There are two issues near and dear to me this morning that have been bugging me most of the week. The first centers around attempts to run an advertisement over the past few weeks for our promotional products and the second deals with established industry suppliers supposedly by accident including confidential price and contact information in the boxes of drop shipped goods.
For those of you that do not know a majority of products in the ad specialties industry are drop shipped when it comes to hard goods. They are produced at far away factories to customer specifications and then delivered via UPS or Fedex to the proper location. Three times in two weeks industry ranked suppliers have shipped invoices and sales contact information in the box to our customers. It hasn't happened three times in many years and now it happens three times in three weeks? Times must certainly be tough and although they keep indicating it is accidental there are numerous reports on the web of this happening recently. Suppliers please take the time to maintain the confidentiality you require your distributors to keep on pricing and merchandising. Take the extra few minutes to make sure you remove confidential pricing information and invoices from the boxes. We abide by the terms you require we follow please pass the same privelege our way.
Moving along to advertising in the newspapers and the associated difficulties. We've made at least two dozen calls, used various outsourced ad placement services and have tried dozens of emails to advertise in our regional newspapers for the holiday season. Out of the twenty phone calls not once has a live person been reached and inevitably the dial tone will go busy and the call is disconnected after waiting from five to fifty minutes. In close to twenty five emails not even so much as an auto-response has been given. Attempts to use outside placement agencies resulted in no ads and refunds. So I guess it is no surprise that Advertising Age is reporting the stocks of major newspapers are still plummeting. Profits in general are diving up to thirty percent per quarter over earlier year results and this does not surprise us. It is really no wonder it is happening when their traditional revenue base is now so difficult to reach it is like navigating a pool full of sharks. We cannot give them our money and at what point does it become ridiculous? How many thousands of other classified ad customers have walked away and run an advertisement on craigslist or Ebay instead of dealing with the horrendous wait times and terrible customer service? If the newspaper media ever wants to see a revival of fortunes they really need to get their act together and put their forward facing customer service reps back answering phones and emails. Customers have a choice now and the recent publisher profit performance indicates many customers are choosing other sources.
In other news the economy continued the downward spiral last week. Stores were empty and credit continued to dry up as major retailers like Target announced plans to further curtail limits and lending. The fact that captive audience banks like Target are bailing or scaling back on consumer lending should be a clear indication they think tougher times are coming. GE Money Bank is one of the larger store brand card backers in the market and there are wide ranging reports of them cutting store backed card limits at Lowes, Walmart and Amazon over the last two weeks. In many cases they are cutting lines down to the balance or eliminating lines entirely making it increasingly difficult for consumers as the effect on credit score can be significant. The reduction in credit lines can lead to a cascade of adverse action as other lenders see that a customer is up against their credit limits and perceive that as a potential sign of trouble even though it is actually the direct result of another creditor reducing their risk portfolio. It is sad that in the trillions of dollars we have handed out to the banks nothing has been done to protect the consumer in these situations. The very same companies looking to take dollars from the taxpayer are also often taking adverse action on consumers that have always paid on time that pay their taxes so that the banks could be bailed out.
The economic news this week is probably not going to get any better. Monday will mark the anniversary of one of the greatest financial collapses of all time and although the market came off the lows on Friday we may see some horrific lows on Monday.
