Feb 15
2012

Mom: Your Home’s CDO (Chief Domestic Officer)

by Amy Staupe

Working moms, stay-at-home moms with tenure in the workplace – practically any mom – knows the value of a well-run organization, and that includes running a home. There’s a major domestic movement afoot that’s redefining and re-drawing the org chart of home life. Moms are increasingly seeing domestic duties in entrepreneurial, business-like terms. And why not? Many of the principles are the same such as sound business plans, fresh financial models and even branding the family name.

Mom as the ruler of the roost isn’t a new concept, but it’s only natural that her experience in the business world carries over to modern home life. She sees the value of discipline, leadership and even tough love. She plans, she strategizes, she sets goals and works for success.

These domestic CEOs know the value of sussing out helpful tools and tricks to rid the workplace of chaos, take control and streamline operations. And that includes personalized products that focus on the family brand to save time, simplify and organize.

All moms are working moms and we recommend arming them with the new tools of the trade. Think about customized personal correspondence cards, such as thank-you notes, family-branded greeting cards, and even business cards with your family’s contact information to hand out at PTA meetings, soccer games or chance meetings at the mall.

Help the home office run smoothly with branded family notepads for phone messages, grocery lists, instructions for babysitters and pet caregivers, and even inspirational notes in unexpected places like lunch boxes, briefcases and desks. Jazz up important correspondence with personalized, pre-addressed shipping labels, or go formal and elegant with monogrammed envelope seals for special occasions.

For every family’s central and essential business hub – the wall calendar – consider your own customized version. Personalize your annual calendar with memorable photographs or artwork, recurring events (like birthdays and anniversaries), and great family quotes.

Building your family brand encompasses who your family is and what it stands for. It’s a great way to instill positive messaging and take your “business” to the top.

Feb 2
2012

Creative Gift Ideas for Valentine’s Day

by Amy Staupe

Just as we wrap one holiday season with our loved ones, we find ourselves in the midst of another special holiday to show how much we love and care for them. But finding a gift for your special Valentine doesn’t need to cause a lot of anxiety. In fact, it can actually be a really fun holiday when you put a little thought and creativity into it.

Not sure what to get or send? Why not make something unique specifically for them? While many people will send flowers or chocolates, consider doing something different by creating more personal and meaningful gifts. There are several resources to aid you in creating the ultimate personal gift this Valentine’s Day.

Below are some suggestions that are sure to impress any one of your valentines.

For Your Sweetheart:

Photo Books. Create a photo album filled with images from one of your favorite trips or curate images of your relationship captured through the years.  Blurb has great tools to design a personal book that they will cherish for years to come.

For Everyone:

Valentine’s Cards.  Everybody wants to feel loved on Valentine’s Day and there is no better way than sending a card to your loved ones. In fact, did you know that according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year?

This year, create a card that will stand out from the rest by using your own photos and text to send to your family and friends. You can even order a pack to hand out at work or in the classroom.

For Your Mother or Grandmother:

A Family Cookbook: Valentine’s Sweets Collection. Assemble your family’s best candy and sweets recipes to make and indulge in this oh-so-sweet day. While your mom and grandmother will be honored to see which of their recipes made it into the print edition, it is also a perfect gift to send to your friends who enjoy baking and cooking too!

For the Single Ladies:

Valentine’s Party Invites.  If you don’t have plans on Valentine’s Day, why not consider hosting an evening of cocktails and laughter or throw a craft night with your favorite gals? Tiny Prints has a number of festive invitations you can customize to get the ladies together.

No matter what you choose to create this Valentine’s Day, the personal touches you put into any gift will make your loved one feel that much more special, and make this holiday even more memorable and fun.

Jan 30
2012

Consumer Lifestyle Trends: Connecting the Digital-to-Analog

by Traci Pichette

iCade iPad controller cabinet

I’ve been thinking a lot about how futurists once predicted that we would become a paperless society. That email and the internet would spell the end of printed books and handwritten letters. It’s true, the global economic crisis has negatively impacted the market for stationery products and a preference for electronic communication has rapidly emerged. But, guess what? The fountain pen industry is running a stiff business.  According to a recent report by Global Industry Analysts, the global stationery products market is set to reach US $155.4 billion by 2015 driven by innovative designs and high-profit premium segments such as luxury writing instruments.

Even though we’re more connected today than in any previous generation, there’s a growing trend and desire to blend the old and the new. Fueled by rapid innovation with the advent of mobile devices, tablets, digital music players and smart TVs, more and more, the offline is a reflection of the increasingly dominant online environment. Yet as our individual worlds become permeated by screens, we yearn for the tactile, material and more human connection to accompany our virtual experience. Sure, video games are hotter than ever, but so are board games and retro toys.

The rituals of stitching, folding, and leafing through the pages of a photo book or sending a handwritten card by post are everyday moments we savor at RPI. It’s true, digital versions of these items are remarkable, but there’s nothing quite like holding a hard copy that has an element of craft to it in your hands. And, while we absolutely believe in archiving all of your prized photos and digital diaries online, you can’t hang a .jpg file on your wall or wrap it up and give it to a loved one as a gift. So with the conveniences of high-tech and the value of high touch, integrating technology with the nostalgic elegance of paper can create a more authentic and much more meaningful form of expression.

