There’s an election coming and you’re probably wondering how a change of government might affect you or your business.
I want to focus on an issue that has been pushed by one member of parliament that could have implications for all of us in print.
Ed Husic is the Labor member for Chifley, a seat in western Sydney, based around Mount Druitt. He was elected to the ministry as a parliamentary secretary.
As a long-time Labor supporter, my view may be biased. But regardless of your politics, you should be paying attention to Husic for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, his time as president of the CEPU representing postal workers has given him an acute understanding of what is happening in our industry. He is a potentially powerful voice for our industry.
Secondly, we should be watching Husic because he is the driving force behind a parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing. He has been grilling the heads of companies like Apple and Adobe as to why their prices are so much higher here than overseas – with some success. The inquiry led to Microsoft losing government business, while Adobe lowered prices. However, Adobe’s move to a subscription model for Creative Suite has more to do with its global strategy, and many Adobe products still cost more in Australia than the US.
Pricing pet project
Husic’s work partly inspired me to start an amateur investigation of my own. If Apple and Adobe can charge us more than they do in the US and their prices are public, what about those multinational companies whose prices are kept on the QT? Like digital press suppliers?
I went onto LinkedIn and posed the question to some overseas printers – how much do you pay for your clicks? I was happy to show my cards and tell them that when I bought my Xerox 700 and Xerox 4127 four years ago, I signed up to rates of $0.088 per colour click and around $0.01 per B&W click.
None of the nine LinkedIn members who responded paid as much as I do. Some paid as low as $US0.043 per colour click on similar machines and B&W rates as low as $US0.0055. And you didn’t need to be turning over millions to get these rates.
I’ve never owned an Indigo, but people in the US were quoting $0.025 per click. You can tell me if that’s good or bad.
The structure of the deals varied – but they always ended up at least 25–50% cheaper than my rates.
Now, I’m not holding up a LinkedIn pop quiz as empirical proof of over-payment. It was just a small, anecdotal sample. And global markets are different.
But pricing is of real interest to everyone with a digital box and there is a bloke in Canberra who knows printing and might be interested in hearing about it.
[Related: More Industry Insider columns]
Baden Kirgan is the MD of Jeffries Printing Services and Black House Comics
Author’s declaration: My company has done work for Ed Husic in the past
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