The Stationers Guild

As I have reported many times, internet search results are often manipulated by very smart people to the detriment of the consumer and visitors who are looking for information rather than a sales pitch.   As most of you are no doubt aware, Google and most other major search engines segregate their page listings into two areas:  paid search and organic search.  For instance, if you are searching for ”wedding invitations” using the Google search bar, the results page will look something like this:

The search for “wedding invitations” returns more than 14 million pages which Google has found which contains information relevant to wedding invitations.  The three lead paid search results bracketed in RED are paid ads where companies bid for the top placement.  In this particular case, Wedding Paper Divas, bid more than Normans Printery (whoever that is) and Google places them in the top position because of that fact.  Immediately below the top three paid listings are the ORGANIC listings.  These listings are derived from a proprietary algorithm  developed by Google to determine the most relevant websites for that search term, independent of any paid advertising.    They use over 100 factors in determining that ORGANIC relevancy, include key word density, title bars, backlinks from other websites and many other factors.

While the companies on the first page of Google for paid and organic search results can often be radically different, in this particular case Wedding Paper Divas also occupies the Number 1 position in ORGANIC search as highlighted in GREEN.   Why is this important?  Simply stated, the first listing in ORGANIC search will attract somewhere between 36% to 45% of clicks, almost twice the percentage of the next organic listing.   In other words, it pays to the be the number one organic listing for key search terms.   For that reason, many businesses will do most anything to obtain that coveted ranking:  It is big dollars!

In a fascinating article that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday entitled The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, NYT’s investigative reporters discovered that J.C. Penney’s had used “black hat” SEO (search engine optimization) tactics to grab the number one organic listing for key product search terms.  When the information was reported to Google, who conducted their own investigation, J.C. Penney was manually stripped of its number one listing and its search relevancy signficantly altered (in some cases falling to as low as 77 (seventh page of search results).   All this for a company that was listed number 16 of the most influential 500 internet retailers.

While J.C. Penney’s has now fired the SEO firm that was responsible for these questionable marketing strategies, I suspect that its reputation will be permanently damaged by this revelation.  Nevertheless, it raises a number of question for firms that are practicing similar strategies.   The wedding industry in particular is ripe for “black hat” marketing.   For local retailers, it is absolutely imperative that you do everything legitimately possible to boost your online presence.  Google and other search engines try to list “local” providers if they believe that qualified local suppliers exist.  There are a number of simple and inexpensive ways to do so.  Don’t let online marketing companies destroy the stationery industry.

Consumers are waking up to the fact of the deceitful practices of many internet marketing companies.  Congratulations to Google for taking the high road and acting promptly to safeguard the integrity of their search algorithm.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

One would have thought that the New York Times would have had the good sense to say something positive about the National Stationery Show, but clearly it looks like they are short-staffed and had to assign a rookie reporter from the crime beat to cover the show.  In a bizarre and senseless piece of “reporting” that seems to have been crafted in an Irish pub, NYT reporter Corey Kilgannon  focused on the case of the purloined letter and the scatological humor of one award recipient as the defining moments of his Javits Center experience. 

Perhaps Kilgannon is trying his hand (I assume Corey is a male) at blogging rather than journalism since his days at the New York Times are probably numbered if this is the best he can do.    It is no wonder that NYT’s readership is declining with Kilgannon missing everything that it is relevant to focus on sensationalist tidbits that may appeal to his small base of followers on Twitter.  If this is all the news the New York Times sees “fit to print” then the editor has obviously had a bad hair day.  Pitiful and sad.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, The Morgan Library & Museum  in midtown New York City will have on display a hand-drawn Valentine Day’s cartoon from poet  E.E. Cummings to Marion Morehouse. 

Without question, the Morgan Library is one of the great architectural and cultural treasures in New York.  A visit to this magnificent Museum is provides a historical and visual perspective of the great traditions of Western culture that, in my experience, is not matched by any other museum in the world with the possible exception of the Getty Museum on the West Coast. 

