The Stationers Guild

Another online invitation and announcement company surfaced today:   Chickadee Prints.    In the tag line of its online Press Release, Chickadee claims to be “a company that aspires to create unique designs for stationary . . .”  Well that stopped me in my tracks.  How can a company aspire to create “unique” designs for a market that they can’t even spell properly?  

In a surprise development that has taken the stationery industry by storm, National Stationery Show spokesperson, Shirley Greenhouse, announced that the National Stationery Show would be “entirely digital” by 2012.  Ms. Greenhouse stated that “today’s consumer is embracing a new medium to express themselves and, quite frankly, paper is no longer considered Eco-chic, timely or relevant.”

While this will come as a shock to traditionalists and the many artisans who produce fine paper, it is a huge cost-saving boon to online resellers and printers who can now substitute paper invitations and stationery with online images.   Said one delighted CEO, who preferred to remain anonymous, “we can finally compete with the Chinese now that we don’t have to deliver the goods.”   For another anonymous executive,  it is a dream come true:  “Brides can now have digital stationery and invitations to match their wedding website.  To be quite honest, producing ‘real paper’ was just a distraction and got in the way of cross-selling other products and services to bridal couples.”

While Ms. Greenhouse, dismissed accusations that the NSS digital plan was a sell-out to online resellers who produce little of tangible value other than advertising revenue, many brick-and-mortar retailers were disappointed with the announcement.   Store-owner Elizabeth Long from Stillwater, OK remarked that she looked forward to visiting NY and catching up with the latest industry trends.  Says Elizabeth, “despite the over-priced food and beverages at the Jacob K. Javits Center, I will really miss rubbing elbows with talented designers and the beautiful papers they produce.  Quite frankly, I’ve never understood the ’save a tree’ mantra of online marketers since we only sell stationery made from cotton rag.  I guess it’s a generational thing.  If the new generation can’t spell stationary correctly, I suppose there is no reason for them to buy it.”

Charles Avery, a long-time distributor for many fine paper lines watched a lifetime of ”pushing paper” disappear in a cloud of low-resolution pixels.  While obviously distraught, Mr. Avery summed up the situation quite philosophically, “this adds new meaning to the expression that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’”   Even the “Twits” on Twitter were taken aback by this stunning announcement and were furiously text messaging the organizers for further clarification.  Fortunately for Ms. Greenhouse, the NSS email Server was down again, a regular occurrence that the GLM management company laughingly refers to as “turning a deaf ear to the situation.”

It is hard to believe that the National Stationery Show organizers would take such a radical step and turn the lights off on a 500 year-old industry spawned by the Johannes Gutenberg.  “Certainly, it is better than moving the Stationery Show to Las Vegas, but this is still rather extreme,” summed up one grizzled paper veteran.  Ms. Greenhouse offered no apologies for the decision, and deftly fielded many cynical questions with the curious sound bite “if we can rebuild Detroit without gas-guzzling cars, we can certainly build a better world without paper.  Long live the Spotted Owl!”   We are hopeful that the organizers will certainly reconsider their pronouncement on April Fools Day.

The syndicated online news release is a great way to create “buzz” about your stationery store and announce important community events.  For the most part, these online services are relatively inexpensive and in many cases are free.  Writing a “good” press release requires a bit of skill since you want to avoid shamelessly promoting your business.  After all, it is a “news release” and not an “advertisement” or political message.

While online services are quite useful in disseminating information to the search engines and local news services, you should be aware that there could be some unintended consequences.  Specifically, your news message can be usurped by banner advertisements.  Also, keywords in your release maybe hijacked by hyperlinks to redirect readers to a third-party website and, perhaps, that of a competitor.  It is as if your news release were simply buried in the classified ads of your newspaper.

An interesting case in point is today’s news release by Blissful Designs, a UK company that provides online invitations and stationery.  The article was syndicated by Live-PR yet it contains banner ads from online competitors and hyperlinked keywords that were added by Live-PR to redirect the reader to competitive websites.  As the snap-shot below illustrates, the competitors get more attention than Blissful Designs.

Blissful_News_Release

As you can see, the two Banner Ads from Paper Divas overwhelm Blissful Designs’ news release.  You have to question whether Live-PR was a useful way to promote their new website.  If you plan to use a “free” or an inexpensive online syndication service, you may well end up promoting a competitor.  Personally, I use PR-Web which allows the user to control how their ads will be displayed.  It is certainly more expensive, but absolutely worth the protection that your message won’t be distorted by advertising parasites.  Furthermore, the success of online printers is more often determined by search engine optimization strategies than by selling fine papers.  Let the online buyer beware!