Fantastic Fine Stationery options

We've been having a great time putting together our new fine stationery collections. What's been great is our ability to find really great looking fine stationery papers with a lot of eco-friendly attributes.
This collection of fine stationery papers gives the user the ability to find exactly the type and style of stationery they are looking to use while supporting various eco initiatives. This line truly proves that you don't have to sacrifice quality to support eco-friendly papers. Its simply a matter of understanding your options and making an informed choice.

We've chosen papers from the leading eco-freindly paper mills including, Neenah Paper, Mohawk Fine Papers, Smart Papers, Wausau Paper and Monadnock Paper Mills. What also makes this collection different is that we offer the ability to buy a la carte depending on your needs. You can purchase 8.5 x 11 packs of stationery, matching envelopes and mathcing cover stock for business cards. As well, we offer the option to have the card stock perforated so that you can print your own business cards on a desktop printer in the numbers you need when you need them.

Neenah Paper Adds Carbon Neutral Papers

Neenah Paper has just announced that they have added carbon neutral papers to some of their best selling lines of paper. The six paper brands now offered as carbon neutral are, Classic Crest, Classic Laid, Classic Cotton and Starwhite. Starwhite was recently acquired by Neenah Paper during their purchase of Fox River Paper Company.

We have not received the specifics of the carbon offset purchased for these papers. I will follow up with more details when I receive them. I'll be meeting with the folks at Neenah Paper in a few days.

What we do know is that Neenah Paper is making real and substantive change to their business operations to lessen their impact on the environment. Just as an example Neenah Paper started buying Green-e offsets in 2006 and has since more than quadrupled their their purchases. Additionally this past May Neenah joined the Chicago Climate Exchange making commitments to further reduce their carbon output.

HOW Design Conference Videos

See Exclusive HOW Conference Videos

Nothing beats attending the HOW show to experience the energy and to have the opportunity to talk to other people in graphic design from around the country and the world. Even if you attended, did you get to talk to the paper mills during the mad rush? Did you get to hear what some of the industries biggest names had to say? Maybe and maybe not.

We have some great videos to give you an insiders view of the conference no matter where you were last week. See our exclusive HOW Design Conference videos.

HOW Design Conference 2007

We came back from the HOW Design Conference Wednesday. Travel was smooth except for the bomb scare in the Atlanta airport that caused the longest security line I've seen since getting back into the USA from Europe the days after September 11th. We found some great places in Atlanta. We stayed at the Glenn Hotel Friday and Saturday, the roof cocktail bar is outstanding. YUPO held a party there one night. Couches and views as far as you can see. As well the Atalanta Botanical garden is a must see. However all Northerners should be sure to get there early in the day as by 4:00 pm the heat was oppressive. One of the best orchid collections I've ever seen.

Last but not least as places to go is Rathbuns for great dinners, good wines and a great atmosphere. Its neighbor the Krog bar is a must for a pre or post dinner cocktail. This is a great place to meet friends or take your special someone. Great service. We went there 2 nights.

The HOW conference was great from our point of view as suppliers exhibiting. We met with a huge number of graphic designers in our booth, we gave away two sets of TINTBOOKS, winners to be announced, and we created 10 exclusive videos speaking with industry observers and paper mills, etc. We're going to post these videos Sunday night.

Paper & Envelopes Videos

We've posted the first in a series of educational videos for graphics professionals, students and everyone interested in seeing how things happen. The videos provide an inside view of how paper is made, how envelopes are made and other secondary processes related to graphic design and the paper industry. We visited Neenah Paper's newly acquired Appleton Paper mill, formally owned by Fox River Paper company. We also visited the National Envelope envelope manufacturing plant in Appleton, Wisconsin.

It's amazing how prolific the paper industry is in this part of the country. Even though the landscape is almost perfectly flat the area is known as the Paper Valley. We located our business in Neenah, WI (the Paper Valley) because of the large number of paper related companies, businesses and professionals concentrated in the relatively small geographic area.

Neenah Paper Announces Plans for Acquired Brands

Last week Neenah Paper made some initial announcements about the future of the brands they have acquired in the Fox River Paper / Gilbert Paper acquisition. Neenah Paper is moving quickly to inform the markets of its decisions regarding brands to minimize the anxiety and questions surrounding this subject.

Here's the gist of the news

Writing Papers

Neenah intends to continue and fully support with promotional materials; Neutech, Fox River Select, Capitol Bond and Gilbert Cottons.

Neenah will offer for the foreseeable future without promotional materials; Fox River Bond, Correspond, Chadwick Cotton and Gilcrest.

Translucent Papers

Neenah intends to consolidate the four brands of translucent now in the combined companies. The brands are; UV Ultra II, UV web, GilClear and Clearfold. No further announcement of brand names has been made as of this date. The strategy is to consolidate into a premium brand and an economy brand.

