Seattle Bindery Newsletter: Issue #18. We welcome your comments.

1. New words of wisdom from industry maven Kevin Keane of IAPHC: “The wise printer will align with an ASP provider that wishes to help with a privately branded website that builds value perceptions for the printer’s clientele. This alliance between ASP and printer will not be transparently obvious to the client. It will be opaque and respectful of the human interactions that brought the client and printer together in the first place. And it will help the printer charge a fair price for value added.” Yes!

2. Gee, I love summer just like all of us rain-soaked denizens of the green Northwest. But the one thing I do dread during the season is the fact that every week at least one or two key people are out on vacation. At Seattle Bindery, we grant four weeks vacation to long-time employees, which I certainly don’t begrudge since they earn every day of it. But when the sun shines (on July 32nd in the Puget Sound region), every one of them wants to take off. Has anyone come up with a way to manage this other than whine and wait for Labor Day? Send me a good idea and I’ll send you a Starbucks coupon for a nice, cool iced drink, naturally.

3. Other IAPHC Tuesday Morning News tidbits: Franklin Electronic publishers demonstrated its first e-Book last week in New York at PC Expo., Priced at less than $150, the e-BookMan, is “based on the typical width of a column or newspaper typed for ease of reading.” (Someone’s paying attention to consumers!) R.R. Donnelley may just become the largest e-commerce provider when this summer it launches Digeno, an Internet means of simplifying transactions between all printers and printing buyers. (Remember reference to this in Newsletter #15? Seems our prediction was right on target.) And, according to RIT’’s Frank Romano, the really big news to come out of Drupa was the announcement by Flint Ink of a new technology
called SFI (Single Fluid Ink) that eliminates the need to balance ink and water in fountain solutions! (Chalk up another one to the bricks-and-mortar folks!)

4. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are almost compulsory tools in sales these days. My Palm III has 3,861 contact records in it. If I’m in traffic on the way somewhere and want to make a side trip, whip open the Palm III and grab the address of a nearby business and make an extra stop. The cost is so low now, even Costco sells them.

5. You can now register online for Chicago’s TechGraphics at http://www.gasc.org. And, if you’re looking for used equipment, www.murphyauction.com/pioneer.html is a good local resource. What remains of the old Greater Seattle Printing & Mailing will be on the block July 25, 2000.


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