While I was first drawn to the Morgan Museum to see the illustrated manuscripts (see above), I have now become a “book junkie” that has fallen in love with the Morgan Library.  The beauty of this three-story wood library makes you want to settle in for a lifetime of reading.  Each volume tells a story far  beyond the actual words in the book.  For instance, where else in the world would the find Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther that was reportedly carried by Napoleon?   Where else can you see original music scores written by Mozart in his own hand and hand-written novels by the Bronte sisters?   The Morgan Library and Museum is a sacred place that inspires by its unique perspective on the rich traditions of Western culture.

In a delicious article, Alison Leigh Cowan of the New York Times writes of the many exhibits in the metro-area that will display memorable love letters and notes  to celebrate Valentine’s Day.  Ms. Cowan quotes Mark Twain as saying that ‘“The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter.  The writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.”

This year, as in year’s past, I will pen a short love note to my wife of near forty years for Valentine’s Day.  Like Mark Twain, those few hand-written words reflect a “limitless freedom of statement and expression” that no other form of communication can match.  This Valentine’s Day, why don’t you plan on doing the same.

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

I came across an interesting article in today’s New York Times by Sam Roberts with the intriguing title that “More Men Marrying Better Educated, Wealthier Wives.”   The gist of the article suggests that men who have sought marriage “from the standpoint of physical and mental well being”  now realize that a better-educated partner can also contribute to their “economic well-being.”   While this might be seen as a major evolutionary break-through in male maturity and self-realization,  the “alpha female” (The Knot’s characterization of the upwardly mobile female) is unlikely to compromise her rigorous approval standards.  One anonymous textile executive quoted in the article reportedly queries bar slugs and first dates with “Do you have a passport and a library card?”  Gosh, that will certainly weed out the field of eligible males rather quickly and so much for “Love at first sight!”

As I have no skin in the game (married to a far smarter woman and breadwinner -a fact which she reminds me of each day), I am free to offer this advice to men whose emotional IQ is higher than their testosterone level:  Buy engraved stationery and seek out a woman with an expensive pen.   I might add that Crane & Co. and William Arthur have sensational personalized stationery promotions going on right now, so you can buy in cheap and score big with a personalized note to the woman of your dreams who is currently involved in an unhealthy relationship with her Blackberry.   Can you imagine her reaction when she receives your hand-written note on engraved stationery?   Her Facebook “friends” and “Twits” on Twitter will simply fade into oblivion proving decisively that the pen is mightier than texting. 

If you need help selecting your stationery, please enter your Zip code or City and State in the Search Bar in the right hand corner to locate a qualified stationery store in your neighborhood.   If, however, you are looking for a woman with the “right”  fountain pen, might I suggest a limited edition Omas Château Lafite Rothschild fountain pen with a sterling silver nib which retails for $1,750.  I ordered the Chateau Lafitite pen for a woman as a birthday gift to the man of her dream’s whose passions were limited edition pens and French wine.  Apparently, his passions didn’t extend to the woman in question and I still have the Omas pen.  If your bride-to-be is looking for a pen to ink the relationship, tell her I have a great deal for her at Thérèse Saint Clair.

Chateau Lafite Fountain Pen

Richard May
Therese Saint Clair

I don’t like to quote myself since it appears – and is – self-serving, but I recently published an article called “It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on – The lost art of fine stationery.”   The tongue-in-cheek article seeks to apply a monetary value to correspondence using engraved stationery to determine if it is any more relevant than the new forms of social correspondence such as Twitter and text-messaging.

Clearly, the conscious act of  visiting a stationery store to design your own personal stationery demonstrates a level of commitment to a  meaningful form of communication.  I think it is fair to say that words exchanged in writing tend to leave more of a lasting impression than a phone conversation.   While both may accomplish the same objective, the simple act of taking the time to write a brief note resonates on a more personal level.

