The Stationers Guild

William Arthur, a leading designer and printer of fine stationery and custom invitations, has extended its promotion for custom wedding invitations and fine stationery through May 31st. 

William Arthur Wedding Invitation

Now through May 31st, buy 75 custom wedding invitations or more and receive 25 free.  Simliarly, buy 75 notes or stationery cards and receive 25 free.  We recommend shopping at a Guild member store in your neighborhood to take advantage of the expertise of your local stationer.  Appointments are recommended.

Following the dissolution of the long-standing relationship between Sweet Pea Designs and PrintsWell reported upon earlier this month, Stacy Claire Boyd reports that PrintsWell will provide “all customer service, production and fulfillment services beginning April 15, 2010.”

According to an eMail distributed by Stacy Claire Boyd (“SCB”), they claim that they will be offering their “designs at a new lower price point” to provide their dealers with more “competitive pricing.”    It also appears that through PrintsWell, SCB clients will be able to have their “own online stationery store, offering all of the SCB catalog products to its customers 24/7.”   Clients who wish to avail themselves of this online service will be able to “brand” the SCB online store with their own logo and collect commisions based on orders processed through the store-branded website.    According to the release, this service is free for the first 4 months and $15 a month thereafter.  Call 866-481-4414 to take advantage of this offer.

Editor’s Note:  With the many changes, consolidations and growing impact of the internet on the stationery industry, it is difficult for independent dealers to know which way to turn.   As readers on the Stationers Guild Blog are aware, I have found no compelling economic argument that would lead me to believe that “lower” or “more competitive” prices make for a stronger industry.  Quite the contrary.  Lower prices necessarily lead to lower quality stationery products for the consumer and profit margins that are not sustainable to support the manufacturers and the craftspeople and designers  who produce quality papers.

While I do not doubt the genuineness of Stacy Claire Boyd and Printwell’s intention to provide its dealers with a competitive product 24/7, the numbers simply don’t add up.    For instance, let us assume that in the past you were able to sell a SCB baby announcement from the album for $200.  If you are like most dealers and earn a 50% margin you would receive $100 for the sale.  Now, under the new PrintsWell agreement this same invitation may sell for $160 (20% less).  Your margin is now $80 for the same amount of work and same level of fixed costs.    Does this make business sense?  I think not!

Well, how about the online store where I make money 24/7?  Glad you asked and, again, sorry to disappoint.  Imagine if all 1,000 or more SCB dealers and existing PrintsWell dealers launch their own private-labeled SCB online stores:  All that adds up to is another 1,000 pages of the 37 million pages now indexed by Google when you search for “baby announcements.”  Unless you are a real pro at internet search marketing and website optimization, your SCB online store will simply be confined to the outer-reaches of internet oblivion.    Even if it can be found, do you think you have much of a chance to compete with Costco and eInvite, who are driving prices and quality standards to levels that even the Chinese would envy.

I know this sounds like a bummer, but trust me it is time to wake up.  Brand integrity is worth talking about!  As dealers we should insist on quality papers and designs that do the industry proud and are sold at  prices where the consumer receives “fair value” and at “price levels” where the dealer, manufacturer and designer are fairly compensated.  To do so, dealers should simply quit carrying lines where that value proposition no longer exists.    Let’s talk vigorously about the many great papers and designers we respect and not spend time apologizing for companies with boring designs, cheap papers and service quality to match!    Fine paper companies who compete on price will go the way of dinosaurs.  Don’t let them take the rest of us down.

Richard W. May
Editor Stationers Guild

After watching the second installment (actually the second hour) of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on ABC last Friday, I finally reached rock-bottom on the John McEnroe “You can’t be serious scale.”    I had always that “reality” TV shows like The Kardashians and Jersey Shore were populated by third-rate actors that preferred to act stupid in front of a TV camera than serve pancakes in a diner.  After watching Jamie deal school administration officials and cooks in Huntington, West Virginia, I now realize that “being dumb” is no act and we: our parents, our institutions, the media and big-business are making it easier for this new generation of American to become “dumber.”  It is time to wakeup.

It is hard to imagine that while many people are applauding the passage of Heathcare Reform, our kids our eating themselves to death in our schools and homes. Am I missing something here? Shouldn’t we be “fixing” the toxic waste our kids eat day rather than enable a healthcare system to pay for their excesses. Seems pretty straight-forward to me.

Which brings me to stationery and the thank you note.  How can we expect people “write” or “use proper etiquette” when kids in school are only given a spoon to eat until the age of ten!  No wonder “finger-food” is so prevalent, the poor kids don’t even know how to use a knife and fork.   McNuggets are more more recognizable that chicken and our school kids can’t even identify ”real” vegetables.     I guess this is the ultimate triumph of form over substance.