Text and Cover

Neenah intends to continue and fully support with promotional materials; Starwhite, Coronado, Sundance, ESSE, Oxford and Howard Linen.

Specialty Brands

Neenah is contemplating how to position and how to move forward with; Crushed Leaf, Valley Forge, Parchment, Voice, EverGreen, Gainsborough and Teton. They state they will "extract the strengths moving forward" from these brands and position them appropriately.

Brands to be discontinued

Neenah plans to stop producing Realm and Confetti.

Neenah promises to make its intentions known to the market and pledges to announce further changes 3 to 6 months into the future informing the marketplace of substantive changes.

Specialty Paper Bonanza

I was looking through my collection of fine paper swatch books the other day and the huge availability of extraordinary specialty papers in North America shocked me. I've been intimately involved in distributing and designing specialty papers for 18 years. The number of specialty papers available today just crept up on me and took me by surprise in retrospect.

When I first started the CTI Paper Group back in 1989 specialty papers were relatively rare in the main stream commercial printing markets of North America. The really beautiful papers were almost all made in Europe. A few European companies, Zanders and Fedrigoni, had some small distribution here in the USA. The sheet sizes were weird (metric), the packaging was weird (package wrapped no cartons) and the prices were, well out of sight by the standards of the day. The fact was at that time that if you wanted a really unique printing paper you had to source it from a European paper mill. My theory has been that because of Europe's older paper mills, less efficient machines, together with their inherent understanding of design and fashion and the need to add as much value as possible to the fiber coming off of the older less efficient machines that this led European manufacturers to create the large variety of specialty papers they still offer today.

The Tide is Turning

Our company began creating specialty papers by designing papers in partnership with Euro paper mills in the mid 1990's. We developed, for commercial printing markets and broad distribution, the first and most widely recognized naturally translucent paper, Glama Natural and it's companion Glama-lope envelope in 1994-ish. We later decided to bring some of our efforts home when we designed and manufactured Aspire Petallics, the first ever mica coated colored paper to be manufactured in North America. We have subsequently redesigned our Currency metallic paper and we continue to manufacture Currency here in the state of Wisconsin. I assure you that other great papers are in the hopper.

In the last 4 to 5 years other leading North American paper mills, previously only uncoated text and cover mills, have begun to develop interesting value added specialty papers in the European tradition, probably for the same reasons I mentioned previously. Some examples of these more progressive mills are; Wausau Paper who now has some great metallics, Fox River Paper (now Neenah Paper) developed a very nice metallic line and Smart Papers has for years has manufactured Kromekote cast coated paper and now in more recent years has added some very nice additions to its flagship line with foils and patterns.

Land ho

The biggest advantage of North American made value added specialty papers to the consumer is availability. Early on in my sales career I was fond of saying, "You can have a great paper at great prices and if you can't get it when you need it, who cares." This statement remains true today. Lead times for papers made here are generally faster and inventories tend to be higher. The fact of the existence of the Atlantic ocean sitting between supplier and consumer can't be changed and vessels only sail so fast. Another factor favoring North American paper mills versus European paper mills is the dollar /euro conversion. As the euro goes up against the dollar European papers can tend to become more expensive. Domestic paper mills prices tend to move up only when the market as a whole moves keeping most domestic papers in line with each other.

Europeans will continue to create gorgeous papers and now they will have more competition from domestic paper companies which is always good for the consumers.

Housatonic Paper Mill (Rising Paper) to Close by June 07

Another one bites the dust could be an appropriate epithet for the tombstone of this latest closing of a fine paper mill. The Rising paper mill located in Housatonic Massachusetts is being closed as a result of it not being a profitable paper mill. The new owners, Neenah Paper, have made a solid business based decision to close the Housatonic paper mill.

A lot of emotions surround the closing of the Housatonic mill. First, for me, this paper mill is the most beautiful paper mill that I have every visited. It's brick exterior and white wood trim depict an architectural style used in the construction of factories back in the 1870's when the mill was built. The building provides a visually pleasing landscape to all who pass by the curving road winding alongside the Housatonic River. The mill structure itself is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Perhaps more meaningful is the loss of approximately 140 good paying jobs in the Berkshires where good factory jobs are not plentiful.

During a visit to a framing shop in Madison, WI on St. Patrick's day I realized another concern about the closing of the Houstatonic paper mill which is the unknown future Rising Museum Board. Yikes, this hits home with me again. Practically every framed piece in my home and in our company offices are framed with Rising Museum Board.

I'm sorry to see the loss of jobs, the loss of craftsmanship and the possible loss of great paper products. The truth is that Neenah Paper is making a sound business decision that will serve to strengthen the company and protect more jobs and more great papers. Time moves on.