The Stationers Guild

Very few printing techniques can match the caliber of an engraved wedding invitation. Even though engraving was traditionally used to print wedding invitations, baby announcements and business cards in your parent’s and grandparent’s generations, modern day printing methods are much more efficient but don’t have the high quality and vitality of engraving.

Lately, prominent stationery retailers across the United States are finding that bridal couples are now rediscovering the inherent beauty of engraving. Notwithstanding its higher cost, engraved wedding stationery bring back the heritage and elegance of times past.

As the industry has moved to less expensive and more efficient forms of printing, numerous engraving firms have shut down and the profession of engraving is perilously close to disappearing. Even though the robust Heidelberg presses remain in abundance, the creation of engraving dies from submerging photo-sensitive copper plates in to a tub of an acid solution is far beyond the financial abilities and know-how of the many independent printers.

Because of its opaque colors and eye-catching 3D print quality, engraved wedding invitations are experiencing a renaissance among the engaged couples who treasure a well-crafted invitation. Amongst the key firms which offer a variety of printing options, Crane & Co. and William Arthur give the finest design and printing alternatives.

If an engraved invitation is out of your reach, go for printing in thermograph inks. Using thermograph inks mimics engraving by stamping a resin-based composite on the paper to form the raised surface which you find in engraving. Thermograph inks are generally more shiny unless of course the printer offers a matte finish, but printing using this method will produce great savings.

As with any fine stationery, engraved invitations should be seen in person to appreciate paper and print quality. Ink colors are “true” and richer, particularly when evaluated side-by-side along with other types of printing. In all likelihood, you can find knowledgeable stationers in neighborhoods across the United States who are able to deliver assistance in helping to design wonderful wedding invitations.

Richard W. May, a founding member of the Stationers Guild, writes frequently about NYC wedding invitations and wedding invitation trends across the United States.

Not many printing methods can match up with the quality of an engraved wedding invitation. Even though engraving was customarily utilized create wedding stationery, birth announcements and business cards for your parent’s and grandparent’s generations, today’s printing processes are much more efficient but lack the level of quality and vigor of engraving.

Most recently, leading stationery stores across the US are finding that wedding couples are now rediscovering the inherent beauty of engraving. Notwithstanding its higher price, engraved wedding invitations bring back the heritage and elegance of times past.

Because the industry has adopted more cost-effective and much more economical forms of printing, numerous engraving firms have closed down and the profession of engraving is quite close to vanishing. Though the robust Heidelberg presses still exist in abundance, the fabrication of metal engraving dies from submerging photo-sensitive copper plates in to a tub of an acid solution is beyond the financial abilities and experience of many private printers.

With its “true” colours and exceptional 3D print resolution, engraved wedding invitations are experiencing a renaissance among engaged couples who treasure a well-crafted invitation. Amongst the leading firms which offer a variety of printing methods, Crane & Co. and William Arthur offer the best design and printing choices.

If the engraved wedding invitation is out of your reach, go for printing in thermograph inks. By using thermograph inks mimics engraving by stamping a resin-based blend on the paper to form the raised surface which you find in engraving. Thermograph inks tend to be more shiny unless of course the printer offers a matte finish, but printing using this approach offers great savings.

As with any fine stationery, engraved invitations should be seen in person to experience the print quality. Colors are opaque and deeper, specially when compared side-by-side along with other types of printing. In all likelihood, you will find skilled stationers in neighborhoods across the United States who are able to provide assistance in helping to design wonderful wedding invitations.

Richard W. May, a founding member of the Stationers Guild, writes frequently about NYC wedding invitations and wedding invitation trends across the United States.

Only a few printing techniques can match the caliber of an engraved wedding invitation. While engraving was typically utilized to print wedding stationery, baby announcements and business cards for your parent’s and grandparent’s generations, present day printing processes are much more efficient but don’t have the level of quality and vigor of engraving.

Lately, the leading stationery retail stores throughout the United States report that wedding couples are now rediscovering the innate beauty of engraving. Despite its higher cost, engraved wedding invitations bring back the heritage and elegance of times past.