I recently learned that an industry research study (I did not actually read the report) had concluded that 86% of people interviewed still considered “paper” correspondence to be a more effective form of communication.  More than that, the trend is holding steady suggesting that text messaging and social media sites may not be making as much headway as once suspected.

Certainly, today’s New York Times article “Buying, Selling and Twittering All the Way“  suggests that the Twitter model has been seriously compromised by Big Business.  Twitter’s tag line of “What are you doing?” now seems to have been overtaken by paid mercenaries building “brand awareness” for their employer.  According to the article, Greg Ahearn of Toys “R” Us stated that Twitter is “a way people can stay connected with the brand in a way they’ve never been able to before.”   Now, I can’t really understand why people would want to stay connected to a brand (even Toys “R” Us), but I am absolutely convinced that the Big Business footprint in Twitter will drive their audience to greener pastures.  Big Business simply doesn’t get it:  Twitter is about people, Twitter is not a medium for aggressively selling or creating brand awareness!

I am reassured that people still value the exchange of social correspondence:  It is a habit and art form well worth preserving.

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

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

For some reason, I have become fixated on the phrase:  “cheap wedding invitations”.  Perhaps, my curiosity was piqued when I discovered that there were 17 million web pages that contained the search term “cheap wedding invitations.”  Or maybe it was the shock at finding that there were almost 50 thousand Google searches in June using the phrase “cheap wedding invitations.”  I would have thought that “free wedding invitations” was a better term, but I was mistaken since there were only 27 thousand Google searches in June for that phrase.

In any event, the matter came to a head this weekend when I picked up the New York Times Book Review and saw the review of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell.    I have now read a couple of reviews and intend to buy Cheap (at the full retail price?) when I quit writing Blog articles.    The long and short of the reviews is that the costs of our “discount culture” are inevitably paid for by somebody.  Writes the reviewer, Laura Shapiro, “We’re being subsidized by a distant labor force we never see, the Chinese and Mexicans and Vietnamese who work under well-documented Dickensian conditions.”   Harvard economist, Robert Lawrence is quoted by Ms. Shell as saying that “When prices are kept too low, innovation is nearly impossible.”  Argues Ms. Shapiro “Apparently we’re not even building better mousetraps anymore – just cheaper ones.”

Cheap by Ellen Ruppell Shell

While it is hard to argue that getting the “best value” is certainly a worthwhile pursuit, an online search for a “cheap wedding invitation” is unlikely return anything more than a cheap wedding invitation.  Whether the wedding invitation – regardless of its cost - has any intrinsic value to either the bridal couple or their guests is the far more important question.  Clearly, if your “cheap date” morphed into a more meaningful relationship and eventually a proposal, then one might  look for something a little less “cheap” to celebrate the occasion.  If you seek an affordable wedding invitation, then I strongly recommend that you visit a qualified stationer in your neighborhood who has wedding invitation suggestions for all budgets.

“Cheap” is always available on the Internet.  If, however, you are looking for a custom wedding invitation that is within your budget, don’t cheapen yourself by succumbing to the unsubstantiated and largely outrageous ploys that abound in cyberspace.

Yesterday’s New York Times had a fascinating article tracing the tragic decline of the Australian wine industry.  Meriah Foley in an article entitled “For Australian Winemakers, More Turns Out to Be Less,” documents the decline in margins of the world’s fourth largest wine exporter whose aggressive pricing to build market share now threatens the entire industry.  Writes Ms. Foley, “Even as its star appeared to be rising, the Australian wine industry was sliding, selling a greater volume of wine at increasingly lower prices . . . a level many say is unsustainable.”  For one who discovered the bold new taste of Coonawarra wine in the late 70s, this comes as a bitter disappointment.

For some time, I have felt that the same thing has been occurring in the stationery industry.  We are constantly bombarded with new papers and designs that - like Australian wines –  British wine writer Andrew Jefford refers to as “cheap and cheerful.”   As more and more fine stationery companies fall prey to the need to mass-market their product over the Internet, brand awareness and quality standards will inevitably give way to price competitiveness. 

