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The Winter Mailing Season
Is it time to start
believing?
If you follow the
stock market even loosely you can’t help but notice it is recovering
nicely. Among the leading industries making its way back to
normalcy is a group entitled “Paper and Forest Products”. Of course
this covers a myriad of products with paper being chief among them.
What is of significance about this increase is that it is predictive
of where the mailing industry is headed. Marketing budgets are
usually among the first items cut in bad times but they are also the
first things to be reinstated and in the direct mail industry it
begins with paper.
The business we do
here at MailingSupplies.com and MailMerry.com also
serves as a bellwether for the direct mail industry as we cater
specifically to bulk mailers. A review of our sales confirms that
the recovery is gaining a strong foothold, especially since August.
We have returned to the same level of increase we saw before the
crunch and it has been consistent month after month since August.
Considering that many mail houses and printers had no choice but to
close their shops and go home this is quite remarkable. One could
argue that our increase was in part caused by the USPS requiring use
of larger 1 ˝” wafer seals for booklets but a thorough review
doesn’t support this as being the root cause of the increased
business. The increase is across the board in our product line with
the sole exception of one of our pricier items, mailing software,
even though we discount it.
Small mailers that
survived did so in large part through staffing reductions which
allowed the majority of owners to survive and protect to a large
degree, the business owners income. That said these same owners are
going to be cautious for a very long time before again going into
the hiring mode. There is going to have to be a strong confirmation
at the “Main Street” level of a business recovery before they
consider expansion or hiring.
It would seem
there is a disconnect between what is happening on Wall St with
stocks and what the average person sees in the neighborhood. It
remains to be seen if the optimism will filter down and fuel the
recovery but one thing is certain, when the big businesses start
spending advertising money it affects a lot of smaller mailers and
printers. Who among us can’t remember the days of doing mailings
for one of the “Fortune” companies that filtered its way down?
The conclusion I reach is that it is not time to discard the “self
protect” mode that we all put ourselves in, but it is time to allow
ourselves to believe the recovery may well be right around the
corner. Either the stock market is going to correct lower early
next year to meet the reality of Main Street, or their optimism and
profitability will help drag us up and out of the mess.
The winter mailing
season will be decisive. It is the time of year when distractions
are at a minimum in the business world and people tend to hunker
down to get the job done. My bet is that even with a stock
correction lower, the money is already in the pipeline for the first
quarter.
Nothing good ever happens if you don’t allow yourself to believe
that things are going to get better. Well it is time to believe and
to solidify your plan for the next step, just like you did in the
good old days.
Larry Gohmann
CEO
Mail Merry Systems Inc
MailingSupplies.com
For
immediate release
12/17/09 |