Writing regularly about stationery and invitations trends in the US has necessarily led me into different venues of “Americana.”  Sadly, the decline of good taste, etiquette and meaningful interpersonal relationships has coincided with an explosion in new technologies which many have argued would usher in some ill-defined “golden era.”   While I am not one to wax nostalgic about the “good old days,” I am deeply troubled by what I see on the horizon and the apparent disconnect from simply befriending one’s neighbor to rushing head-long to embrace social media avatars or the latest fad.

This sense of concern received another jolt this week when I watched the introduction to Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.  Jamie, an accomplished British chef, decides to change eating habits in the United States.  In a TV series that begins to air on Friday, March 26th on ABC, Jamie descends on Huntington, West Virginia recently labelled as the “unhealthiest city in America” to change the eating habits of this town of 50,000.  If you can stomach it, I strongly suggest that you watch this program (see video clip below) to see how we are systematically killing our kids with fast-food.  

While Jamie’s corageous attempt to teach us colonials a few things about eating wisely is certainly disturbing on an emotional level, you can’t help but be shaken by the apathy, silly institutional barriers and general self-satisfied smugness which threatens the well-being of a new generation of Americans.

It is tough to draw meaningful parallels between “tweets” signifying nothing and school menus, but as our attention span grows shorter in pursuit of instant gratification, we lose sight of a far more meaningful and productive way of living. It is difficult to believe that Jamie Oliver has more sense of responsibility for the fate of these young kids than most of the parents, school administrators and talk-show pundits in Huntington. If you are not moved by this program, I join Jamie in saying “Shame on you!”

As readers of this Blog are aware, I rarely find much illuminating information on the internet for “wedding invitations”  that is not  promotional.  Today, I was thrilled to find  an excellent article on how to avoid Five Common Mistakes for Wedding Invitations.   This Blog article was posted on BridalCookie.com and when I have some time, I will check it out to determine if this website offers other useful advice for bridal couples.  Rather than regurgitate this well-written article (also a novelty in today’s fast-food social media), I will briefly list the five common wedding invitation errors that surface regularly:

• Not Enough Postage:   Wedding invitation paper stock and the enclosed reply card set often push postage into uncharted territory.  Always take a sample down to your local Post Office to determine the correct postage.
• Order Extra Invitations and Envelopes:   It is wise to order 25 more invitations and envelopes than you actually plan to use.  Inevitably, you will find that a couple of friends or relatives were left off the initial list and some envelopes may not be addressed improperly.   Ordering an extra 25 invitations is considerably cheaper than initiating a separate run of 25 after your original 150 invitations have been delivered.  In some cases it could cost 40% of the cost of 150 invitations.
• Don’t leave your invitations to the last minute:   Ideally, your guests should receive their invitation not less than 8 weeks before the event.  Some leading design companies take three to four weeks to print invitations and it can often take two to three weeks to finalize wording, font styles and layout.   We recommend starting the process six month before the wedding event.
• Content Mistakes:   Workding with an experienced stationer in your neighborhood will certainly help reduce the many errors we often encounter in online wedding invitations.  Proofs and several extra sets of eyeballs will eliminate 99.9% of errors, poor etiquette and proper formatting problems encountered in crafting wedding invitations online or with inexperienced friends. 
• Not setting an RSVP Deadline:    This is a critical organizational element.  Always include an RSVP deadline.  If you don’t hear from your guests, you have a perfect excuse to call.  Everything you can do to keep the logistics simple and up-to-date will relieve stress on your wedding day.

Again, thanks to Bridal Cookie for this excellent advice.

Sheila P. May
Therese Saint Clair

As readers of the Stationers Guild News are aware, I have long pointed out the hazards of trying to find “cheap wedding invitations” online.  It is not that they are not available.  In fact, there are over 14 million search results when you enter the search term “cheap wedding invitations” in the Google search bar.  What I am referring to is the self-serving and deceptive techniques used by many vendors to attract unsuspecting visitors to their website.  These deceptive advertising practices are undermining the credibility of online search and, in my opinion, fradulently promote websites and products under the guise of advice. 

Today, I came across a Blog posting from Wedding Layers offering advice on how to find cheap wedding invitations.   The text of the article was lifted from an Ezine article written by Kim Lapp and contains eleven embedded links to the website of  Tiny Prints which just happens to sell wedding invitations (no other vendor sites are listed) .  The issue is not that one should not offer genuine advice on “wedding invitations,” but to shamelessly promote another website under the pretext that you are offering the consumer meaningful  information as a “detached” expert is a sham.

