Digital BW, The Print

In that case I'll stick with the well-known brands that have an established
performance, Hahnemuhle for example, until I see a massively demonstrable
reason for switching including substantial longevity testing.  It's all
about ex ante uncertainty.


> From: <hogarth@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:04:24 -0500
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] paper industry
> 
> OK people, you lost me. What is it about the paper industry that people
> find so scary? If you know the entire chain from trees to the box of
> paper arriving at your desk, how does it benefit you?
> 
> The paper industry works like many market sectors - by contract
> manufacturing. You don't think that everyone who sells a brand of
> pineapple juice has their own factory do you? You don't think that every
> brand of motor oil comes from a separate factory do you? You don't think
> that your Lands' End shirts come from a Lands' End factory do you?
> 
> Paper making is by and large a batch process. You can make a batch in
> your bathroom - but not very much, and your batch-to-batch repeatability
> will be pretty bad. We have artists in my town that do just that - they
> make hand made paper and sell it as art. The *lack* of repeatability is
> what they are selling in large part.
> 
> This is problematic if you want to sell to a clientele who demands each
> roll or piece of paper is the same as the last one. If you want to sell
> a paper that is largely repeatable from batch to batch, and you want to
> sell it at a competitive price, you are going to have to automate a
> large part of the manufacturing process and make the batches fairly
> large. This takes a fair amount of expensive equipment, and takes a fair
> amount of space. Unless you are able to sell enough volume to keep this
> equipment running 24x7, you probably wouldn't make the investment.
> 
> Enter contract manufacturers. These people think they can invest in the
> plant and equipment required and make a profit. They do this by making
> paper for lots of different "manufacturers." The way it works is you
> come up with your recipe for a paper you want, and they use the recipe
> and make that paper for you. There are hundreds of variables in paper
> making, so it's a pretty safe bet that no one is going to duplicate your
> recipe. What you get from the contract manufacturer is a roll of paper
> (a "master roll") that's roughly 1.25m (49 in.) wide by 1.25m (49 in.)
> in diameter and weigh in the neighborhood of 5000 Kg ( 11,000 lbs.).
> Sizes vary depending on the manufacturing line and your requirements of
> course.
> 
> Now if you are going to sell paper to the inkjet market, this clearly
> isn't enough. So you take this roll of paper to another contract
> manufacturer and have them coat the paper with an inkjet receptive
> coating. This is a separate market all by itself. There are companies
> that make and sell coatings. There are consultants who act as liaisons
> matching papers and coatings for people. There are chemists who
> specialize in making coatings for hire. And of course you can design
> your own. So you bring the coating to the company with the coating
> machines, and they coat your substrate for you.
> 
> When you get done with that, you've got a master roll that's coated.
> Still not enough.
> 
> Now you have to convert that master roll into something that an inkjet
> printer can use, and you have to package it into nice pretty boxes with
> brand names and labels. This requires yet another contract manufacturer
> with more specialized machines, including slitters (work down the length
> of the roll) and cutters (work across the width of the roll). And of
> course sheet stackers and various packaging machines.
> 
> Now tell me -- what good will it do any of us to know who "actually
> made" the paper? You can't go to any of them directly and buy paper from
> them. First, they aren't equipped to deal with a retail market. Second,
> most of the manufacturing chain is selling a single value-add operation
> at a time. IOW, if you could buy it, it would be unfinished to the point
> where you couldn't use it. Third, the manufacturer who is retailing this
> paper to you can switch contracts at any time based on any number of
> factors. You can't know that any one factory is going to make your
> favorite paper at any point in time. Fourth, contract manufacturing
> firms changes hands from time to time, and deal factories back and forth.
> 
> Very few paper companies bother to be end-to-end manufacturers. Fewer
> still in the inkjet marketplace. So why the insistence that "knowing"
> will somehow benefit us in any way?
> 
> What you need to know is the company responsible for the brand, and
> their retailers who stock and ship the papers to you. These are the
> people who have to come up with a product that is desirable enough to
> capture some market share. These are the people who have to insure the
> quality of the product, and the batch-to-batch repeatability. These are
> the people who have to back the product and support their customers.
> 
> I don't see how knowing more than that is helpful. I'm sure someone will
> set me straight on that though ;-)
> -- 
> Bruce Watson