Co-Mailing: The Biggest Controllable Variable in Your Catalog’s Printing and Postage Costs, Part 1 of 2

The majority of a catalog’s publishing costs are contained in the three P’s: printing, paper and postage. The cost of creative, list rentals and merge/purge is small compared to these three cost categories. And catalogers have little control over these costs. Postage isn’t negotiable, paper costs are increasingly mandated by the paper companies and printing margins are razor thin. This means printers can’t cut their manufacturing costs, leading to very similar prices because competition between printers dictates virtual price parity.