The Stationers Guild

Engaged couples browsing for wedding invitations often tend to assume that paper quality is probably the most substantial price consideration when searching for an online wedding invitation. While the fine quality of the paper is very important, other things to consider like the printing method, amount of ink colors and additional touches frequently play a much more significant role in determining the end pricing of your personalized wedding invitations.

Many quality printers utilize cotton fibers, high-grade wood fiber that’s been approved by the Forest Stewardship Council or a combination of both cotton and wood-based fibers. Even though these papers tend to be of a superior quality than re-cycled papers that a great many promote as “tree-free, these high-quality papers frequently cost a tad bit more but are certainly worth the nominal premium. In addition, these papers are typically far more “environmentally-friendly” and substantial than most papers sold online that claim to be “green” or “tree-free.”

Factors that tend to increase the price tag of printed wedding invitations are paper weight, colored papers and the number of ink colors used in printing the invitations.

Paper weight: Lots of wedding papers offered on the net are printed by commercial printers. Generally speaking, paper with a weight beyond 120 pounds can’t be sent by way of a commercial printer or ink-jet printer. Consequently, a weighty wedding invitation can only be printed using engraving, letterpress or, in some circumstances, with thermographic inks. This old fashioned printing method is likely to increase overall costs, but will generate a substantially more beautiful invitation.

Paper Color: Nearly all wedding invitations are printed on white or ecru colored papers making sure that ink colors resonate. Having said that, there is a movement in the direction of bold-colored papers. In these cases, only using a higher priced printing procedure like engraving seems to work to acquire the proper resolution between ink colors and darkly-colored papers.

Ink Colors: Whilst flat-printing, lithography and digital printing is effective with papers less than 120 pounds in weight, more old-fashioned printing procedures are necessary for more substantial papers. In such cases, each color needs to be applied in a separate press run, thus escalating prices.

When browsing locally for wedding invitations, it really is best to confer with an experienced stationer who will help you select the finest wedding invitation styles and papers for your expense plan.

Yesterday, I received the following question from Lori London of Write Impressions in Royal Oak, Michigan:  “I’m a guild member.  I have a question that I wish I could pose to other guild members and/or maybe you can help me.  I took down my web site a few weeks ago as we are ready to launch our much improved web site by November 1st. Did other members provide links to stationery vendors … such as Crane, William Arthur, Checkerboard … even though some of these vendors sell directly to the consumer?  I am curious how other stores dealt with this.”

Please find below my slightly edited response to this most interesting question:

Very good question.  I will answer your question (at least try to) as posed, but then if you will stay with me a bit longer I hope to give you a “better” but slightly more technical explanation that might influence your decision. 
 
First, based on my research just under two-thirds of the 285 guild members currently listed in the StationersGuild have their own website.  Of those that do have a website less than 20% have outgoing links to vendor websites.  Those that do link to a vendor’s website do so primarily with companies where  they receive referral commissions (Sweet Pea or Printswell, Birchraft and Checkerboard).  Based on a cursory observation of member websites, I would say that very few Guild members (certainly less than 10 and probably less than 5) link to a vendor website that sells online unless they participate in a referral program.    
 
Now, as Paul Harvey would say “Page 2″:   While incoming links to one’s website are important in determining “search” relevancy, it is the quality and relevancy of  links rather than the number of links that determine whether one site will get a higher ranking than another.  Without trying to bore you, an incoming link from the Chamber of Commerce or a Trade Organization (StationersGuild for instance) is perceived by Google to be more valuable than a link from a paid listing such as www.1Wedding.com.  Authoritative links  from sites with a .gov (government) or .edu (educational sites) ending or websites with consistently high Google Page Rank are generally perceived to be “higher quality links” that will enhance the value of your website (or at least a specific page on your website).
 
The ThereseSaintClair website provides links to most of our vendors.  The reason is quite simple:  People who visit our website are interested in what brands we carry.  We provide them a lot of choice, give them convenient access (i.e. links) to many Fine Paper companies and then give them very strong reasons to shop locally.  In fact, the Therese Saint Clair and Stationers Guild websites have been designed to provide  buyers with  information in one location that would be difficult for them to find elsewhere.  It would be presumptous and silly of me to assume that that an online visitor found “Crane wedding invitations” through a visit to my website.    In other words, we help buyers research online without any aggressive sales pressure in the expectation that a discerning buyer has the common sense to shop locally.
 
Now, most people seem to think that one runs the risk of losing prospective clients by providing links to online suppliers.  You may lose a few, but I believe the risk is minimal.  In fact, Fine Paper companies would be far better served by providing hyperlinks to their dealer’s websites on their “Find a Dealer” page.  It would help their dealers build credible links and it would also help the Paper company promote their brand to customers looking for a local solution with an experienced stationer.  As long as the industry (storefront dealers and the fine paper companies whose lines they represent) fail to act on this simple premise,  companies like www.weddingpaperdivas.com will continue to disintermediate and eventually destroy the industry by substituting fine paper for fine technology.

Storefront stationers and the many fine companies we represent simply must do a better job of giving people the necessary information on whether they wish to shop locally or online.  Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that the consumer is in one camp or the other (online or store) is painfully naive and will eventually lead to an industry where toxic recycled waste paper from China with designs developed from pirated copies of PhotoShop will innundate the market under the pretext that these “beautiful” papers/invitations are “green” and “eco-friendly.”  This is not science fiction, it is happening today!  Furthermore, wedding portals, self-appointed etiquette specialists and “born-again” environmentalists are all tooting the same horn in merchanidizing inferior products on the internet in the hope of prying loose the “green” from your wallet. 

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

This week I attended a conference at the Javits Center National Gift Show entitled “Get Real . . . Green Verification and Certification.”  Like most responsible people (although my wife might disagree), I wish to use our planet’s resources wisely.  I had hoped that behaving “green” was as simple as plugging in a purchasing decision or behavior pattern into a carbon footprint calculator and voila:  pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing!  Little did I know how mistaken I was.

The Javits Center conference showed how difficult it is to verify “green” claims.  Three speakers from quite different backgrounds, but equally committed to the environment, shared their insights on how one might go about green verification and some of the pitfalls in this process.  I have broken down the Blog into three parts to summarize each speaker’s presentation and keep the article to manageable proportions.

Alan Honick, a documentary filmaker most of his life, traced the complexities of environmental sustainability by discussing his research on the controversy over the Northern Spotted Owl and logging in the northwest.  Clearly, there is far more to the subject than simply an endangered species.  He argues that all factors – including human – need to be taken into consideration when looking at environmental issues.  I had a chance to talk to Alan after the conference and he pointed me to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for more information on this important subject.  He believes that the FSC does an excellent job in keeping the “human economy” in sync with natural ecology.  See Mr. Horick’s fascinating 10-part video in 9 minute segments entitled “Critical Habitat”:

Despite the somber tone of this excellent video, it captures the complexities of tinkering with mother nature and the difficulties in developing sustainability models that balance environmental, economic and social needs.  Out of countless interviews with advocacy groups and scientists, Mr. Honick featured 18 special-interest advocates and 15 scientists in the video to provide a balanced presentation of the issues involved.  I was most fascinated with the role of millipede which is responsible for processing 95% of the organic matter in the forest.  As Mr. Honick correctly points out, the Northern Spotted Owl was just a side-show for a very complex problem.