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Good morning.
Once again, thank you for the lovely comments on my last Sunday AM. I am not sure how long I will keep writing these, but the good words I get from many encourage me to continue a bit more anyway - so thank you!

BUSINESS

Business is essentially the art of creating value, right? If you is a retailer, you buy a product, add your margin, and sell it. Your store's location, the brands you sell or represent, how good you are attracting customers, and all the other things you know, will determine your success. If you can't be attractive, you may need to sell at lower prices. I hope this is clear? If it is, why is it then so difficult for many printing companies to operate using the same principles? Of course, a production company operates differently than a retailer, and of course, overhead is different. Last week we had our offset day and spoke to several interesting people. The three I would like to mention here are Ulrich Stetter, Anthony Thirlby, and Mike Malpas. According to their sayings, these three gentlemen operate their business entirely differently but are all successful and profitable. Ulrich Stetter operates an online printing company, and as he said (free from memory), it's all about filling up the sheets. He refers to the fact that a filled-up sheet with an online printer makes every sheet profitable with HIGH margins. Anthony Thirlby is not an online printer and focuses on the speed of production. The more efficient you are, the more work you can process on your equipment. Finally, Mike Malpas focuses (along with being efficient) on quality and expects to have a higher margin per job in return for producing the jobs of a higher quality. All interesting models, and something that we can all learn from - and all relating to what I wrote about initially!

TECHNOLOGY

Internet of Things, or IoT, is important to understand, but we will get it whether we want it or not. The latest upgrades of the IP protocols enable more IP addresses, and with that, the ability to connect everything to the Internet. You can think that internet-enabled fridges are crazy. Still, when the self-driving robots in the supermarket can communicate directly with your kitchen about what products you need, you will get more time to more important things. Still, you can think this isn't necessary. Still, in business, we today take it for granted that our machines can report scheduled maintenance, order paper when needed, and optimize production to the maximum. So there is a need, and it requires some intelligent solutions. These solutions have started to come to market, and when you investigate, you soon realize that this is also very dominant in the graphics arts industry. In the past week, I had the pleasure to visit Schur Pack Germany, and they have with Schur Logistics essentially optimized the flow of materials and finished products almost 100% to robots. Lights out production, and even companies where the required skills are entirely different are on their way, and for some productions in the printing industry, understanding this may be the difference between life and dead - so learn!

MUSIC

When I was sixteen years old, I was on vacation in Austria. Back in 1984, the Miloš Foreman directed film 'Amadeus' was premiered, and I was so fortunate to see the film in a small Austrian cinema, and it was and continues to be one of the best films I have ever seen. It's like watching Titanic, where you know the end in advance and feel the pain of what you know is about to happen to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. How true to the history the film is, is discussed, but the music, the performance, and the story are so dense that even here 37 years after, it still touched me. I recently saw it again on Netflix together with family. Now Mads is sixteen, plays piano as I did, and I could see that the film touched him. The story touched him, but even more the music. Amadeus is on Netflix; if you haven't seen it, you should. It's still fantastic!

MEDIA

Are newspapers and magazines dead? I hope not, but the issue is severe. The business models have not changed much in many years, and the question is what the future role of newspapers and magazines is? The former editor of Chris Anderson once said that there will always be a need for curated content, and think about it for a minute? One argument I often hear is that you can find anything on the Internet, but that isn't true. Firstly, finding content is not always easy. Secondly, research and investigations often lead to impossible conclusions to see if reporters and journalists haven't worked hard to locate leads, understand the connection, and conclude finding new traces. So the need, I believe, is there, but the business models are under pressure. Creating content takes time and costs money, and typically newspapers and magazines have used advertising to subsidize content creation! It will be exciting to see where and how things develop, but I am certain that the best will survive.

On the other hand, if business models don't change, I find it difficult to believe that media like we know today will survive - and that is good. Every media must support their viewers, readers, listeners and do this with a focus on the audience. If media mainly serve advertisers, I hope these media won't survive, but that's, of course, just my opinion!

Politics

A few days ago, I read a story in various national and international newspapers about right-wing activists recently caught by the authorities in Germany, Belgium, and the UK. The story is that several soldiers, officers, and police officers are right-wing activists with roots in the neo-nazi movement, and with easy access to arms - and even recruiting people in the military - it scares the shit out of me, to be honest! More than 30 soldiers and officers have been arrested in Germany, and it's almost impossible to believe how the authorities got a hint. A prostitute was the "reward" for these soldiers when they competed using guns, swords, and other arms. The prostitute told the authorities about heilings, nazi-songs, and how these men used her—many scary concerns in this story. The right-wing movement with access to arms in itself is a frightening story. But I can't help think about that these young soldiers can be our sons. What drives young people to these radicals, not only concerning the political project they appealed by but also what sons can have a sexual moral where it becomes 'ok' using prostitutes like this?

Nina and I have always tried to teach our kids good morals and ethics, but the headlines recently of both group-rapes of young girls, and now this, we as parents have a tremendous responsibility to teach our kids right from wrong!

TRENDS

This week's topic is again about sustainability. But it's also about regulation. Last week I wrote about G7, and one of the agreements reached is an idea of working in favor of global tax reform. What has typically identified a country recently is its right to use taxation to drive investments in a country. In the US, you see different taxes from state to state, so it is with the European Union's member states. However, the new G7 agreement will force global companies to pay taxes where they operate. So why is this a trend? If you only operate in one country, you are taxed after the rules and regulations in that particular country. The past 20 years have created global conglomerates, and there is a need for unified rules. The sustainability agenda has similar cross-border challenges, and politicians have widely spoken about a global CO2 tax. Whether the above initiatives are good or bad for individuals and businesses is one thing. Still, the change is a huge one since it will change how we see democracies and how we, with these moves, potentially distance influence. The trend is clear more globalization also on a political level. I am not confident this is good for democracy, as many things that can be managed locally should be managed locally. The sustainability and globalization agendas are for sure global, but maybe the money could be better! What do you think?

See you next Sunday!

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