As the industry has chosen cheaper and much more productive forms of printing, many engraving firms have closed down and the craft of engraving is perilously near disappearing. While the resilient Heidelberg presses still exist in abundance, the production of metal engraving dies from submerging light-sensitive copper plates in to a tub of acid is far beyond the financial abilities and knowledge of many autonomous printers.

With its “true” colors and exceptional 3D print quality, engraved invitations are experiencing a renaissance among engaged couples who treasure a well-designed wedding invitation. Among the key firms which provide different types of printing methods, Crane & Co. and William Arthur provide the best printing and design options.

If the engraved invitation is beyond your budget, go for printing in thermograph inks. Applying thermograph inks mimics engraving by imprinting a resin-based composite on the paper to make the raised surface you find in engraving. Thermograph inks tend to be shinier unless the printer provides a matte finish, but printing using this method will provide great cost savings.

Like all fine stationery, engraved invitations should be seen in person to appreciate paper and print quality. Colors are opaque and richer, particularly if evaluated side-by-side with other types of printing. In all probability, you can find knowledgeable stationers in cities across the United States who can deliver assistance in helping to craft wonderful wedding invitations.

Richard W. May, a founding member of the Stationers Guild, writes frequently about NYC wedding invitations and wedding invitation trends across the United States.

Few printing methods can compare with the caliber of an engraved wedding invitation. Although engraving was historically utilized create wedding invitations, baby announcements and business cards in your parent’s and grandparent’s generations, today’s printing methods are more productive but lack the high quality and vigor of engraving.

Most recently, the leading stationery retailers across the US report that wedding couples are now rediscovering the inherent attractiveness of engraving. Notwithstanding its higher price, engraved invitations bring back the traditions and elegance times past.

As the printing industry has moved to more cost-effective and more efficient types of printing, quite a few engraving firms have shut down and the craft of engraving is quite near vanishing. Although the resilient Heidelberg presses still exist in abundance, the creation of engraving dies from submerging light-sensitive copper plates into a bath of acid is beyond the financial abilities and expertise of the many private printers.

With its opaque colors and distinctive raised print resolution, engraved wedding invitations are experiencing a renaissance among the bridal couples who cherish a well-designed invitation. Among the key firms which provide different types of printing options, Crane & Co. and William Arthur give the very best design and printing choices.

If an engraved invitation is beyond your budget, opt for printing in thermograph inks. Utilizing thermograph inks simulates engraving by stamping a resin-based blend on the paper to form the raised surface which you find in engraving. Thermograph inks tend to be more shiny unless the printer provides a matte finish, but printing with this particular technique will provide great savings.

Like most fine stationery, engraved invitations should be seen in person to appreciate paper and print quality. Ink colors are opaque and richer, particularly if compared side-by-side along with other forms of printing. In all likelihood, you can find knowledgeable stationers in neighborhoods throughout the United States who are able to provide assistance in helping to craft wonderful wedding invitations.

Richard W. May, a founding member of the Stationers Guild, writes frequently about NYC wedding invitations and wedding invitation trends across the United States.

Maybe it’s time to consider getting off of the beach for a few minutes and visit a stationery store in your neighborhood to see Crane’s great summer stationery promotion.  Until August 2nd, you receive 25 FREE thank you notes or custom stationery for every order of 75 or more.    This promotion is available at Crane dealers throughout the United States or at Crane Online.

I’ve always had a love for fine paper and innovative styles. I still recall how stimulated I was by the engraved seal of a European royal family that seemed to float on a business card. My interest has not declined during these years and I’m fortunate to own a stationery retail store and can enjoy my interest.

You will discover something very special and unique about taking a few minutes to mail a hand-written note to a relative or friend. I opt to use a foldover note with my engraved monogram while my husband enjoys the correspondence card with his name engraved along the top edge. My spouse and I have the benefit of updating our stationery every few years after we get tired of the designs or a particular envelope liner. As such, we were thrilled to receive the fresh new Personal Stationery Album from Crane.

For more than two centuries Crane & Co. has set the standard for customized stationery and personalized invitations. In June, Crane unveiled its brand-new Personal Stationery album which includes most everything a consumer needs to have for communicating in style: half-notes, correspondence cards, thank you notes, pocket jotter cards and note pads. Crane has refreshed many of its vintage stationery choices as well as introducing several brand new contemporary designs that are undoubtedly likely to capture the fancy of stationery addicts.

Crane’s Personal Stationery album contains a brand new page layout featuring an extensive stationery collection for both business and social stationery. Its straightforward product presentation depicts quite a few color selection and paper-size options in addition to attributes call-outs accentuating advanced capabilities, artistry, etiquette and design tips.

The new stationery album also is designed with a practical guide to Crane’s premium cotton papers, double hand-bordered cards, engraving and monograms. There are some 80 envelope lining options to choose from in addition to Crane’s proprietary fonts and motifs. In a nutshell, this is a virtuoso display of Crane’s rich traditions in making exceptional stationery.

Sheila P. May
Therese Saint Clair

Found below is an affiliate ad for Crane & Co. 

This is an affiliate ad for William Arthur.

Each of these ads can help grow your store business and send a powerful message to the consumer that “quality is not dead in the stationery industry.”

Supporting the affiliate programs of your vendors should - and most probably will - bring  the following benefits to your business:

• Properly used, affiliate marketing will drive traffic to your store;
• Affiliate marketing is a far more effective marketing tool than the Yellow Pages and most paper media advertising;
• Affiliate marketing allows you to build an online presence without the expense and fuss of doing it yourself;
• Affiliate marketing gives you an opportunity to talk about and promote fine stationery and custom invitations;
• Affiliate marketing gives you credibility with your customers to “see” that your store has online product capabilities;
• You earn affiliate commissions when customers buy online through your affiliate ad referral;
• You support your vendor by promoting their brand online;
• Most importantly, you support the stationery industry by promoting quality brands.

If you are not yet engaged in affiliate marketing to support the brands of your in-store vendors, you should do so now.    Need help?  The Stationers Guild’s technical website Rite4U will give you plenty of instruction on how to do it yourself.    

For those who are more interested in selling “real” stationery than marketing affiliate programs, we will show you where you can get access to affordable talent to replicate the Stationers Guild affiliate programs.   The NYC Wedding Invitation website is an affiliate marketing website focused on driving foot-traffic to our store, Therese Saint Clair.    It promotes the same brands we carry in our store, but subtly encourages visitors to shop locally.  Shouldn’t you have a similar website for your local market?  

Learn how at rite4u.com.

Richard W. May
Founding Member of the Stationers Guild

People shop online and most stationery companies have been obliged to provide consumers with an online alternative.  For many years, people thought that Jane or John Doe consumer would either buy online or exclusively at a bricks and mortar store.  As we well know, they are likely to do both depending on circumstances which are not easy to predict.  The industry has been tip-toeing around channels of distribution for quite some time and it is clear that bricks and mortar stores require some level of online presence to engage clients who may wish to visit their store or purchase products online.

I recently picked up the Summer 2011 Instore Magazine that was published for the Dallas Gift Show.  In this magazine, there are several interesting articles that are most useful to store owners getting their feet wet in online marketing:

• The ABCs of SEO by Cindy Baldhoff
• Use YouTube to Engage with Your Customers
• Getting Social with Email Marketing by Ron Cates and,
• Where’s your ‘Stupid List”?

Now, I have no way of knowing if anyone is going to read these articles, let alone act on them, but they contain plenty of very good advice and suggestions.  I suspect that people’s eyes will glaze over and they will get back to business as usual.  It’s understandable, but a real shame.

Crane and William Arthur now have affiliate marketing programs.  There is no reason why bricks and mortar stores can’t share in the online revenue stream if they do a little work.  Will they?  I suspect not, because they lack the tools and the knowledge to do so successfully and are perhaps frightened that they may end up cannibalizing their existing business.  Is this a reason to stay out of the fray?  No, but most will choose to sit on the sideline and surrender the bounty to professional affiliate marketers.  Let me explain.

Online affiliate marketers will hype anything and many have become quite rich by focusing on key words and building website devoted exclusively to capturing affiliate income.  The acai berry diet (14 million search pages) that is hyped by online marketers is a perfect example of how this works.  In fact, I have attended several online seminars that teach you the techniques to optimize your site for acai berry diet searches so you can capture affiliate income.  Even if you decide not to activate your affiliate program with Crane or William Arthur, someone else will to your detriment.

Let me give you an example of a website I setup over a year ago (no affiliate links as yet) to test various automatic “content-generating” products in the market.  The site is nycweddinginvitations.org.      I have done relatively little to this website, but will soon be adding graphics to make it look attractive and begin to add affiliate links and perhaps add an online store.  This website was FREE and costs about $1.50 a month to run.  I then use several Wordpress tools to skim the Internet to look for articles that use my key words (“nyc invitations,”  “nyc wedding invitations,” nyc wedding stationery,”) and then these articles are automatically “spinned” (term for substituting synonyms and rearranging sentence structure to avoid duplicate content) and then published automatically on the NYC wedding invitations website.  You can establish multiple websites using the same strategy built around different key words but perhaps using the same graphics.   All of this is basically FREE and by using the appropriate Wordpress Plugins, ALL OF THIS IS FULLY AUTOMATED  (i.e. no human intervention).

Now, you may have a much prettier website than I do, but because my website has been optimized for search, it is far more likely that it will appear higher in a Google search result than your store.  The first listing in Google’s Organic Search (not paid!) statistically receives between 30% and 46% of the clicks.  Pretty scary, isn’t it?

This is how professional affiliate marketers work.  Sure, there are a lot more wrinkles using Facebook Fan Pages, YouTube, Landing Pages and other strategies, but I can assure you that just because you decide not to actively and aggressively support the Affiliate Programs kindly provided to you by your Vendors, others will!

Is this good for the industry?  I think not, but this is why Tiny Prints and many other online “printing” companies who wouldn’t be able to pick out an engraving press from a lineup of toilet bowls will eat your lunch and mine too!

Isn’t it time to figure out what we can and should do to preserve the quality standards in our industry?  Together we can do this the “right” way and preserve the integrity of our industry  Rest assured that there are plenty of people out there who will and can sell anything and make a fine living doing so.  They are real pros and I admire their spunk.

Call me at 203-661-2927 or email me at rmay@stationersguild.org with your ideas and suggestions.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

Anil Jagtiani, the President of Crane & Co., has  “shared some thoughts” with its dealers in a recent communication entitled “A Look Forward.”  Seeking “to respond to consumer expectations with an integrated store and online strategy,” Mr. Jagtiani goes into great detail to explain how Crane & Co. plans to harness the energy of its bricks and mortar dealers with a more integrated online marketing strategy.  The new direction is the result of intensive conversations within Crane and its “partner” dealers.

Recognizing that both Crane and its dealers will “learn from the markets and may stumble for time-to-time,” “A Look Forward” provides a useful  explanation of Crane’s “emerging thoughts and actions” with regard to their multi-channel strategy. Among the more concrete action plans are the following:

• Crane.com e-mail promotional programs will strive to enable consumers to have the same pricing/promotions online or in stores.   In fact, promotional emails may include coupons that can be redeemed at Crane dealers.
• The retail store locator will be more prominently displayed on the Crane website.
• Crane will continue to run test programs with social media distribution channels to determine which ones may be of most benefit to the Crane family of dealers.
• Crane will launch an affiliate program for authorized dealers at the end of May. Further details of this program will be available shortly.
• Crane will explore the possibility of developing and sharing digital content with dealers to enhance websites and email campaigns of bricks and mortar dealers.

