The Stationers Guild

As most people are aware, I do try to remain upbeat for the stationery industry and local business in general, but the drumbeat of Armageddon beats louder than ever.  Yesterday,  CNBC’s “Mad Money” Jim Cramer stated that Barnes and Noble was simply a showroom for Amazon; and that food stalwarts like McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks and Domino pizza were core assets in one’s stock portfolio.  Personally, I think listening to Cramer would drive me crazy in a couple of hours, but he is smart and, if you buy into the theory that the stock market is a leading indicator of the future, then it just might be a wise idea to follow his advice.   But, then again, if you follow his advice to its logical conclusion then both you and I will either be eating at McDonald’s, working there or, quite possibly both.

If Jim Cramer is right, then mom and pop retailing is dead.  The small businesses that were so integral to our communities across the United States will simply fade into oblivion since there is no economic incentive to become a “showroom” for Amazon or the growing number of vendors who find it easier to connect with the consumer directly through their online store.  There are many who do not think this will occur, but  sadly, I am not among them.   Americans tend to be oblivious to the impact of their purchasing decisions and, quite frankly, it is probably far too late to reverse course once our small towns and communities are decimated by the “convenience” of shopping online.

Just yesterday, a woman walked into our store and said “I’m so happy you are still around with the number of stores closing in Greenwich.  You know, I occasionally shop locally to make sure that a few stores are still around so I can actually see what I am buying online.”    Mind you, she is not the only one who is oblivious to the impact of these seemingly insignificant one-off purchasing decisions that are radically changing our communities and way of life.  For instance, a well-known economist friend of ours who loves books was touting his new Kindle until I pointed out to him that Kindles would be the death of Borders, Barnes and Noble and hundreds of book shops that he frequented over the weekend.  He argued that they would co-exist “in some form or other.”   How wrong can you be.  I’d keep a eye on the libraries and the local Post Office to see what happens over the next several years.

Let it be said, that when  ETs picks over the remnants of our civilization I would hate for them to conclude that we simply ate ourselves to death in fast-food  restaurants and simply washed down our civilization with a Venti Latte.  I would prefer to think that the Pietà,  the Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s plays still have relevance in today’s society, but I am not sure.

Now some will argue that I am a Luddite and don’t embrace change.  Quite the contrary, I grimly tolerate change – both good and bad – but I don’t think our Towns and the guy in the street fully comprehend what is going on in our rewired society.  In fact, I would argue that this “change” in the way we interact with each other is what these worldwide protests are all about:  a sense of powerlessness to affect the changes that are radically transforming our communities and way of life.

Our towns and communities are at the core of these changes and, if you would like to learn more, I suggest that you visit Strong Towns.org and take action in your community before it is too late.  Watch the informative 15-minute video and, if you would like to see what you can do to play a more active role in your community, download the free Fireside Chat.

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

The New York Times reports that a price war is developing in the merchandising of books that threatens to destroy the industry.  New York Times writer, Motoko Rich, says that a price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon accelerated on Friday with many bestsellers offered online at $8.99. 

Writes Motoko Rich, “Publishers, booksellers, agents and authors, meanwhile, fretted that the battle was taking prices for certain hardcover titles so low that it could fundamentally damage the industry and ability of future authors to write or publish new works.”   If you like Chainsaw Al, you’ve got to love Wal-Mart.  Once Wal-Mart  gets a stranglehold on an industry the resulting landscape will be as barren as Georgia after Sherman’s march to to the sea during the Civil War. 

A similar, but not so dramatic, battle is taking place in the stationery industry.  Yep!  Wal-Mart has got its paw into this industry too, selling greeting cards for $0.46.  American Greetings and many other greeting card companies are suffering by these predatory practices of Wal-Mart.  As Wal-Mart pushes for the last cent from its suppliers to provide the “cheapest” product on the market, hundreds if not thousands of artisans, craftspeople, workers and families are displaced and marginalized by their practices.  

While the current bestseller from Amazon, Wal-Mart and the town bookstore are identical, one might ask “why should I pay more?”   I guess it is for the same reason why discerning consumers pay more for “green” energy:  they are concerned by the implications of their purchasing decisions.    I think it would be a stretch of credulity to assume that Wal-Mart really cares about the future generations of authors, craftspeople and artisans that no longer can support themselves in an industry dessimated by Wal-Mart.   I guess these would-be artisans will be obliged to lay down their paint brushes, sell their Heidelberg presses and donate their book-binding tools to museums and become sales clerks at Wal-Mart.

As a stationer, I see many inferior designs and poor paper quality touted   as “fine stationery” by online marketing companies and their  paid internet marketing mercenaries who shamelessly promote their brand  in social media channels.   Stationers and Fine Paper companies simply must do a far better job in “educating” the consumer that there is more to fine stationery than a disingenous advertising ploy.

George Orwell must be having a chuckle – maybe even a hearty laugh – at the hullabaloo that ensued when Amazon deleted Orwell’s 1984 from it’s Kindle library because it didn’t have publishing rights to the digital reproduction.  Big Brother must certainly have been impressed by the ease with which faceless technocrats can deprive us of one our most sacred rights:  the right to read.   In his wildest imagination, Orwell could never have dreamt that Big Brother could control what people read with the simple flick of a switch.  Makes me start to wonder about the implications of Google’s digital library.   

Maybe I’m paranoid, but I don’t think I will be recycling my book collection any time soon.    For that matter, I’m taking a long position in personalized stationery even though the Post Office may not be around much longer.  I have even stopped converting my photographs to digital images and gone back to leather photo albums.   I’m stopping short of building a bomb shelter, but will seriously consider getting rid of the TV if they have anymore “reality” TV shows.   I guess Paula Abdul’s abrupt departure from American Idol is a sign that reality TV is even less silly and hilarious than life in digiworld.

Just when I thought that digiworld couldn’t get any loonier, I discovered that someone was actually converting John Quincy Adam’s 1809 diary entries into Tweets.  In today’s New York Times, reporter Katie Zezima writes that a college student has been taking JQA’s journal entries of his boat trip to Russia and coverting them to tweets on Twitter.  According to the article, JQ already has 4,800 followers (I’m not one of them) and “the number was climbing.”  This clearly adds a new dimension to the Twitter tag line “What are you doing?”  In John Quincy’s case it might be “I’m dead, but still chirping!”  I wonder how many more people will become followers of someone who has been dead for more than 150 years.   ”Curiouser and curiouser!” said Alice in Wonderland (Yep, I have the book).

As we race down the digital highway of new “awareness” and greater “sensitivity” and “connectivity,” I do hope that some of us will pause to consider the consequences.   We  refer to that as “stopping to smell the roses.”  Personally, I find digiworld as confusing and as transient as Alice. 

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair