Seattle Bindery Newsletter: Issue No. 56. We welcome your comments.

1. A tip of the sparkling cider to an upbeat and upward 2002! While speculation for recovery from last year’s miseries fluctuates between the first and second quarters of 2002, most industry prognosticators are betting on a mid-year upswing, barring any other economy-shaking events, with sales growing at a rate of between 3.5% and 4.7%. This past year, we at Seattle Bindery have been particularly grateful for repeat business that not only keeps our equipment busy, but also sustains our belief that if we serve you well, you’ll come back for more. One customer did just that. We just completed round two of a job we did last year: Diecutting, applying Kleenstick, and packing in bundles of 10 for a total of 40,000 (30,000 in English; 10,000 in Spanish) bank outserts.

2. Tip of the Week. Few customers think beyond a Table of Contents to make a book user-friendly. But the use of tabs is one of the easiest ways to make a book or document more accessible to readers. Although tabs come in various shapes and sizes, the most common style has rounded corners and extends a half-inch beyond text pages. Standard dies can also create tabs that extend 1/4-inch, 3/8-inch or 5/8-inch beyond text page size. The length of a tab, referred to as a “cut,” can range from 1/2-inch to 10 inches. The rows of tabs are referred to as a “bank.” Our “Tips for Tabs” booklet provides detailed tabbing information. It’s also posted on our website at www.seattlebindery.com. We can even email you an EPS tab template. Just give us a call.

3. There are printers, then there are printers. Over the past two decades, Hewlett-Packard has dominated the desktop printer market. According to a 12/24 NY Times article entitled “Hewlett Aims to Replace the Print Shop,” the electronics giant controls 4 percent of the “trillions of pages printed across the world each year on desktop printers.” It has now set its sights on the other 96 percent that’s printed by the traditional offset press. Execs say they “envision a world in which corporations print hundreds of thousands of customized catalogs and other reports on next generation (color), high-speed digital presses from Hewlett.” But even a recovering accountant like me has a hard time computing how all those folks, who now have $200 models sitting on their desktops, will be able to afford these fancy new $200,000 to $1.2 million digital presses.

4. The gift that keeps on giving. Despite the run to blood banks immediately following 9/11, the Red Cross is running low again, according to a recent Associated Press release. The Red Cross says that blood donations are typically slow during the holidays, although that’s often when the need is the greatest. I’m a big believer (and a regular donor; they love my Type O Negative donation!) in this method of charitable giving, since it crosses all economic and social lines and is a much-needed commodity. Time to roll up those sleeves again.

 
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