Seattle Bindery Newsletter: Issue #13. We welcome your comments.

1. Seattle Bindery wowzer! We just finished a huge Wire-O© job that involved collating three web-folded signatures and trimming the sigs with our three-knife trimmer (the fourth side was flat-bed trimmed.) We then punched the holes, married the covers and inserted and closed the Wire-O© binding for 44,000 perfectly bound Wire-O© books. Big job and we did it on deadline!

2. E-commerce doldrums: You might have noticed the business buzz about the fates of the print e-commerce competitors. Writers of major business publications are questioning the long-term viability of these enterprises. Noosh, in particular (we don’t know why, except perhaps it’s been the longest-lived and loudest application service provider, or ASP, on the scene) has been lambasted in recent news clips (WSJ and Fortune.) Others have fallen understandably silent given the recent NASDAQ roller-coaster ride and Venture Capitalist disillusionment. PrintCafé, for its part, keeps on truckin’, reporting $121 million in software company acquisitions in their S-1 Registration Statement. It’ll be interesting to get first-hand info at the upcoming PrintCafé user conference in  Las Vegas.

3. Seattle Bindery addition: We’ve added a fourth knife unit to our stitcher. This is a great time-and cost-saving add-on to our trimming capabilities, since it gives us the ability to trim 2-up books with bust-cuts . . . in line, in one pass!

4. Paper praises: A piece by contributing writer M. Richard Vinocur in the March issue of American Printer quotes a Wired editorial: “There’s nothing that comes close to the user friendliness of paper. (It’s) completely random access . . .high resolution . . . portable . . . almost interactive in the way it gives you the ability to go backward or forward. Paper is still the best way of delivering high thought content.” How’s this for an unlikely (albeit welcome) endorsement for the power of print?

5. Interesting tidbit: In the 4/2/00 issue of Trendwatch Report (http://www.trendwatchgraphicarts.com/news.html) we’re told that “Despite the hoopla in the trade press about printing industry dot-coms, there is very little awareness about them in the creative marketplace.” In fact, my sources tell me that much of what the ASPs tout —such as job tracking and asset management—have little value to designers or marketing communications pros. They just want the job done right, at the right price, right on deadline. While this may seem like business as usual, demand for faster estimates and turnaround definitely supports online facilitation, regardless of who delivers it.

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