I have long argued that there is no way to differentiate your brand on the Internet and the only way to compete effectively is to become the low cost producer.  This implies sacrificing standards and quality.   Once you have done so, can you restore brand awareness to a public that has become accustomed to the “discounted” brand?  The Australian wine industry is a vivid example of what can happen to an industry that loses its bearings and places its emphasis on growing market share rather than promoting brand awareness.

It is not difficult to see the same tragedy unfolding in the stationery industry.   With self-appointed pundits shamelessly promoting inferior designs, cheap papers and anything-goes etiquette, it is no wonder that the public is confused and disoriented.    I fear that the stationery industry is rapidly paddling up the river of no return.   If we want to preserve the integrity of the industry, designers and craftspeople and industry leaders must collectively raise their voice to the innane claims, hyperbole and simply “bad taste” that permeates our industry.

I was fascinated to read the Cecilia McGee’s article in the June 10, 2009 Styles section of the New York Times entitled “Your Invitation is not in the mail.”    The article describes how a young brother and sister have launched a new website called Paperless Post which allows a buyer to design and send a custom email invitation.  The Hirschfeld’s have allegedly received $1 million in funding to launch their new website and several distinguished politicians and celebrities seem to be overwhelmed by the simulated beauty of their emailed invitations.

While some of the innovative graphics may seem to be revolutionary to their clients, it is unlikely to create much buzz within the internet community.  In fact, as web design graphics evolves it continues to be imitated, absorbed and quickly displaced by new technologies.  In fact, success on the internet is based on search engine optimization (SEO) rather than innovative design.  More importantly, simulated invitations on the internet are missing two important elements:  paper and printing.

Artists and craftspeople in the industry are simply being displaced by graphics designers using Photoshop.  Whether this is useful or beneficial to society over the long-run remains to be seen, but I suspect that Paperless Post will not emerge as the Rembrandt of custom online invitations.   The  internet and inexpensive graphic design programs place sophisticated design capabilities in the hands of most everybody.  Unfortunately, since most everyone can do it inexpensively, it creates an environment of only transitory value.  If everyone could design a Mona Lisa or the Nightwatchman, these works of art would have little perceived value to society.

The online invitation business is rapidly approaching economic irrelevancy from a design perspective.  Efficiency and cost drive the online business – not beauty!  If you are interested in an invitation rather than an email, paper is the only real alternative.  When the distribution channel become more important than the product itself, the craftsmanship and civility of fine paper will gradually be lost to society.  In the New York Times article Pamela Fiori, the editor in chief of Town & Country, is quoted as saying “In a world increasingly uncivilized,” she said, “it’s important that we have some ties to tradition. And I honestly think that what we’re losing with e-mail are our memories.”  Ms. Fiori’s comment reminds me of a memorable scene in Blade Runner.

In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, replicant hunter Deckard (Harrison Ford) callously tells Rachael (Sean Young) that her memories have been implanted and that she is simply a robot.  Rachael, desperately clinging to a “family” photograph as proof that she is human, breaks into tears and flees Deckard’s apartment.  The scene was provocative on two levels:  first, it was the first time I had seen a robot cry and, secondly, a simple family photograph seemed to be a more relevant factor in Rachael’s belief in her humanity than all of her systematic programming.

In summary, if simulated email images masquerading as invitations is your cup of tea then by all means imbibe.  If texture, relevancy, tradition and tangible works of art continue to entrall you then don’t settle for pixalated pop art.

The New York Times reports that luxury stationer Mrs. John L. Strong is closing.  This venerable stationer, founded by Flora Strong during the depression (the Great Depression of the 30s, not this one!), closed its Madison Avenue store on Thursday.

All of us in the stationery industry lament the passing of one of the great design firms for fine stationery and custom invitations.  Needless to say, the presence of Mrs. John L. Strong will be sorely missed.