No longer the workhorse of the industry, continuous forms can still create strong sales
Cut-sheets, single-parts, electronic forms… All have eaten away at continuous forms' previous dominance as the heavyweight workhorse of the forms world. Despite this evolution in customers' needs and desires, manufacturers maintain that continuous can still be a strong selling point for forms distributors.
"Continuous has been declining over the past several years; it's down 50 percent from 10 years ago," said Kenneth Adams, president of Central States Business Forms, Dewey, Okla. "In just the past six months, it's down 5 percent or so. There's been a shift to smaller orders. The larger orders are just not there."
Doesn't sound very encouraging, does it? But, Adams sees a silver lining. "We believe that there's an opportunity with variable imaging, and we bought a new press earlier this year for that reason," he said.
Central States has been supplying variable imaging products for the past 10 years, and the company recently upgraded equipment to meet consumer demand for higher quality and speed of production. "We are now able to image at 600 dpi, and press speed has increased from 250 fpm to more than 400 fpm," Adams said.
Adams sees steady markets in checks, as well as expanding opportunities in the insurance market and club membership products. "Continuous, in some areas, seems to be shrinking; there are a lot more one-part orders now," he noted. "But, the financial, insurance and medical markets still need multi-parts, and we handle up to 10-part forms."
Still Rolling Along
Mark Clabaugh, vice president of sales and marketing at PRINTSouth, Atlanta, is also optimistic about continuous forms. Although, over the past three years, continuous as a percentage of total sales has declined by 12 percent, "Conversely, continuous forms as a whole have increased due to our long-run jumbo-roll capabilities," Clabaugh said.
One jumbo roll is the equivalent of 30 to 40 cartons of continuous product, providing production efficiencies to end-users with the requisite equipment to handle rolls. "It's absolutely a handling issue; end-users can eliminate an operator who does nothing but link cartons of product together," Clabaugh said. Jumbo rolls also reduce waste from carton linking and store more efficiently than cartons in the warehouse, making them doubly attractive to end-users with high-volume continuous needs. "Utilities are great customers for rolls with all of their monthly billing," he continued. "Bank statements and credit card solicitations via direct mail are two other good markets for this product."
Clabaugh cautioned that the sales curve to transition from carton to roll is long, and advised distributors to identify customers that are already using roll products or are in the process of converting. "Our jumbo roll sales jumped 10 percent from one year to the next," he said.
Clabaugh echoed Adams' assessment of variable imaging. "This is truly an area for growth going forward, on both rolls and mailer products. Distributors should not miss the valuable opportunity to call on the lettershops that provide personalization. Often, these lettershops buy their raw materials from distributors, and the applications don't have to be high-volume," he said.
PRINTSouth is rolling out a new offering that adds variable imaging to the individual plies in a conventional mailer prior to assembly. "That way, you don't have to use either carbon or carbonless papers," Clabaugh explained. "The end-user sends us the data stream, and we put the pieces together and mail them out."
Clabaugh encouraged distributors to remain alert to market needs. "Direct your attention toward gaining a larger portion of this market," he advised. Whenever a product or market is tagged as "over-the-hill," some vendors will abandon it for newer offerings, leaving opportunities to pick up sales to those customers who still demand it.
Going Deeper
Another winning strategy is to go deeper into the continuous market by offering unusual sizes and a vast range of quantity, from very short to very long runs. That's exactly what Value Graphics, Sellersburg, Ind., has done. "We are bucking the trend; our sales of continuous have increased and make up approximately 50 percent of our business," said Marketing Director Jason Powers.
Value Graphics used to be strictly a short-run pack-to-pack provider, but has added new equipment that enables the company to produce quantities from 250 to three million in "many odd sizes, and any width from 5˝ to 151⁄2˝," Powers said. "We're competitive in a wide range."
Value Graphics has added a 22˝ press to do 11˝ continuous two-up and has added a roll-to-roll collator, and it can do fanfold continuous up to six colors. One variable-size press allows flexibility to produce unique sizes. "We started in 1991 with laser and continuous forms, and checks up to 10,000 pieces; obviously, that market has suffered a whole bunch," Powers said. "A lot has gone to cut-sheets, but some long runs are still out there."
Powers pointed to fulfillment houses as one obvious target for long-run continuous needs and said that health-care is still a strong market. "One of our biggest clients is in health-care and orders a ton of multi-part continuous. But, just in the past year, we've seen him start to transition to laser cut-sheets," he said.
Such stories point to the need for distributors to be vigilant about their accounts so that they are not caught unaware by a switch from a high-margin product to a less profitable one. "You need to know where the markets are," Powers advised. "You're not going to go into a huge company and expect to sell multi-part forms; they're all laser and high-tech. But, for instance, automotive service stations still have dot matrix printers. The mom-and-pop businesses still go by the rule, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"
Packing lists and bills of lading are still strong applications for multi-part continuous forms, Powers said, because the same form must do duty in multiple locations.
Color is another area in which distributors can increase their continuous product profits. "We're seeing an ongoing increase in demand for color on one-part continuous forms—color gets people's attention," Clabaugh said. Direct mail continuous is primarily one-part, he noted, and relies on color to increase its impact.
"There are more dazzling colors now. We've seen so much of that with customers adding a splash of color by the name, and the logos are becoming more exciting," Powers said.
Ten years ago, Powers noted, a three-color invoice might have taken 10 days and cost "an arm and a leg." Even five years ago, customers might only have requested one standard color, such as reflex blue. "Now, three colors are standard, and customers expect them in three to five days," he said. "Technology makes it more cost-effective, and customers want forms to catch the eye, even if it's just an invoice."
Powers noted that many distributors are themselves producing personalized forms for their customers by stocking blank continuous forms and downloading the end-user's variable information to provide quick turnaround.
The service grew out of many customers' desire to move away from warehousing forms on-site and avoid the waste associated with outdated, pre-printed forms bought solely to win a quantity discount. The combination of technology to more cheaply produce personalized forms and downsized customers with no storage room opens up opportunities for smart distributors, manufacturers said.
Unlimited Opportunity For Success
Although distributors may find it tempting to augment sales with non-forms products, manufacturers agreed that selling continuous, in particular, is still worthwhile. "It's more difficult to sell forms because there are more technicalities to understand," Adams said. "That can lead to more loyalty from customers."
Clabaugh agreed. "The key is that if it's difficult to get an account, it's difficult to lose it. If it's easy to sell, it's easy to lose."
Adams noted that among manufacturers of traditional products, such as continuous forms, "Everyone in the industry is looking at their capabilities and asking if they should diversify and, if so, into what?"
That's a question answered in a variety of ways by forms manufacturers. Whether it's variable imaging, jumbo rolls, color, odd sizes or some other capability, it all comes down to expanded product lines for distributors to sell. "There's always something in the wings to take the place of declining products," Clabaugh said. "You just have to keep your eyes open."
And, Powers agreed with Clabaugh. "A company can still grow, even if we say it's a dying market, by finding creative ways to get in and get market share. There's still a lot of continuous market out there. I think the opportunity for continuous is unlimited."
By Janet R. Gross