How to Offset Postage and Paper Increases

Gretchen Peck, a Catalog Success contributing writer, asked Ciavola to share his insights and best practices for managing through these times of rising costs, technological innovation and economic instability.

Catalog Success: Catalogers often take reactionary measures when there’s talk of postal and paper pricing hikes. You haven’t resorted to the standard counter-attack measures, like downsizing basis weights, trim size, page count or frequency. You’ve found other ways to offset those increases. How so?
Ciavola: Postage is going up in the United States in 2006. It went up in Europe in 2005, and it’ll go up a little more there in 2006, too. Paper prices are going up, as well — about a quarter ahead of the price increases we’ll see in Europe. And so, what are we doing? Are we cutting circulation? Are we cutting page count? Are we chopping trim size? No.