Printing the ETP: Press Check Photos

This morning I went to my first-ever press check at Papergraphics, a printing company based in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The press check a final form of approval, pulling the first few sheets from a press run to make sure the color looks right and that there are no final issues. I was mostly curious about what the inside of an actual printing shop looked like. Our representative, Susan, was very patient in answering my questions and in allowing me to take pictures. Printing is awesome. There's something magical about watching a blank sheet of paper make its way down the press to emerge, transformed, into something much more.

PROOFING AND PRESS CHECK

By the time I arrived, the press had already been set up and had printed a few hundred sheets of our 18,750 sheet run. The press guy pulled a sheet off and handed it to Susan, who then put it up under a light to compare. Everything looked fine to me, until I noticed it looked too good: the printed area of the page was perfectly centered. However, our design is off-centered on purpose, as to provide space for hole punching for those who need it. I had not caught this in yesterday's proofing check, but the press guy said that it could be adjusted by just moving the cropping marks. He made a sheet that described the changes (see picture below), and then painted out the crop marks on the actual plates.

PRINTING PRESSES ARE COOL

As this was going on, Susan showed me around the press, pointing out its various features. It was a 5-color press, meaning it could print up to five different inks at a time. We're printing the Emergent Task Planner as 4-color process. This refers to the use of 4 standard primary inks: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The inks come in cans (below, left) which they sometimes mix themselves for custom colors. A gallon of ink is good for "thousands of impressions". A plate is a piece of flexible metal (bottom, right) that fits over a roller in the press that has been treated to hold ink (bottom, middle). When the plate rolls over the paper, the ink of that color remains.

I liked the smell of the ink, which had a slightly sweet smell. There is something intoxicating about it. I was also enthralled by the printing process itself, because it requires an attentive eye to maintain quality throughout the run. I could imagine myself working as a printer if there weren't any computers around. Going back even further, I probably would have been a clockmaker or a blacksmith.

Watching a pile of blank paper get transformed into an actual product was one of the most quietly exciting things I've experienced. There was something kind of calming about the experience. It may have been the press guys around the room that exuded that sense of quiet competence. Pretty awesome.

It's just hitting me that this is a moment I have been waiting for my entire life. For the first time, I've created a physical manifestation of my own product. I'm glad I had a chance to see the printing process first hand; it just wouldn't have been the same ordering over the Internet.

On a side note, 55 of the 86 pre-order confirmation emails I sent out have been been acknowledged, which means that I probably won't lose money now. If you ordered an ETP pad but didn't get a pre-order email last night, leave a comment here and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

The next step, once the pads are delivered to Manchester, is to actually create some packages and price out the postage.

Another Status Update for Printed ETP Pads

Yesterday I met up with my buddy Scott to have a look at the printing proof for the pre-printed Emergent Task Planner pads. I know it's been quite a while since we kicked off this project, so here is the current status:

• We have our costs finalized ($12 per pad, which now includes a cardboard backer) and are going to press this week, perhaps as early as Thursday morning. I'm hoping to be there with a camera to document the process.

• Once we produce the pads and get them back, we can finalize both the packaging (simple envelopes, boxes and stickers) and the shipping cost (the post office refused to quote us anything until they saw what we wanted to ship). Shipping is extra, so I'll find out what shipping options and cost will be from New England. We have about 90 orders to move, if all pre-orders decide to follow through.

• We will be targeting the domestic US first, perhaps Canada if that is doable without having to fill out a separate customs form for every package.

• I have upgraded my paypal account so I can use Website Payments Standard for accepting payments. I also have set up a separate email account for handling product-related email.

• I have not yet sent any email to people who have pre-ordered, though now that I think about it I should have confirmed them all...hindsight, 20/20, etc. I had thought we'd be going to press much quicker than we did, so I thought we would have had final costs emailed to everyone by now.

