I noticed a lack of companies going out to bid this winter.  Trying to figure out why?  Has the competition actually started offering some value?

Sell!

Nothing Happens Until You Sell Something- Red someone or other said that and it makes sense.  When times are tight why lower the number of salespeople?  Increase your sales force and you immediately increase your distribution.  You can cut costs all you want but wouldn't you rather increase sales?

Printing

Timeline's and detailed graphics/printing never go as planned.  Whether it be a design that wasn't made for low resolution print by your artist or a structure that doesn't match up with your art.  Make sure to give yourself enough time to complete your project.  If artwork is involved add another week onto your timeline even if your artist has completed it.  We need to make sure we can replicate it, do color samples, possibly change the layout to make sure it fits our constraints, and also get a signed hard proof back in hand before we will start on a carton.

Moral of the story...keep us in the loop on future projects so we can get the ball rolling early
have a great week
Ryan

Qualifying

When I meet with a prospect and they have the list to quote in hand, most of the time they view corrugated as a commodity.  When in fact it isn't: different paper, better quality, faster delivery, better printing, innovative changes to save on labor or costs or a myriad of other things make it a niche item.  The companies that will earn that prospects business will usually be the ones with the most open capacity, since that's who is going to be the cheapest.
Then you have to ask yourself; why do they have so much capacity?

Better By Design

Sometimes when I have an appointment and I see A LOT of stock boxes I wonder if anyone has ever explained the benefits of a box that actually fits?

Legislators gone mad!

I recently came across an article about how local municipalities wanted to charge the makers of a product pay for its disposal.  Good article the link is below
http://www.packagingdigest.com/article/518592-Extended_producer_responsibility_resolution_rejected_in_Massachusetts.php?rssid=20535
Corrugated is recycled at close to 70% already and is worth $140 a ton.  Maybe the cities should buy balers and sell it back to the mills.