I have no difficultly with self-promotion if it is labeled as such, but “advice” and “news” and “recommendations” that are clearly self-promotional and not properly disclosed as such are an insult to the consumer and may, in fact, be illegal under recent Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”)  guidelines.  Tiny Prints and its sister company, Wedding Paper Divas are experts at self-promotion.  Buyers beware, you may not be receiving objective advice!

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

I recently was engaged in an  interesting discussion on LinkedIn within the “Greeting Card, Stationery & Gift Industry Gurus” Group.   Without going into a lot of detail, the discussion focused on the future of paper greeting cards and how best to create the next generation of eGreetings to connect with a new generation of “tech savvy” users.   While I do not question the impact of the digital revolution on paper greeting cards, I could not see an economic rationale to create a sustainable and successful eGreeting business.  Found below are brief excerpts of some of the comments I made during this discussion. 

 There is no question that digital greetings and invitations are rapidly eating into the “paper” market. While I don’t happen to think of paper as a “device”  since color reproduction and print quality on paper remains far superior and authentic to anything on the web (band-width restrictions), the whole point of the discussion is how to make money with digital greeting cards.

Personally, I think it is a losing proposition because I don’t believe any company will be able to create designs or unique delivery capabilities to compete on a sustained basis with the many (and growing) “free” alternatives on the internet. I have yet to hear how someone will be able to create “brand awareness” around something so mercurial as a greeting card and convince a critical mass of “subscribers” or “buyers” to pay for something that is pretty much free.

To draw from just one example. Take Blue Mountain Greeting Cards which was one of the first digital greeting cards to make a splash in electronic greeting cards. They are now owned by American Greeting Cards (AG), because they wouldn’t have been able to survive as a stand alone venture. Is AG any better off? I think not. Their sales are down 25% since 2002, they lost over $200 million in 2009 and they may break even this year.

Why Paper? A well-designed greeting card with a personalized message printed on quality paper is often worth “saving.” On the other hand, a digital greeting card or image maybe worth “storing” (there is a huge difference between mechanically deciding to save a physical object as compared to storing it on your computer). While you may eventually want to print the stored image, what will you print it on?: 20lb copy paper stock. There is a reason why people go to art museums: they want to see the real thing, not some digitally reproduced image formatted for a digital transmission. The same is true for greeting cards for memorable occasions.

There is a difference between building an iPhone application that plays “Happy Birthday” and sends a cute text message to your contact list on their birthday as opposed to building a business providing “unique” designs over a technology platform that gives the business provider a sustainable competitive advantage. Most novice tech users can already embed videos and pictures in their emails and many have already created their “free” Wordpress or Blogger websites. While I don’t doubt that technology providers can “sell” services to users interested in creating or selling their own greeting cards, I have yet to see how one can build a sustainable eGreeting business around the many “cool” apps that appear each day. Competing against “free” communication alternatives doesn’t seem to be a market that offers much promise.

Just did a Google search: there are 14.5 million web pages offering “free greeting cards.” Do you think it will be less competitive when the iPad hits the market in a few weeks? Again, if someone shows me a sustainable business model for eGreetings I will eat the digital printout of the business plan. Better yet, if you have figured it out, go for it! (I would love to be a shareholder).

I remain unconvinced that one can make money on a sustained basis with electronic greeting cards. Twitter and Facebook have essentially eliminated the need for them since the lives of its members are pretty much an open book.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

Like other stationery dealers, Sheila and I have been somewhat perplexed and not a little put-out that Printswell will no longer distribute the Sweet Pea line of stationery, invitations and announcements.  Shortly after we received this information, we contacted Printswell and were informed that Sweet Pea Designs had ended their contractual arrangements with Printswell and that Sweet Pea Designs (album and online designs) could no longer be sold after March 19, 2010.  We sought additional clarification from Printswell owners, but received no further information other than the email announcement.

Today, we received an email from Anne Johnson and Kim Kreis, the founders and designers of Sweet Pea Designs, indicating that they intend to relaunch the company under their own name within the next “month or so” and that they were putting the “finishing touches” on their new website and that “new” catalogs were being designed.   Sheila and I took the opportunity to call Sweet Pea and had a most pleasant conversation with Anne Johnson, one of the founders.  Found below are brief highlights of the conversation that we feel may be relevant to fellow dealers and clients who admire Sweet Peas designs:

• Sweet Pea Designs (“SPD”), a 22-year old company, and Printswell have always been separate legal companies even though Printswell changed its name to Sweet Pea name for a short period of time for convenience in distributing the Sweet Pea line.
• Under the terms of their contractual arrangement, SPD gave 60 days notice in January that they planned to terminate the distributions and printing arrangement with Printswell.  According to Anne, the co-founders decided that they wished to assume greater control of the design process and the marketing and production of their stationery line.
• The existing Sweet Pea albums are “obsolete.”  SPD will shortly be issuing two new “somewhat larger” albums for Baby & Children and another for “Adult Themes.”    A third album for Christmas and holiday themes will be issued later in the year.
• These new albums will be shipped within the next few weeks (probably within 60 days) to dealers who complete a Sweet Pea Designs Application form.  Email SPD at info@sweet-peadesigns.net to obtain your Application Form.   SPD does not have a list of authorized Sweet Pea dealers and is trying to piece together a list from third-party sources.
• According to Anne, the new albums will be shipped free-of-charge to dealers who have met some pre-determined volume of sales.  Pricing for the new albums is still under consideration, but should not be more than $100 per album with coupons offered to help offset the cost of the albums.
• The new designs will be printed on heavier paper stock (110 lb paper).
• The new Sweet Pea website will also incorporate an “affiliate program” similar to programs offered by Printswell and others in the industry.   The nature of the affiliate commission structure was not discussed.
• Anne suggested that they would be more selective on how their product was represented geographically, but admitted that some home-dealers would be “grandfathered.”   She anticipated that SPD would have firm policies to avoid discounting.
• SPD will be represented at the National Stationery Show in booths 3306-3308 and Anne and Kim encouraged Guild members to drop by.

Clearly, Sweet Pea is a very popular line for many dealers.  It is unfortunate that this rough transition has left many dealers in the dark and unable to fulfill customer requests.  Nevertheless, it is good to see Sweet Pea upgrading their line when many other companies are tracking in the opposite direction.

I would like to thank Anne for sharing this information with readers of the Stationers Guild News and we wish Anne and Kim much success in flying solo.
Sheila and Richard May
Therese Saint Clair

My recent Blog post on DIY wedding invitations prompted a good bit of feedback – mostly positive.  On the negative side, several people accused me of self-promotion or worse and felt I had a bias against “people doing their own thing.”  I am sorry I gave that  impression.  Quite the contrary, I was just trying to save people time, money and, quite possibly, much aggravation and embarrassment.   For those interested in “doing their own thing,” all I can say is “Go for it!”  Hopefully, my tips may keep your blood pressure in check until after the wedding.

In a not too unusual situation of DIY invitations gone awry, I present The Case of the Crooked Envelope.    It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes too much time to determine that grievous harm has come to this very attractive envelope (certainly looks like Crane & Co. was the victim this time around).   

 ”I say Watson, who defaced this lovely celadon (light green) wedding invitation envelope?”  

 ”Elementary, my dear Holmes,” responded Dr. Watson, “this otherwise lovely creation in 100% cotton paper by Crane & Co. was mutilated by a commercial printer.”  

Holmes, evidently surprised at Watson’s astute observation asked, “How can you be so confident?”

“Only a commercial printer would print on a straight line and then try to convince the client that the envelope was crooked,” responded a confident Watson. 

“Well said,” said a particularly jovial Holmes.  “I guess we can just mail this case into Scotland Yard.”

“Lovely pun, Holmes! I do so admire your skewed sense of humor,” laughed Watson and both men chuckled as they departed the crime scene.

For the bridal couple, this is no laughing matter.  Imagine ordering lovely wedding invitations and then – trying to save some time and money - have the envelopes mangled by a  commercial printer.  The fact of the matter is that most commercial printer are simply not equipped to print on heavy paper stock and certainly not on envelopes that have been lined.  

Again, we recommend that you plan wisely and consult with a qualified stationer in your neighborhood for proper advice.  Most stationers have highly calibrated equipment to print on heavy paper stock.   In fact, most qualified stationers would have recommended that State abbreviations be spelled out.  In this case “WI” should be Wisconsin.  Proper etiquette is free at qualified stationers.  

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

In the Victorian era, calling cards were considered as a sign of social standing, today the calling card has returned for the ease of giving out information to someone you’ve just met or as use as a gift enclosure.  You can select an adorable baby calling card for your baby with designs ranging from modern and cute to abstract, or you can have the traditional engraved card for its timeless beauty.  No matter how you use the personalized calling cards you will be sure to give the “write” impression every time. 

Phyllis Langsdorf
The Write Impression