How American Litho is Solving the Print Industry Supply Chain Challenges

Supply Chain Intel and Staying Informed

Staying on top of incoming intel and industry trends has never been more imperative. We’ve all experienced significant changes over the past year that have led to a diverse set of challenges. With labor, print materials, production, shipping, and logistics costs on the rise, supply chain changes have not only limited smooth production and transportation, but have given us all additional variables to weigh out.

Looking Forward with Optimism

The global printing market value is projected to reach $796.3 billion by 2027. Direct mail remains the number one marketing channel for engaging an audience to take action with the greatest ROI, building brand loyalty and growth. In the meantime, we have insights and strategies to share regarding postal optimization, paper and planning that will help manage current shortages and drive return on investment.

Postal Reforms and Rate Hikes

The USPS Board of Governors presented an industry wide challenge when they authorized hefty increases in Marketing Mail at the end of March. This move is driving price increases of 6.5% for First Class and Marketing Mail and an 8.5% increase for periodicals, but when we look more closely within the Marketing Mail category, products like Flats, including catalogs, show much higher increases. MM letters 6.151%, MM flats 8.543%, Parcels 9.785%, High density/Saturation letters 8.326%, Carrier route 8.657% American Litho provides a wide range of solutions to help combat these rate hikes including:

• Postal Optimization: Alitho will examine every aspect and cost of your mail piece to determine available cost savings and calculate a total cost per piece (TCPP Model). We provide innovative ideas on format design that will increase response, reduce cost per acquisition and postage costs.
• Informed Delivery: Savings up to 4% though USPS discounts on qualified mail
• Distributive Print Model (DPM): A national network of strategically positioned satellite print centers. Allowing us to create a model to print and mail within the same geographical locations of the country.

Let’s focus on Informed Delivery and our Distributive Print Model.

Staying on Track with Informed Delivery

Informed Delivery is one of our most relevant services when it comes to postal discounts. Recipients that are signed up are emailed impressions of your mail before it hits their mailbox, and your brand exposure is essentially doubled. This provides extensive opportunities for your customers to digitally interact with your brand and are primed for your messaging when the mail arrives. Most importantly, brands that participate in Informed Delivery campaigns qualify for a 4% discount. Talk to us about a combined campaign using print and digital to realize greater engagement utilizing Amerlytics, our complete suite of customer acquisition tools. Informed Delivery is the fastest growing USPS program, and American Litho is one of the largest contributors. We have our own dedicated USPS Informed Delivery expert to help pre-qualify designs and make the entire process run smoothly. You can work directly with us on all Postal Promotions, and by adding this to the equation, you can help spark ideas as to how you can qualify for the greatest discounts, getting you in line for an impressive payoff.

Advantages of The American Litho Distributive Print Model

Did you know, American Litho is on target to mail over two billion pieces in 2022? We are ready for even more growth in 2023 by deploying our Distributive Print Model (DPM). We have a network of strategically placed digital web printing centers, expanding our capabilities footprint. This allows us to place the mail into the mail stream closer to its destination, providing a more cost-effective postal and freight options without any compromise to quality. Learn more about the following benefits of DPM.

• One Point of Contact
• HP (Digital Press) Platform Ensures Brand Consistency
• Speed to Market
• Increase Capacity
• Additional Paper Allocation Through Network
• Decrease Freight Cost
• No Data Transferred

Alitho is taking every necessary step to cover your business on multiple fronts and is 100% focused on solutions that get your project to market, fast!

How is American Litho Handling New Paper Market Developments?

Coated paper, newsprint and paper producers have announced various rate hikes and surcharges due to escalating costs of paper production and shipments. American Litho is well positioned to provide paper with 26 million pounds of paper currently in-stock and holds strong relationships with paper mills. We have stayed proactive with increases in our allocations and options since early 2020, with strategic feeds from mills. We also retain stocks in strategic US locations for additional backup, labor reduction and support. In addition, we have sheeters on the floor to cut rolls to custom sheet sizes, providing paper economies for our Sheetfed programs. RELATED POSTAL DISCOUNT: The USPS recently approved gloss paper for its 2022 Tactile, Sensory, and Interactive (TSI) promotion. TSI offers First Class and Marketing Mailers a 4% postage discount to motivate you to incorporate innovative techniques and materials into mailings. Ask us about the specific gloss papers that entitle you to the 4% discount.

Let’s Plan Ahead to Combat Supply Chain Challenges

We strongly recommend staying well prepared as you look into 2023. Overall, becoming a better long-term planner will ensure that paper, postal and logistical items are covered well in advance – and we are here to lift that weight off your shoulders. Planning your next project ahead of time is the key to success for 2022 and 2023. Labor and logistics costs can be better managed by consolidating services and considering where you print and mail from. Logistics challenges remain, with rates, reliability, and capacity similar to the last year. Less Than Truckload (LTL) and rail reliability is patchy at best, caused mostly by high volumes causing delays in other areas. One of the largest challenges if the increased price of diesel fuel, which affects both trucks and railroad diesel engines. The national average price of diesel is up more than $1.00 since last month, a 25% increase. Furthermore, we’ve strengthened the versatility of our platform by helping to directly eliminate outside vendors through our 7-in-1 Synergies program, with unlimited capabilities all under one roof – we are not shipping different pieces of your job to a central location – we run it all at our facility. 7-of-1 Synergies include: savings on shipping, labor, quality control, and data security while streamlining your project from concept to delivery – all with one point of contact. It also means only one purchase order is needed. By partnering with American Litho, you get one vendor who has credentials making us one of the top 35 commercial printers in the country. Let us help you maximize your savings, time, and space so you can focus on more significant tasks. Share a few details below and let’s talk!