That’s a question we’ve been asked a few times, and the answer is different for Press Books and Press Albums.

Books are inherently more affordable than albums – although as the saying goes you can really pimp your ride with Queensberry’s Press Books: translucents, art papers, leather covers, Mayu cases, the works. In fact it’s surprised (and gratified) us a bit how many of you have gone for the upmarket options.

On the other hand, with Press Albums the challenge was two-fold: to offer something you couldn’t get with our classic albums (art papers in particular) and to strike a dramatically lower price point.

How did we do that? By keeping things simple, and leaving out the options that ramp the cost up.

Nothing non-standard. No Pagemount. No Duo. Just gorgeously simple Flushmount and Overlay. No optional extras, fewer sizes. As the price list says, “For more upgrade and design opportunities check out our other album ranges.”

No compromise on quality though. They’re made in exactly the same way with exactly the same materials.

By the way, the fact that Queensberry Press products are printed digital-offset instead of silver halide does help with costs, but surprisingly little in the big scheme of things. Check ’em out and you’ll see we’re not compromising on quality there either!

Cheers
Ian

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In 2000, when we started doing business in North America, our representative lived in Edmonton, Canada, and our very first clients lived in Houston, Texas, and Sacramento, California. No way could Darlene drop by!

It’s a good illustration of our most interesting challenge as an international supplier: getting our products into new clients’ hands for them to touch and feel, no matter where they live.

Getting started is an act of faith on your part, and an act of commitment on ours. “You take the first step and we’ll go the extra mile.”

It gets even more interesting when the product is new to existing clients, as has been the case with Queensberry Press. To introduce our new books and albums we’ve been giving away some major discounts.

It’s cost us serious money, but it’s got the product into your hands, and when we see the feedback from our clients we think it’s money well spent.

And maybe we’re not finished yet…

But this is one reason we won’t be there in force at WPPI and FOCUS. We can only spend the money once!

Tomorrow: why Queensberry Press is cheaper.

Cheers
Ian

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Yesterday we introduced you to our Good Better Best product matrix, designed to help you navigate our products and services. We designed our new price lists, which you can download here, to match.

Maybe the best thing about them is that they’re SIMPLE. The prices for each range of products fit comfortably on a single page. No jokes, please, but that’s a step forward!

How did we do that? More than 95% of you now order our albums and books in Photojunction, printed and fully assembled, so that’s what the price list assumes you’re doing. If you’re interested in DIY, contact us and we’ll send you a supplementary sheet.

The next best thing about them is that, despite the destructive currency movements that have been impacting us afresh since early this year, our prices will remain the same, and in some cases reduce. (There are two minor exceptions you can read about below.)

More good news…

• We’ve dropped the prices on Queensberry Albums un-matted pages by 10% including printing. (We’re calling them “Flushmounts” now to avoid confusion with our digital offset products.)

• We’ve reduced our album design prices for Flushmount, Duo and Press albums, by about a third in most cases.

• You can now add translucent titles to all our album products, including press albums and flushmounts.

• We’re discontinuing the 9×9 format and replacing it with a 10×10 at the same price.

To make way for the new we’ve also discontinued a few cover materials, as well as the 6×6, 15×15 and 20×16 formats. (The 6×6 format is now Press Book only.) Also going are all un-matted self-mount options, including digital albums, demis and self-mount miniatures.

All discontinued lines will be available for a further twelve months as per our normal policy.

I mentioned a couple of exceptions.

1. Since everyone is now using the latest version of our software we will be canceling the small “PJ Credit” in the New Year.

2. We need to align the price of smaller format covers (8×8, 10×7, 10×10) in the Queensberry Albums range with those of the Queensberry Press (the small formats have been cheaper in some cases). Obviously that is a potential cost increase to you, but it’s countered by the fact that all small albums, including 8x8s and 10x7s, will now qualify for free freight, or if you order them with a 12×12 or larger album we’ll discount the smaller album by 20%.

With that exception all the significant price movements are reductions, so why wait? They come into effect immediately.

Next: why we’re stepping back at WPPI and FOCUS.

Cheers
Ian

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This has been a big year for Queensberry. Especially the launch of Queensberry Press. New products, new services, new technology, new price points.

The challenge is making it easy for you to get your head around. Why so many products? What’s the difference between them? How much do they cost?

We came up with this Good Better Best matrix to map out what we do.

Good Better Best is a strategy – having a range of products and services to tempt your clients across a range of price points.

Good is your entry level – affordable if you like. Best is aspirational (expensive). Better is in the middle – what you budget on!

Before Queensberry Press we were under-represented at the lower end, so one of our goals was to establish new, lower price points, important in an environment where people are looking after their cash more carefully.

Queensberry Press is about more than lower prices, however. It’s also about digital offset printing (as opposed to traditional silver halide) and books (as opposed to albums).

The graphic above shows how everything fits together, but it caused a fight here at first, so in the end we went with Great Better Best, and added an extra column for Musée!

You may notice that we’ve reorganized our website along these lines, with a couple of changes in product names along the way.

Our new price lists include a more detailed version of the matrix, designed to give you a quick insight into the main differences between our various products. More about them in our next post.

Cheers
Ian

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