The product designers at RPI are always developing new concepts that offer consumers unique, personalized artifacts for bridging the analog with the digital. We look at global trends and imagine “what if.” We love our easy-to-use, time-saving gadgets especially when they allow us to explore our creativity in a way that truly represents our personalities. And while we live in a world brimming with technology, we think it is important to delight in the ordinary wonder of the world around us too, whether it’s baking bread, drinking tea, or making a simple homemade gift. We enjoy the technology today as an exciting growing market with boundless possibilities, but we mustn’t let the human touch disappear into the cloud.

Jan 18
2012

Mobile: The Next Frontier

by Rick Bellamy

The dark gray days of January always give me pause. The crush of the holidays is over and we can usually take a few moments to dream about possibilities.

Maybe it was a quick family photo, or a note I made to myself on my phone, but I’ve realized that increasingly smart phones and tablets have become a new set of eyes, ears and memory. We not only have a staggering amount of information available, literally at our fingertips, but we can capture significant moments of our lives via our increasingly sophisticated and high-resolution embedded cameras, recording capabilities, and the written (and subsequently printed) word.

Most of us are now increasingly using location-based services and other apps on our devices to help us convert our location based activities into information. Think about it: the outrageously funny candid photo of your brother, capturing a video recording of a friend’s impromptu living room concert, recording audio of a particularly inspiring political stump speech, or writing your own unique thoughts, ideas or designs in the moment, they are all captured and executed for posterity. It’s all doable on our mobile devices.

The big challenge, as I think about it in terms of RPI and our capabilities, is how to translate the excitement of an event into a lasting personalized souvenir. The transient nature of digital media makes the physical reminder ever more important. There have been some less than satisfactory attempts at having something available at the end of an event (think action ski photos on the slopes or a snapshot taken on an amusement park rollercoaster made available at the end of the day), but nothing that rocks your world. But with the ubiquity and sophistication of our mobile devices, there is now an opportunity to quickly merge users content with professional content and convert the sale at the point of event.

The possibilities are staggering. Any big event, any special moment, social media makes the event immediately ripe for personalization and mass customization. Imagine that a consumer’s images or text are uploaded to their site, whatever it is; they see a targeted opportunity to create a packaged product that combines their content with professional content to create a meaningful , tangible souvenir.

It won’t be an easy task, but increasingly conversion at the location will be important for all brand owners. The mix of mobile with point of sale technology as part of the in-store or event experience will be a critical component to everyone’s success. Personalization in the context of your favorite brand will help to increase loyalty no matter who the brand owner is – a retailer, a band or artist, or even you – and mass customization can make it affordable.

Jan 6
2012

Trends in Mass Customization – RPI Bridges the Gap

by Rick Bellamy

As we emerge from the holiday shopping season and head into the new year, there is no denying that the last economic downturn created a genuine shift in purchasing values. We have have dramatically shifted how we are spending our discretionary income – with a greater focus on experiences over items, and from companies that reflect our personal values. While it’s true that consumer spending is down overall, more value is being placed on each purchase, and a strong desire to get exactly what we want. That in turn is driving increased participation by the customer and common values are the main driver in the purchase decision.

What this has sparked is a major uptrend in mass customization. While this may seem a fairly new notion, the concept of mass customization has been around since the eighties. One of the industry’s forefathers, Frank Piller, defines mass customization as a customer’s participation in the co-creation and co-design process of products and services using computer-aided design and manufacturing systems to produce the output, or to personalize or customize products at the last possible moment in the supply chain. In other words, it enables the cost benefits of mass production to be applied to personalized products, a notion once available only to the very wealthy.

This has placed a bigger emphasis on the value of co-creation, and the interface between open innovation, operations management, and marketing. RPI has been at the forefront of this trend since 1999. We see personal customization as far more than a passing fad. It is becoming a significant movement. Look at the rise in product customization available across the entire spectrum of consumer products, including brands like Nike (iD), Burberry Bespoke, Rickshaw Bags, Timbuk2, Gemvara, and Joya Beauty’s customization of cosmetics.

Over the past 10 years, RPI has built and refined a scalable platform that allows us to produce a wide variety of personalized products so that brand owners can offer their customers millions of design possibilities without the overhead of inventory. We are able to keep price points down by utilizing mass manufacturing techniques with computer aided manufacturing to craft consumer print products on –demand and deliver them just in time. Our platform enables consumers to be intimately involved in the creation process. We’ve seen an explosion online of electronic personalization, i.e., blogs and social media, and customers now require that ability for their physical products. Personalization is the next step in the evolution, and RPI is poised as the connector.

As consumers, we are demanding that our purchases are tailored to our desires at that particular moment in time – we are all unique in our own interests, hobbies, style and personality. There is growing expectation among consumers, and only those companies nimble enough and well positioned in this competitive marketplace will thrive in mass customization, melding co-creation with brand owners’ content tailored specifically to an individual’s special interests.

Personalized print is the perfect vehicle to rapidly prototype new products and systems that will propel mass customization innovation. We see great things ahead.