Technology revolutions demand more

Paper companies long ago discovered that printers preferred an easy life to selling what they don’t know. Printers would prefer to offer just the papers that they know can be printed on their presses without problems and so deliver a satisfactory result. Few wanted to push the papers they used into different styles, different surfaces, different colours even. There was nothing wrong with a bright white, white and off-white on coated, uncoated and silk. What more could anyone want? Only paper companies were creating papers with all kinds of different characteristics, recycled, papers made from bagasse, from the detritus from making beer, seaweed even. These would never sell if it were left to printers. Hence the peak of back selling where the paper company persuades the designer or brand to use a particular grade and then to compel their printer to use it.

Over the years back selling has been hugely successful. Arguably the popularity of uncoated stocks is the result of back selling, or at least the power of persuading the brands to try something a little less shiny than usual. This approach can be employed for digital printing too. HP has led the way with all kinds of educational content to convince brands that short run, even personalised print and packaging will have an impact on sales. That success can be relayed to persuade printers to invest in said technology in order to woo or at least keep up brand requirements. But there are an awful of brands out there and HP, even if helped now by Koenig & Bauer and Heidelberg, cannot reach them all, 

When a potentially revolutionary technology or machine is introduced such activities are mandatory. All too often though the developers fall at this hurdle. They show machinery at Drupa and the like (noticeable for the absence of brands in attendance) and expect printers leap on the benefits of what is in front of them and gleefully sell this to an equally expectant client base. There are numerous examples of this in action, from printing, through smart software, though embellishments. Printers (and brands) cannot be expected to do the right thing. And now, one quarter of the way through the 21st century, this has laid the foundations for some of the problems that print as a whole faces. This industry needs a vast back selling operation to show brands, agencies, publishers and other buyers that print is not what they think it is, but a vibrant, exciting, revolutionary industry even. Suppliers should put aside arguments that inkjet can transform litho and the specifications war; printers should unite behind the IPIA or BPIF to tell a story, not about numbers and data, but about a 500-year-old industry that is still at the forefront of change.