Mailing Systems Technology - September/October 2008 - (Page 21) number of printing firms who see mailing services as a new profit center for their operations. While these “new guys on the block” may not pose much of a threat for mailing firms processing a million or more pieces per month, it does not bode well for smaller mailing companies who process 200,000 to 600,000 pieces per month. This is especially true for those mailing firms specializing in mailings in the 4,000-6,000 range. Two interesting statistics tend to support these conclusions. When we examined the estimated monthly piece volume and compared that to the estimated average size of a typical mailing, it is quite clear that there are a significant number of new companies, mostly printers, who are “dipping their feet in the water” by slowly and methodically starting to offer mailing services. Although we failed to ask this question in 2002, subsequent surveys asked participants to estimate the average number of pieces processed and mailed in a typical mailing. Interestingly enough, the results in both 2004 and 2008 were amazingly close: 2004 Average Mailing Size Median Mailing Size 2008 in terms of a mailing project because they are typically involved early on in the design and then printing of a brochure, postcard or envelope that is clearly intended to become a part of a large mailing in the coming days or weeks. On the other hand, mailers are often approached at the last moment by a customer who suddenly unloads four cartons of material with an urgent plea that the mailing be processed immediately if not sooner! Is the opposite occurring as well? Are today’s mailing firms beginning to enter the printing arena and offer more traditional offset printing services such as graphic design as well as on-site or brokered offset printing services? We think the answer is “yes,” but we also think mailers are more reluctant to enter the offset arena than printers are in trying their hand at mailing services. 9,925 9,595 5,000 5,000 More Printers Offering Mailing Services As you can see from Table 1, while the “average” monthly piece count has remained fairly steady in the last six years growing from 771,235 pieces in 2001 to 826,328 in 2007, the “median” (the middle number in an array of numbers) monthly piece count has dropped from 300,000 in 2001 to 150,000 in 2007. What this appears to indicate is that there are a growing number of new companies (mostly printing firms) who are entering the mailing industry, and with each new entry, they are nibbling away at the monthly mailing volume previously produced by the more traditional mailing or letter-shop firms. Like it or not, in many cases at least, printers have a distinct advantage of being “upstream” WWW.MAILINGSYSTEMSTECHNOLOGY.COM | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 21 http://www.MailingSystemsTechnology.com
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