Other Options
What else can you do to buffer the costs of printing your catalog? Review potential savings from cutting your trim size and paper weight. Work with your printer to co-mail your catalog and minimize postage costs. Know your breakeven, and make sure your circulation maximizes profitability.
As for gauging just when/if these increases will subside, as long as the paper companies can maintain their cartel and not discount prices or start cutting side deals to sell excess paper, plan on the price increases to continue indefinitely. Given that the increases have happened like clockwork each quarter, look for the next round of increases to be announced six weeks before the beginning of a business quarter. Talk to your printer and paper merchant to keep up-to-date on all the happenings in the paper market.
Don’t get caught assuming the paper price increases won’t continue. Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news, but all indications are that prices will continue to rise in the short term!
Jim Coogan is president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based consulting firm focused on catalog circulation planning. You can reach him at (505) 986-9902 or jcoogan@earthlink.net.
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