http://www.piworld.com Copyright 2012 North American Publishing Company en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Early in my career, I had a job at a company where the purchasing manager gave a seminar for the sales staff. This particular purchasing manager was smart, professional, ethical and a tough negotiator. He didn’t lie about having lower... ]]> Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:57:27 EDT The large paper companies have lots of smart people. Financial people. Marketing people. Engineers. Lots of MBAs. We can learn a lot from these smart people…from the mistakes they make. Accountants will tell you that every order should... ]]> Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:46:21 EST We’ve recently been talking about coated paper prices as if there’s a single entity called coated paper. Of course, it’s not that simple. There are a lot of different coated papers and, too, coated papers compete with uncoated... ]]> Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:17:38 EST As previously reported on PIworld.com, D. Edward Tree wrote on Dead Tree Edition that coated paper prices were set for a collapse, citing falling demand. Paper Guru replied that paper prices would be determined by supply and demand, not by... ]]> Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:41:46 EST The Dead Tree Edition blog recently cited a Webinar in which Reel Time Report editor Verle Sutton said that paper prices could be ready for a fall. Declining demand is the issue. Sutton argues that the rhetoric from the mills and the bullish... ]]> Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:30:03 EST Pulp and Paper Week reports that North American printing and writing paper demand was down 4.3 percent year-to-date through June. Demand was down for all grades, ranging from coated mechanical (-7.1 percent) to coated woodfree (-2.0 percent),... ]]> Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:41:39 EDT The growth in print decoupled from general economic growth in the ’90s, and the demand for printed products has now been declining for a decade. Between 2000 and 2010, printing and writing paper demand fell by 24 percent. This has... ]]> Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:43:57 EDT This year during Paper Week in Chicago—now called Paper 2011—I escaped from the hotel and the meetings for a field trip. I traveled to the village of Alsip, about 15 miles south of Chicago. In Alsip, you feel like you’re still in... ]]> Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:29:33 EDT In my last blog , I said that paper prices are up because, “Consolidation and mill closures have brought supply and demand more into balance.” That statement elicited a Comment: “And it doesn't have anything to do with the... ]]> Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:16:33 EDT Bill Farquharson posed this question in a recent blog, The Big Questions I’d Like Answered. “What percent of the time when a client says, ‘Your price is too high.’ are they telling the truth?” It was an... ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:54:55 EST As a marketer for a paper mill, I needed to know how my customers, and their customers, selected paper. Why would they buy my paper instead of my competitor’s paper? We did benchmarking. We went into the market and bought samples of our... ]]> Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:27:45 EST