Issue #144 | May. 2, 2008 | by Andy Kowl

If you have been reading RFID Street this past year, you know we have been examining the otherwise unreported phenomenon of new Value Added Resellers (VARs) enlisting in the RFID force of solution providers. In fact, this has manifested itself into our second website – www.RFIDtradeMart.com – which we have added to our original RFID Switchboard portal.

We predict more than 75% of those companies that will be selling RFID solutions two years from now, are not offering RFID today.

Most of those companies are in business today. They just do not sell RFID yet. We are not predicting that those selling RFID today will be out of business. No, despite the fact that like all industries that go from the toddler to adolescent stage, there will certainly be a shake-out, that is not it at all.

It is just that as we previously reported, with less than 2% of all information technology solution providers of every kind selling RFID today, good ol’ capitalism makes their jumping in a foregone conclusion.

Now this is hitting home. You see, it turns out I have been a VAR all along and have not known it.

I own another company called Further Printing & Marketing. Further provides production services to publishers and marketers throughout the Washington, D.C. area, and though we are a small company, to clients around the world. At our core, we sell printing. And maybe like some things you sell or have sold, printing has become a commodity. Printers are a dime a dozen. You have printing machines in your office, right? We have four storefront print shops a block from our own office.

We own no presses. We add value to our print brokering with things like full design studio; data processing; complete mailing services; packaging, assembly and fulfillment services; imprinted apparel and trade show products. The value is a client just needs to make one phone call, and not worry about it.

The first data processing systems
Instead of channel partners, printers often refer to companies that resell their manufacturing as distributors, because many of these companies were originally distributors of forms – those multi-part paper records that, ironically, were actually early data processing systems.

I remember as a kid watching my dad at his sales rep firm, and I could swear the sales forms they used had six or seven parts, with carbon paper. (I just realized there are people reading this who do not know what that is.)

Just 30-40 years ago, these sheets of form paper were the data records used by supply chains, mailed, or sent “by pouch,” to factories, offices, warehouses, retailers and others. Forms comprised the commercial databases of business. Rather than hard drives, they were stored in and retrieved from file cabinets. Yes, this happens today to a degree; but then, that was it! Quite a difference from real-time data transmission via RFID.

Revenge of the forms salesmen
Now that forms, often with barcodes, are relegated to a shrinking amount of industrial use, distributors have been competing for my company’s customers with commercial printing services, large displays, advertising specialties and labels. The form distribution companies, after they folded, merged and morphed, have “moved up” into client offices, now commonly offering some database services. Further Printing, for example, ties variable digital printing into one client’s database to routinely send dozens of versions of direct mail in up to 17 languages.

Did someone say barcodes? Labels? Databases?

The cover of the 2006 Print Solutions Buyers’ Guide includes graphics saying “Brochures,” “Screenprinting,” “Presentation Folders” and “RFID.” There are 15 listings in this 2006 directory under “RFID Products.” In 2004 there were none. The only two I recognize from the RFID trade shows are Nashua Corporation and Repacorp Label Products. Other catalogues we receive offer RFID starter kits for print distributors to sell customers.

Here you have an industry of aggressive service companies who already understand barcodes, label manufacturing and data. Tens of thousands of them are being offered RFID products to sell. No surprise some are selling smart labels already. Our company got its first inquiry for RFID cards recently, from a London nightclub.

Products around the edges
That’s not all – just now I checked our website and discovered we are offering RFID-related products from another industry. I had no idea!

We are members of the Advertising Specialties Institute, the leading group matching manufacturers of products sold with imprinted logos to resellers. ASI provides their VARs (not really called that, but the good ones add great value) with access to about 60,000 items. Lo and behold, a keyword search of the ASI engine on our site shows we are offering “Forget-Me-Not RFID Defender – the credit card sleeve that blocks the transmission of radio frequency waves” and a variety of single pocket, ID card holders which state, “Bar codes and RFID markings scan right through.”

All of this RFID-creep into other industries will continue. It will end up speeding the commoditization of smart labels. This is hardly the new RFID sales force I refer to with my two year prediction. But it is reflective of the market expansion true technology providers face in a more dynamic and important way.

Epilogue
I have not actually worked at Further Printing much for almost six years, this company I have now learned is actually a “print VAR,” since my wife does such a terrific job of running it. We do operate Switchboard Media from offices they are kind enough to allow us to use, which works out quite well having graphic designers nearby as well as sophisticated database and networking resources.

However I am quite proud of the fine job Further does for clients big and small, including some household names like Brookings Institute, the World Bank, Georgetown University, a slew of national associations and corporate marketers, and being in Washington, the occasional job for political groups like NOW and ACLU.

There is no way I can end this without inviting any stalwarts still reading this far to check in with www.GoFurther.com when you need any printing, direct mail, logo-imprinted apparel or trade show give-aways – 301/588-5699. Tell ‘em Andy sent you.