To recap, here’s the current specifications:

• US Letter (8.5″ x 11″) on a pad.
• Simple cardboard backing.
• Top-glued for easy tear-off.
• No pre-punched holes, but there is space on the left of the form to allow for hole punching.
• Printed on Cougar Opaque 80LB Text White Smooth stock. It's a substantial paper sheet that should hold up to daily use.
• 75 Sheets per Pad: This seems like a decent number, and allows us to ship a pack of 5 pads to cover a year.
• 4 color printing: I had pushed for custom inks, but this adds to setup cost. Looking over the proof and discussing options with the printing folks, 4-color looks a lot better than it did even 4 years ago, with 150- and 175-line screens pretty common. I would have liked to design to the raw capability of the imagesetter (the machine that actually creates the metal plates used on the offset press), but apparently they are so automated now that the kind of control I used to get in the early 1990s is no longer necessary or even provided. Or so I am told...I am not entirely convinced.

...and the biggy:

• No pre-printed 2007 in the upper right corner. You fill the year in yourself. Aesthetically this is a small step backwards, but functionally it means that these pads will not be out-of-date when 2008 rolls around.

Here's what the current sheet design looks like:

ORDER STATUS

So that's the current status. I will email people tonight to confirm interest, shipping address, and number of pads. Then I'll be able go to the post office and find out what actual shipping cost will be, and provide the PayPal payment information in a follow-up email.

Please note that pre-orders have been closed, but we will probably do a second run around the end of the year if we sell-through and the interest is there. The profits that come from this run will help fund the next round of expansion to online ordering and fulfillment.

UPDATE: I have emailed everyone in the United States and Canada, a total of 86 names. If you had placed a pre-order and didn't get a confirming email from "DSG Product Division (products*davidseah.com)", then you should email me at productservice at davidseah.com, or use the contact form.

Status on Emergent Task Planner Printing

Things are going a little slower on the Emergent Task Planner Sheet Updates than planned, but the final file is being looked at for final pricing. The major change was removing the pre-printed year from the form (which you can see in this post). The major reason: 2008 is just around the corner, and it does make sense to make the first round of forms useful into the next year. It's just not as pretty...sigh. I'd like to eventually have entire pre-printed planners available with dates for every page, but that carries a setup cost that I can't afford. It may be possible to do this with Print on Demand technology, but that will require a bit more research from me.

We have orders for 194 pads from 86 different people in in North America/Canada, which is awesome! There were also another 36 international orders, which we'll do on a case-by-case basis. If you sent me an email or left a comment, I probably have your order. I have not yet sent confirmation emails, because I want to have final price ready first.

More notes follow below.

There's nothing quite like trying to do this by the seat of your pants to make one realize how many details are involved. I have been distracted by other work, so I haven't been 100% on this project, but now that we're close to actually printing the whole e-commerce side of things is starting to loom larger. Plus there's the whole packaging and fulfillment thing. Here's my current thinking on the project, which much thanks due to the many readers who posted useful suggestions!

E-COMMERCE / FULFILLMENT SOLUTIONS

Possible Solution 1: Shopify ($24/month to start) provides a hosted e-commerce front end that integrates with payment services. I would probably just upgrade my PayPal account to Website Payments Standard. Shopify also integrates with a fulfillment provider called Shipwire, but it seems pricey (I'll have to work out the numbers). The advantage of Shopify: it's pretty and easy to set up. I would probably just ship packages by hand, which has the advantage of allowing me to pack each one individually to see just how much work this would be. I keep thinking it will be a LOT of work, but I won't know until I actually try it.

Possible Solution 2: Amazon Fulfillment, which as far as I can tell costs $39 a month for the Selling on Amazon + storage / handling / shipping costs. The advantage: Could conceivably set this up pretty automatically...just keep providing product to Amazon's warehouses, and they handle shipping it out. Products are listed on Amazon, and all the tracking and returns are handled by them too. The downside is that the packaging is not going to be very personalized, and customer service is handled by Amazon. That may not be the way to go for the first run of this. On the other hand, it would be nice not to have to worry about tracking numbers and all that stuff.

