A change in business strategy always brings cost concerns to the forefront. Will the budget need to increase? Will we need more personnel? Is it sustainable in the long run?
Keeping that in mind, brands have struggled for years with converting their wholesale catalogs and workbooks from a print-first mindset to a digital-focused approach. However, the need to change strategy is becoming increasingly mandatory as retailers rely more and more on a brand’s B2B platform for order placement and brand interaction. We know that most retailers will be buying in this digital space by the year 2025.
If you stick to a print mindset, you’re putting a limit on your bottom line. Fortunately, switching to a digital-first content strategy for your wholesale channels results in huge cost savings while delivering a better, more effective product that can drive bigger returns. Let’s take a look.
The Cost Of Working In The Past
What does it cost to maintain a print focused strategy? It’s probably a lot more than you think.
The print production cost for a single, 24 page, full-color catalog is going to run somewhere around $2,500 – and that’s just the printing cost. You’ll also be paying roughly $90 a month for a desktop publishing program like the Adobe Suite, per designer, that needs to work on the catalog. Those designers also incur a personnel cost – let’s say that’s 30 hours, at $100 per hour (this is likely too low even).
So, for a full year, producing one 24 page catalog per season is going to cost $12,000 for the designs, $10,000 for production, and $1,080 for the software. That’s $23,080. For a single, 24 page catalog each season. That’s a lot. It’s not hard to make the argument that it’s too much.
Even worse, these print catalogs you’re paying for don’t even do what you need them to do. A print catalog, even converted into a digital format, does nothing to take advantage of the power of your online B2B.
You can make better catalogs and workbooks, for less, that do more.
The Future Is Digital (Press)
Fortunately, you can easily fill up your wholesale channels with engaging content that retailers want to engage with, for significantly less than your current print costs by using Digital Press.
A year of Digital Press starts at $500 a month. That’s a full year of as many catalogs and workbooks as you want to make, for a grand total of $6,000. And the best part of it all? The cost savings is just a perk. The real value of Digital Press is in the content it makes.
Everything you produce with Digital Press is B2B-aware. All the content you create – digital catalogs, look books, product sheets, workbooks, etc. – populates from the data you put in your B2B platform. If you make a price change, update product data, or add an image, Digital Press will replicate that change across every relevant piece of content. It’s a huge time saver, noticeably reducing your personnel costs by allowing your team to do more critical work that grows your brand in other areas.
Additionally, all content is shoppable, at any time, from anywhere. Retailers can click and engage with your products, adding them to assortments and orders, with minimal friction. And everything can be segmented, based on customer and region.
You’re getting better content, in greater volume, that drives more revenue through orders and retailer engagement, for a full 75% less than it costs you to make a single 24-page catalog per season.
Spend Less, Make More
Digital Press will show an immediate return by drastically lowering the cost of catalog production, so you don’t have to worry about losing money by pivoting your B2B content pipeline.
With retailer engagement and order placement happening almost entirely inside your B2B by 2025, you're leaving even more money on the table if you continue to treat digital content as a secondary concern.
You can realize a better return on your wholesale business. Lean into the digital shift, spend less money, make better content, and let your revenue grow.
