An update on our printing process

IF YOU ARE ANYTHING LIKE ME, you are sick of hearing about COVID and its continued impact on our lives, but I hope you will indulge me on this letter. I want to explain why so many of our magazines have been late lately.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of issues right now that are impacting the magazine business. Paper shortages are very problematic due to the pandemic and economic factors. Magazines used to be that paper orders were filled within a day or two; now, it is weeks or months before paper can be delivered to commercial printers to use for projects like our magazines, among many others. There are also times when, even though paper is ordered, it doesn’t show up on time, and, therefore, there is not enough paper to complete the job, so it just has to wait till the paper arrives. This has caused some printers to stockpile paper, making the supply even tighter. Does this remind anyone of the great toilet paper shortage of 2020?

The second issue is that two large commercial printers closed their doors recently; one in Salt Lake and the other in Las Vegas. This has put pressure on the existing printers, and, when you mix that with the workforce shortages everyone seems to be dealing with, it has made things very difficult to get the magazines published on time. What used to take 7 business days to print, staple, and trim before taking to the post office so they can deliver within 2 days, now takes 15 days to complete and 3-4 days to deliver. All around, things are more challenging than ever in our business as I am sure they are in your businesses.

We have moved our deadline up 2 times and still seem to struggle to get it to homes on time. The earlier the deadline, the more challenging it is to get relevant information for our calendar and other events. Advertisers also struggle to know what specials they might be running when we ask for their advertising too far in advance. When you mix that with the two holiday months we just got through, that made things even slower. You can see we have a perfect storm.

Our goal remains the same. We want to create connection within the community, connecting you to your city government and the events and stories that are part of living in this community. Thank you for being part of the magazine, and let us know if there is anything we can do to make things better.

Sincerely,

Ryan Spelts
Publisher,
Connection Publishing