Saturday, April 17, 2010

It's money with the wrong dna. (originally posted May 25,2009)

Funny money thinks it has all the answers. It forgets that its replication is based on a rising market and its arrogance on a short memory. If something crashes it's usually because "the economy is blablabla." If money gets burned in the Print space, it's because "the internet balabala and the End of Print." That's why Cenveo closed Anderson, that's why Boundary Capital is closing outlets all over the UK and why Zell took the Tribune into bankruptcy.

Meanwhile David Black is doing very nicely with newspapers in Southwest Canada/Northwest USA and The Color Company just replaced Fedex Kinko's in London and is also growing nicely.

In the States we have this thing about "Go West! Young Man." Maybe the Color Company should "Go North!" They could pick through the debris and find those smart, ever resilient, persistent Printers and click them on to their printernet. Then they could move to Australasia and do the same. Then maybe they could give AlphaGraphics a real run for their money in the States.

Then they could both fight it out with our homegrown good guys to see who will be the Starbucks of the Printernet.

"Earning" money by getting transaction fees from your VARs may work in finance. It's not sustainable in the real economy. Earning money from your VARs through value given, value received transactions is a different business model.

The End of Print? Hah! More likely it's the end of Funny Money poking it's nose into places it doesn't belong.
Prontaprint accused of supplier 'kickbacks'
@ comment posted at printweek.com

"Firms that want to supply Prontaprint had better be careful.

If anybody from Boundary Capital or ODC rings you up and says 'you can supply our franchisees but you'll have to grease our palms first, by the way your not allowed to speak to anyone about it' just remember that the guys that pay the bills namely the franchisees won't touch you with a bargepole if they find out about it. If we find out your doing it already we'll tell each other. Kickbacks mean WE HAVE TO PAY MORE. Be careful what you get yourselves into.

We want to deal with firms that don't give kickbacks.