A long time customer’s email always signals summer’s end
Posted By RichC on August 15, 2023
Having a customer for over 30 years is something that I should be super happy about (and for the most part, I am), but in August like clockwork it is a trigger for me that it is the end of summer and the beginning of a new printing year, at least with the Greater Akron Audubon Society.
When I first started my printing business in 1987 (with the building purchased above and more photos at the bottom), one of my early customers (eventually became personal friends – Susan and Allen Dooley, Clyde Witt and Joyce and Wolfgang Pelz) inquired about publishing a monthly newsletter for the local Audubon Society. I was already publishing short run conference books and manuals for people at Kent and Akron, and was ambitiously focused on starting a business, remodeling a building and even heavily marketing the printing newsletters nationally (how crazy is that?)
Several of these professors talented writers so they could easily put together birding articles along with the monthly meetings and itinerary … and seemed to enjoy working with me (yes I did get involved and even “played” board member — conflict of interest?). Over time this 9 issue/year newsletter grew into adding my companies web hosting services, etc. Of course technology doesn’t stand still, people don’t live forever, and eventually budgets dictated fewer “printed and mailed” newsletters. All of this changed the ink on paper business as yes, 🎶 the times they are a changin’ 🎶. Nearly everything shifted to digital over time (although it now seemed to have happened quicker) and only a few items like postcards, yearly meeting schedules and birdseed sale flyers continued. I still appreciate them coming back to me.
Consolidated Printing and Publishing also evolved from ink on paper to more web hosting. Not that I minded making the shift — it reduced overhead, the need for skilled press and bindery employees and all the capital intensive printing equipment … as well the building. Unfortunately the overall amount of business, the margins and overall profit disappeared.
The correct answer to combat this would be to to try and grow in number of customers and add more digital services — more graphic design, sophisticated web templates and heavier focus on sales and marketing. I do not have the ambition to take on this risk and try to expand … so currently I work to maintain those customers willing to stay with me for their catalogs, printing, limited web design and hosting services. It is barely enough to keep me in the business and more difficult as CPP inches towards a slow death (it is far more stimulating to be growing and motivated to improve).
Anyway … yesterday I received the semi-welcomed email about planning the next newsletter postcard and inquiring about my schedule (great people to work with). I say “semi-welcomed” because to me it also signifies the end of summer. ☹️
The old CPP building photos below an interesting BBC Tweet (or X) from 1995.
How did people find information on the internet 25 years ago?
This Multimedia Business attempted to untangle the world wide web #onthisday in 1995. pic.twitter.com/t29kN9Nm8x
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) December 10, 2020
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