them succeeding as a company. Then, as I review my print jobs I realized that to turn our business into a full web to print enterprise would be nigh on impossible unless I removed most of my catalogue. Web to print companies specialize in a limited range of products, such as flyers and business cards. Print shop such as the Minuteman Press outlets specialize in not specializing.... raffle tickets, posters, brochures, file conversion, forms, diaries, calendars, wedding stationery, business cards, copying, faxing, overprint of pens, newsletters etc. Attempting to computerize all this would be a challenge. Another common factor of these systems is the extraordinary expense of installing them, £3000 for setting them up, £500 a month charged. Forget it. There are cheaper options available but they tend to be a bit clunky.

Moving on, it turns out we are already using web to print, in part; web to print includes a whole range of technologies and many printers will have some of them... email marketing, electronic pricing, web sites, templates. Anyhow, it was an excellent series of seminars led by informative people who seem to know what they were doing or saying.  At the end of the day it didn't seem to quite add up. More thought and analysis needed.

Heresy in the camp

Received another email from business guru Chris Cardell this morning; besides selling his training videos and conferences he regularly pops in a gem of how to market your business. He caused me some amusement to me by suggesting Twittering wasn't very effective for marketing. I do tend to agree that use of social media for marketing purposes seems a dubious way forward. We shall see...

Minuteman Press Stockport: International Stockport

Minuteman Press Stockport: International Stockport

International Stockport

Where are we?
I notice that most of the Blogg views are in the USA. How is this? Is Stockport in the USA?  Well, it seems to be; with a little work with Google there are at least two Stockports there, Stockport Ohio and Stockport New York. So if you are reading this we are Minuteman Press, near Manchester, England, North Europe (in case there is a Stockport near Manchester in the USA). Other than the occasional riot (topical comment) Stockport is quite interesting, not least the weather than has none of the predictability of a continental or tropical climate. Today is wet; tomorrow could be sunny and hot (I haven't checked the weather forecast, though), the next thing you know we have a drought etc. Stockport is sort of straddling the Victorian railway line and has the iconic brick viaduct that uses millions and millions of bricks from the days when the citizens were really oppressed and worked for a pittance. There is big river running through it not that one can't see it for the most part because it was covered and had a shopping mall (sorry, an Americanism) built over it.  I read someone was suggesting digging it up again. I'm old enough to remember before it was paved over.. not that it was the good old days, more like the grey old days of post war depression whilst we paid the Americans back for all the money they lent us to defeat the Germans (sorry, the Nazis). Meanwhile, we are Minuteman Press, Stockport, printers. There are about two of us in the Manchester area. There were three, another in Chorlton, but it closed a few months back. Due to the way Google works, though, their Google optimisation means they continue to come high in Google rankings for printing searches in Manchester.  I would love to ask Sanjay how they did it but I haven't heard from him since they closed. He classified himself as Manchester which was dead cheeky, mind you he was dead opposite the Manchester cemetery, so had a good trade in funeral printing. We are about one mile from Stockport crematoria so perhaps I could improve my stall in that area.
Meanwhile Stockport, tends to be overshadowed by Manchester up the road (no, I don't know David Beckham; does he even work there any more everyone; I thought he emigrated to the USA?). Manchester had the dubious privilege of being smashed by the IRA a few years back and hasn't looked back since. So Stockport limps along, it has an iconic pyramid office block; inhabited (at least the sign says so) by the CoOp bank, a splendid Rochdale invention (north of Manchester). A newly refurbished super cinema from the 1930s (Wikipedia puts in 'citation needed' here). Several museums, a hat museum. I just can't excited by the idea of a hat museum, there is a fantastic science and technology musuem celebrating the good old days of British industry, but that's in Manchester. Lots of hills, none of the cycle friendly Cambridge flatlands. There is an expensively refurbished Victorian market. It even has quite a few shops in it. I even met some tourists trying to see it, wasn't open for business.  There is the really old Parish Church that the Rev Roger seems to have make his lives work to raise the millions needed to replace it, stone by stone. People complain about the railway station, guess it's a ploy to try and get some money spent on it.  It seems OK to me and is on the main line north and south with easy access to London, Manchester and Birmingham (not necessarily in that order). Oh! Yes, the motorway too, it squeezes between two of the viaduct pillars. The busy airport (I say 'busy' to emphasize that it is a decent size) is down the road and interestingly owned by the local authorities; I guess they prove my theory wrong: that nationalisation doesn't work, they seem to make a decent job of that. They have a splendid museum too with a complete but non flying Concorde and various other examples of British aviation technology. Which reminds me, there is Styal Woods under the airports flight path, a National Trust establishment (couldn't think of the proper word there) with a working water powered mill (the good old days again with child labour). Its getting late; I'll stop for now.