“Consumer behavior has changed” and one needs to connect with the consumer in whatever channel he or she finds more convenient to use.  While acknowledging that the “experience and service” provided by dealers is “unparalleled,” connecting with the consumer in multi-channels is critically important to promote the Crane brand and provide the consumer with the alternative to shop online or in a store. The objective  is to make Crane.com “an extension of your store.” Mr.  Jagtiani goes on to state that “we are approaching digital in a multi-channel way – as partners with you. Our objective as we work with you is to win in this changing environment together.”

This is the first time in my experience that Crane has taken a pro-active role in engaging dealers in a frank discussion of the changes that are dramatically affecting our industry.  Some of his ideas may be controversial but, in my opinion, help bridge a credibility gap that was developing among dealers regarding Crane’s online marketing objectives.  While this blueprint of “A Look Forward” may not resolve all issues as we stumble through the rapidly changing digital landscape, I am certainly encouraged by Crane’s new direction.

With a heavyweight like Crane finally taking the initiative on a strategy to engage its dealers in an integrated online marketing strategy with the consumer, the landscape of digital self-promotion, hype and dishonesty will most certainly change. Crane has been making fine stationery for over 200 years and has the “real” credentials to provide online buyers with an alternative to the hundreds of disingenuous and insipid invitation and stationery websites that now dominate  internet search. The question that will soon be answered: “Is there a place for quality stationery on the Internet?” If the answer is yes,” I suspect that online buyers will be flocking to stores to see and feel the “real thing” rather than settle for a digital representation.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

Crane & Co., one of the oldest and most prestigious designers of fine stationery and custom invitations, has just released their new wedding invitation album entitled:  Volume I, Invitations and Announcements.  Now available at Crane dealers in fine stationery stores across the United States, Crane’s new wedding invitation samples, wedding stationery and save the date cards combine the traditional Crane design excellence with some new contemporary wrinkles for those looking for something cutting edge.

While Crane’s superb engraving distinguishes them  from most other wedding invitation printers, their new wedding album also features sample invitations and announcements in letterpress, blind embossing and digital printing in a comprehensive new array of design options at different price points that are sure to appeal to a broad cross-section of bridal couples.

Some of the more distinguishing features of their new release are the number of new digital options.  For instance there is an attractive new save the date card which features a photograph of Venice (looks like a destination wedding) or can also feature a photograph of  the bridal couple. 

Also, digital photography is used most effectively in applying a monogram to pocket folders.  While I am not pleased that some of the sample invitations have monograms featuring the wedding initials of the wedding couple (should only be used after they are officially married), the craftspeople at Crane haven’t lost their edge when producing some stunning wedding invitations.

Crane & Co.sells online but I encourage you to visit a qualified stationery store in your neighborhood to receive expert advice and see and feel ”real” invitations samples in colors that are not distorted by low resolution Internet images.  Trust me, it makes a huge difference and you might save some money by discussing options with an experienced stationer.

Sheila P. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

Last weekend, a woman walked into Thérèse Saint Clair looking for ecru sheets that matched the engraved, double hand-bordered sheets of her personalized stationery.   It isn’t often that you see engraved stationery of this quality and I commented on its elegance.  She explained that her husband had bought the stationery for her some years ago in London and that sadly all she had left were a few envelopes.

Her husband arrived shortly thereafter after parking the car in snow-challenged Greenwich and brought with him the matching envelope.  As I suspected, it was engraved stationery from Smythson of Bond Street.   In recent years, Smythson has been a playtoy for investment bankers, but was acquired last year by the Italian group Tivoli.    I tend to think of Smythson more for their leather products than their stationery, but Smythson craftsmanship and paper quality remains high.

Unfortunately, we were not able to match Smythson’s paper (color and size were a bit off), but I did suggest that Crane had some beautiful hand-bordered papers and could certainly match the color palatte of her existing stationery.  For those not familiar with hand-bordering, the video clip below shows Crane’s experienced and talented artisans demonstrating how card stock is hand-bordered.  This demo took place at the 2010 National Stationery Show:

In a world of flat-printed Photoshop cards, it is a breath of fresh air to see skilled artisans practice their trade and produced hand-bordered stationery of exquisite beauty. To see examples of Crane’s elegant stationery, visit a stationery store located in your neighborhood.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair