The Stationers Guild

I love American ingenuity and, more importantly, the willingness of perfect strangers to share their shopping secrets.    I recently came across a Blog post asking for help to find “affordable wedding invitations.”  Many of the comments are priceless and, if you need a bit of humor, dig in.  I tried to post a comment myself, but presumably the Blog is not inviting any new comments.

Mr. Not Interested was my favorite:  ”Break out the xerox paper and fold it.   Get your local kids to sprinkle some glitter on them and take some of your old perfume or something . . . Maybe you should think about just calling people . . .”  (Note from Editor:  We should hire Not Interested to write for the Stationers Guild.)  Or, how about:

Kaeli:   “Micheal’s…duh create them yourself and ur good.”   On a more enterprising level, we have

Jessie:  “i got mine at wal-mart for 7 dollars for 25 of them went on my own computer and typed them up my self and printed them it took a little bit but if you have time u can do it your self or if you need someone too i am starting my own wedding service and i can do it for you just email me and let me know (email omitted but, if you are interested you can find it on the Blog post).”    

Umm, let me think about this.  You pay $7 for 25 invitation, say $5  for gas to go to Wal-Mart and maybe a couple of hours of work at minimum wage (another $15) and we have 25 invitations that cost $27.  I suppose Jessie could mark it up 100% and market her new wedding invitation line at $2.00 per invite.    Go for it Jessie!  I do recommend buying an etiquette book on wording your wedding invitations properly.  You might find it useful.  Or, how about:

Brown Eyes:  “If you have a Dollar tree store in your town, that’s the place to go. You’ll find all your thank you cards there also. Or if you prefer Staples’ Store, they also have a lot of invitations. Hope you find what your looking for. Good luck!”

Searching for “affordable wedding invitations” is no laughing matter.   With a tough economy, people are doing everything possible to save money and, as such, it is wise to scrutinize your entire wedding budget.  Personally, I have found that searching for a “cheap wedding invitation” is generally a false economy.  Cutting back on the extra pasta dish at the reception buffet might help free up part of your  budget to allocate toward a well-crafted and not necessarily expensive wedding invitation to celebrate this milestone event in your life.   After all, your wedding invitation is likely to be around far longer than the pasta. 

I recommend that you contact a qualified stationery store in your neighborhood for expert advice on crafting your wedding invitation.   You will be surprised at how much time and energy you will save to devote to other aspects of your wedding.

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

 The lead article in November’s Internet Retailer is entitled ”How the Supreme Court fractured online pricing.”  The article describes how online retailers are reacting to the June 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gives greater legal protection to manufacturers and suppliers to implement minimum advertised price policies (MAP).  Legal analysts suggest that the Leegin Creative Leather Products vs. PSKS decision is by no means a clear mandate for manufacturers to enforce MAP pricing, but clearly they now seem to have more leverage.

Sources quoted in the article suggest that “price” is only one of the key factors for shopping online and that “convenience” and “selection” appear to be equally important.  In fact, a Carnegie-Mellon study suggested that online consumers would pay a premium to buy books from a brand-name retailer to merchants they don’t know.

By mutual consent and often through the exchange of a contract, a stationer agrees to merchandise a paper company’s product lines in their store.  Normally, the dealer will purchase a Wedding or Baby Announcement album(s) which contain samples of invitations and announcements and detailed pricing information.  For the most part, pricing guidelines established by the paper company are respected by the dealer since both parties are fairly compensated.  The paper company receives compensation for their papers, creative designs, printing and packaging; and the dealer is compensated for their expertize in helping their client create a custom wedding invitation using the vendor’s albums.

The internet has opened a new distribution channel to fine paper companies.  Some have moved forward aggressively to promote their brand through this channel, other have been more timid preferring to rely on third party online dealers and many have simply decided that the internet is not the medium to sell custom invitations and fine stationery.   Low-resolution internet images, the inability to faithfully reproduce texture and paper weight, template-customization solutions and inexperienced customer support are just some of the reasons why many fine paper collections are not represented on the internet.

“If you can’t feel the paper or see it very well then I suppose the only compelling sales argument is price,” says one stationer.  Indeed, pricing does seem to be one of most important components of online search.  Today, if one were to enter “cheap wedding invitations” into the Google search bar over 4 million search references would be cited, 7 times more than for “custom wedding invitations” or 20 times more than for “affordable wedding invitations.”

While I feel that “affordable” is a better search term than “cheap,” it is interesting to take a look at the internet companies that occupy this search space.  In general, they are either a monoline print-house or an online reseller selling one paper line.    While the end-product may meet the expectations of the online buyer, it is hardly a choice and there is no way of determining whether the buyer would have received better “value” shopping at a brick-and-mortar store. 

What is disturbing is to discover several well-known companies having their brands sold at significant discounts online.  Perhaps, they may wish to take a look at last year’s Supreme Court ruling to protect the reputation of their brand.  Prolonged and highly visible online discounting of a company’s brand will inevitably cause the public to demand the “market price” and disinsentivate their store dealers from merchandizing their brand.

Richard May
Founding Member