Both solutions have a hidden cost in that I need to ship product to their warehouses. I imagine that this is not that expensive. However, the product also needs to be handling-resistant. That means the pads should be shrink-wrapped or otherwise protected, which gets us into Packaging.

I'm leaning toward Shopify + Paypal + Manual Fulfillment at the moment. I'm trying to think of a good name for a store too, keeping in mind that there will likely be more products coming down the road.

PACKAGING

The initial idea was just to make pads of sheets that were glued into a convenient tear-off pad. But if you're shipping a bunch of pads, what keeps the paper from flapping around and getting pre-maturely bent? I would hate getting a bunch of pads that were not cosmetically perfect. There are other factors too: branding and logos and all that stuff, but for the first run I'd rather focus on just learning how to manufacture and ship a product, and worry about branding later. After the e-commerce and fulfilment stuff is figured out, then it's time to think about establishing families of products and so forth.

Packaging starts to add to cost, so this is something that goes back to the print guys to figure out what kind of protection can economically be provided. I am also thinking it would be nice to have some kind of mark on the boxes. Printing stickers might be the cheapest way of doing that.

It's around now that I'm starting to wish I had a business manager and a project lead, so I didn't have to worry about all this stuff.

SUMMING UP

So that's where we are right now:

• Waiting on Final Pricing (print and mailing)
• Setting up E-Commerce System
• Figuring out minimal packaging

I need to talk to my buds here about packaging options and mailing costs. Once I have this all together, I will post the information here and then email the notice for real ordering. We at least know now to expect a run of about 15,000 sheets.

Final Emergent Task Planner Design

I've decided to get rid of the year, though I like it, and have replaced it with a fill-in area for the date. The reason that finally pushed me over was that I'm not actually sure how long it's going to take to print and ship out all these forms. There are a lot of dependencies that I'm just starting to learn about, so I figured it would be safer to supply forms that would be useful for the next year. The profits from this run will go into figuring out how to handle customization of the year in future products; right now, it makes sense to just make this one a fill-in-the-blank. Not quite as pretty, but still pretty useful :-)

Here's the final design:

I'll be closing pre-orders on Monday. We have well-over 100 pad orders, so now I have to worry about how to accept money and fulfillment. I'm imagining this might take me a while to work out, though thanks to other readers I am looking at Shopify and Shipwire as possibilities for ecommerce and fulfillment. I have a paypal account, of course, but I'm not too keen on using them because of all the bad press I hear about them. I still have to get over to the post office and rent a post office box, and also ask them about bulk shipping at media rates (which I should qualify for). And then there's the whole packaging challenge too...how can I make the package cool without adding a lot of expense?

You can add your pre-order to the original post, or revise your existing one if the idea of a pad without the pre-printed year isn't what you want. I still don't have final cost numbers yet, but I'll post them as soon as they're ready. All pre-orders will get an email confirming their order amount and requesting address information. Thanks for your patience!

UPDATE: Here's how the Pre Orders work:

You mail email me via the contact form, or leave a comment with your email address stating:

1. How Many Pads you would Like
2. The City / State you are ordering from

I was not thinking of taking international orders right now, but please do indicate your interest anyway. If I can handle it, I'll do it. If I have to fill out a customs form every time I ship something overseas, then that makes it less likely.

Your pre-order is NOT a real order, but an indication of your interest. After I close pre-orders, I will have an accurate count of how many pads I can print, and can get final pricing. Then I will send an email to everyone stating what the final costs will be, plus whatever shipping ends up being, and start accepting real orders. It will likely be a few weeks before people start getting pads, but I want to get 'em out as soon as possible!

Pre-order Revision: Yearless versus Year Field on the ETP

:http://davidseah.com/archives/2007/07/22/update-on-pre-printed-emergent-task-planner-pads/ About 15 percent of Emergent Task Planner preorderers have said that they would prefer a yearless version, so they don't end up with a stack of "outdated" 2007 forms.