Bizset

Visiting Bizset this morning at Trafford Park. This leaves a bit of time before I go. So, spending some time doing some development planning on the business. I guess its like a mini business plan. Business plans seem OK for getting support off other people but they consume a lot of time and include lots of unattainable expectations. Can the business plan include all the unforeseen elements such as having business premises burnt by rioters or economic down turns or maternity leave or staff illness, technological developments? The list goes on. One of the key things is staying positive. Avoid reading the paper or watching the news... the hacks seem to spend spend less time reporting and more commenting as self proclaimed experts on every subject under the sun. As a business I am at least happy that we are still moving forward through these interesting economic times. Thanks to our loyal customers who, as a business we can't take for granted. Also to those angels who actually recommend us; two yesterday that I know of. Dave at Lloyds TSB recommended us to a friend and a new business whose friend told him to come to us. Well, this took 20 mins, best get back to the job in hand!

All things to with a web site

I Enjoyed another web SEO (search engine optimisation) session this afternoon at The Eword in Trafford Park (just across the way from Printing.com I kept being told!). I was told it is meant to boring; perhaps I'm in the wrong job because I find it fascinating!
Loads of helpful stuff presented in a clear way and kept me engaged for 2 hours. I didn't keep notes this time.  I've found that I take copious notes and then never refer to them.  I tried a different strategy, listen to what was being said and concentrate on 3 things:
Confirming things I sort of know but not so sure about;
remembering a couple of things I didn't know;
refocus our SEO strategy at Minuteman Press, Stockport.

Something new: I learnt the value using a shortened link in a pages title tag. http://tiny.cc/printUK
I'll try it in Tweets too.
Log out of my Google acount before doing a search to help make sure that Google isn't trying to be helpful by focussing on Printers search results!
Perhaps cut our Pay Per Click budget completely; our site ranks highly on the first page anyway, without the Paid ads. The money could then be paid on more 'natural' search engine optimisation.

Oh! Yes I need to make sure my other site has a site map too.

Colour printers

Looking back it is easy to see why the previous owners of the business didn't take on the lease to change the ancient digital printing devises  It is a minefield of options and heavy sales techniques, and potential expense. The first option is continuing to use a Xerox machine.  I'll leave that hanging because I don't want to get sued for libel. It was suggested we report Xerox to Stockport trading standards, last week.  Maybe. I was keen to buy into Toshiba, they make a nice machine that my research showed had a reliable performance and good service record. A new machine would cost less than £10000, to give an indication of their value.  Its main advantage from my perspective would be a reduced lease outlay.  However, the 'click' cost compared unfavourably with the other contenders, Oci and Konica Minolta Direct who are marketing a heavy duty machine called the 5501. Probably over £20000 to buy new. Oci seem OK but remain an unknown quantity in comparison to Konica Minolta. They are offering a redundant machine in comparison with Oci who are offering a new machine.  The latter's 'click' charge is slightly more expensive, making the KM a better deal; the main disadvantage being that the KM machine is a second hand machine. It seems that the extra expense means that our outgoings remain the same, not a realistic option because one of the aims of the exercise is to reduce our outgoings. The final element in the mix is the finance; normally one buys via a lease; not the best of arrangements it seems to me, we never seem to own the machine and the costs seem high.  Alternatively we could buy the machine out right; thirdly we could borrow money to buy one.  The latter seems a good option to me; the interest rates would probably be lower. At present the KN salesmen can't persuade the finance companies to stump up enough money; we're stuck, he's stuck.