What Happened With Schaubek??

"yes, the downloaded pages are killing album publishers........." Only if the Steiner pages fit into one's binders. I have all the preprinted & illustrated pages that I need. My occasional need now is for International sized blank quadrille pages, end pages, glassine interleavings, all which I can get from Subway Stamps. Only thing missing are page separators for the International pages. But even there, I can rig something up.

I have no idea at all why Scott/Amos makes page dividers for the National series, but not for the Big Blue International albums. I agree with the poster who commented about needing mounts of so many different sizes.

If the pages I returned had not cost over $200 I would not have bothered.

This opens the question of what one is to do when a dealer gets something wrong.I was at one time buying on a regular basis from a website of a dealer who shorted nearly every order. always one set or stamp missing. In time I figured it was just a cost of doing business with him. If the missing stamp was worth a buck or so I'd just mention it in my next order and he'd include the one from the last order This went on for months then he began to refuse to send me the missing ones, claimed I was wrong. I think he just decided he'd had enough of me, which was his right. He dealt in a specialty not easy to find a supplier for but I managed to live without him in my collecting life.

I sort of doubt Schaubek held that against me, I have spent four figures with them in the past couple years. But one never knows.

I hadn't noticed this with Schaubeck. I ordered their paper English language catalogue sometime last year, and they sent me one right away dated 2013 which I imagine is the latest one they have in English. Their German language online catalogue link above works fine for me, and it is more up to date in prices, I'd imagine. I found their pre-printed page prices to be so expensive that I decided to use Scott Speciality albums instead which are much more affordable. I like the look of Schaubeck (and Lighthouse) pages very much, but they've always been very expensive "upper end" albums which seemed to me to be designed and sold for elite collectors with a good deal of discretionary income.

Schaubeck does have, however, some of the more affordable blank pages, even cheaper per page than Scott's blank pages which is rather surprising. If I were making blank albums, I'd use Schaubeck six-ring binders and Schaubeck blank pages and have beautiful albums for not too much money, maybe $80-90 per 100-page blank album. A similar sized Scott blank album would be close to $140. If you like blank albums.

As for why their prices have risen so much, it must just be a combination of inflation, low demand, high manufacturing costs, and perhaps other factors. Germany is a very high-wage society and I always wonder how they can sell products at decent prices with all the overhead they must have.

Finally, the claim that online publishing is playing a major role in reducing profits at major album publishers makes sense, but is there evidence for this? Saying it's so because it seems likely isn't the same thing as showing it's true. Is there any evidence that supports this claim? For example, have any major album publishers said this? I ask because I wonder -- are these high-end albums really competing with print-your-own page albums? The former are elegant albums, printed on larger pages, get put into proprietary binders, and so are clearly designed for more "prosperous" collectors, not beginners or the average collector necessarily. The latter are for average "thrifty" collectors who put price first -- which is clearly not the case with buyers of albums by Schaubeck (or Lightouse or Davo, either). I realize these are stereotypes, but I bet they're fairly accurate ones. So, do Steiner self-printed pages really threaten major album publishers? Or is the real threat from other factors like declining interest in stamp collecting coupled with high wages and high production costs, etc. ?

High end albums are likely for people who have been collecting but have enough invested to want a better album to house them. They are not likely starter albums. The album should not cost more than the stamps themselves. Let's just say there are many trends against high end albums that would drive up prices which is a negative trend. Are there any factors that would reduce prices?

Drew,
Obviously we do not have an 'insider' financial info on most of the philatelic companies (few are public companies with published annual reports) so we are left with industry observations and opinions.

My opinion is that the philatelic publishing industry is not immune to the sweeping changes the rest of the world has experience with the advent of the internet. I also think that the traditional philatelic publishing industry would follow the same trends as the larger general publishing industry which it is a part of.

Moving from opinion, here is one publishing industry trend that can be described as fact. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016 report,


They go on to say,



If you look at the numbers for tradition print publishers, the trend is clearly down. Here is the trend for printed newspaper circulation


The trend for printed non-fiction publishers is not any better; sales down 23% in the years from 2004 - 2014


Another metric for traditional print media industry is the decline in periodical advertising spending.



I guess folks can speculate that the philatelic publishers are some kind of outlier and are not effected by the same trends as the rest of the print industry; time will certainly tell.
Don

Edit; We can actually take a closer look at one publically traded philatelic publisher; Stanley Gibbons.

According to their 2016 Annual Report (all the standard warnings about Annual reports apply, companies may manipulate the numbers to influence shareholders).

SG Publishing and Philatelic Accessories profits were down 1/2 million pounds or 59% in 2016. This is due to a huge drop in gross margins that followed their decision to outsource distribution of Their catalogues, albums and accessories.

Why did they start outsourcing distribution?

To lower their operating costs; SG dropped their catalogues, albums and accessories inventory from £1.2m at 31 March 2015 to £0.3m at 31 March 2016.

Outsourcing their distribution and cutting inventory does not sound like a healthy traditional philatelic publishing segment to me.

My questions earlier were more theoretical / hypothetical than not. I don't expect a publisher to chime in with figures about the impact of Steiner self-published album pages on their own albums. And I don't even see how they could even know specifically why their sales were down (if they were). It seems somewhat likely, though, that self-publishing stamp album pages (by computer printer) would be cutting into sale of published albums.

Maybe not, however. Maybe people who print their own pages would not have bought an expensive or high-end album at all. Maybe they're more likely to have bought inexpensive albums. This would be true if they're beginning collectors or less-affluent (or more thrifty, in general). A lot of the talk here is about Steiner album pages and Mystic U.S. albums, both inexpensive offerings. If buyers of Lighthouse or Schaubek (or even Scott) albums began shifting over in large numbers to Steiner print-yourself pages, that would be a major shift that would presumably hurt publishers.

Are potential buyers of Scott's National album choosing, instead, to buy the Mystic U.S. album? Are buyers who might have purchased a Scott International or Minkus Global album choosing to print thousands of Steiner pages instead? My feeling is that this is not really happening much or likely to happen. This is because higher end albums are more elegant. Their pages are larger and generally better looking. For most people, it's much easier not to print your own pages but to buy a pre-printed album . . . and so on. Album publishers don't make much money from beginners, anyway. They make their money from selling larger, more expensive albums to collectors willing to spend a lot of money.

It would be interesting to see how sales of, for example, Scott's International album have gone over the years. Are sales gradually declining? You'd think they were, given the decline in stamp collecting we hear so much about. The same for individual country album sales such as Scott Specialty pages, Schaubek and Lighthouse country albums, and so on.

This would be part of a serious evaluation of the state of stamp collecting someone might write someday (in my imagination, anyway). Have album sales declined much? I realize that these companies are not very likely to tell us their figures! So we'll never actually know. At least not until stamp album publishers begin going out of business, in any case.

Drew,
Do you think that the movement towards 'print your own' albums has impacted the traditional publishers? Or that the increase in the numbers of hobbyists who are using Vario pages to display their collection has impacted new album sales? Or that the increased availability of used albums via online listings has had an impact?


I agree that traditional album manufacturers should concentrate on producing high quality albums and binders, this is evolving into a niche that they can play in. But questions remains if they can educate buyer well enough for them to justify spending a lot more money for that quality. For example, will hobbyists be willing to pay the cost of buying true archival paper as opposed to running out and buying the cheap 'acid free' paper from Staples? Album manufacturers will have to do a far better job at educating hobbyists as to what quality means and how they can deliver it. At this point none have shown that they can do this; just finding album and paper specifications from them is difficult.
Don