Sabine Lenz is the Founder and CEO of PaperSpecs, a California-based company that maintains for its members, a comprehensive online database of thousands of specialty papers that are currently available from 70 paper mills. Sabine wrote the “Top 5 Paper Myths Exposed,” which is available as a free e-book download at paperspecs.com. Earlier this week, I spoke to Sabine about her company.

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Here is a transcript of the interview:

Tell me about your professional background in paper and design, and tell me a little bit about your background in general. Are you from Germany?

What gave it away? [laughter] Yes. I’m originally from Germany and I started my first design studio, I dare say, when the first Mac came out. So I had my first studio in Germany and I came to the States in ’91 I think. I came to San Francisco, worked freelance at several locations here around the bay area which was great, learned a lot. On one of those afternoons when you look for the perfect paper and you know, you’re a designer and you have all these wonderful swatch books in the sample drawer and you go through them and you pick this perfect sheet for your project… And I remember vividly that my printer called me back and said, “Well, this is a really nice sheet, but we have a tiny problem. It has been discontinued.”

And as you can imagine, I was pretty mad about this. So we basically started from scratch again. And that hasn’t only happened once, but I worked in Australia as well in between and it’s a worldwide problem.

And enter PaperSpecs I suppose, right?

Exactly, exactly. I remember we were sitting there, like 3 or 4 of us, and, “Somebody’s got to do something about this. Somebody’s got to change this. This is pathetic. You know, here we’re spending all our valuable time…”

Over the years I’d watched and merchants and some mills came out with some tools to help designer spec paper, but nothing was really what I had in mind. I remember, you know, whenever something came out, I’m like, “No, no, no. They don’t understand. It has to be this way and that way.”

So about 7 years ago, I got together with a tech guy, as I like to call them, and explained to him about the database and about 6 years ago PaperSpecs went live.

Were web businesses successful at the time when you wanted to start PaperSpecs?

Oh no. It didn’t start out with the web in mind, because the web was like way… Can you believe it? It was just 6 years ago, but the web was just so slow, and dial up, it wasn’t doable. So the original idea was to have it on CDs and send updates to people as they would arise. With the way the industry changes at the moment, just thinking about it makes me laugh. It would be impossible. Everybody would get a CD every day. You know, “Update, Update!” [laughter]

Yup. Where is the PaperSpecs headquarters?

We’re here in sunny California, in Palo Alto. Well, Silicon Valley. Where else would we be?

Right? The place that doesn’t exist they say, but yet it exists? I don’t know.

Exactly.

Let’s talk about PaperSpecs and the business and services you provide. What kinds of businesses or individuals would benefit from becoming a member of PaperSpecs? And why don’t you talk about some of the benefits that a new member would enjoy?

Well, basically, everybody who has anything to do with paper or specing paper, to be more precise, benefits from being a member of paper specs. What we do is we provide access to information on over 4,400 papers and we keep this information current at any given point and time. So if a mill decides to discontinue a color or a whole brand or rename it, because it is online now [our database] and instant, we make these changes and our members have instant access. You can go in and search for anything to your heart’s content. So you can search by weight, by finish, by FSC certification, recycled content. You just type in what you need. It’s kind of a Google for paper, if you want. And we show you which papers are available, who carries them, the sheet sizes, weights, and so on.

We have a lot of designers who utilize our service because they feel they have access to more unique papers than they might locally. Because again, 4,400 papers-we show everything from Touché’s and other options, dozens of metallics and translucents, and the wilder the better so to speak. We have printers who, their estimators use us. We have merchants who utilize us to compare sheets. Like if a client asks for a specific sheet, they can come to us and say okay, what other papers would fit in that realm so to speak.

When a member logs into your database, what is involved in making sure the member sees the most accurate color swatches? How do you do it on your end with different people using different monitors, and even in your office, maybe folks are using different monitors?

Well, we’re very picky about our color swatches. We spend a lot of time getting it as right as we can. Obviously, all our monitors are calibrated and get calibrated on a frequent basis. But we know that with every brand, the color will change-with every monitor, the color will change. So we show the actual swatch, an enlargement of the swatch so that people can get an idea about the actual structure of the sheet, like if it’s a linen or what kind of texture it has. We also show the nearest PMS [Pantone Matching System] color. We show RGB and Lab value. And we’re very fortunate; we have a great partnership with X-Rite. They wrote a little software package for us and provided us with some of the high end tools so that we can really provide high end measurements and our members can recreate these papers, or these colors, to be more precise.

I know that you’re in daily communication with mills and other clients. You’re going direct to the source. But how can the mills and other clients make your life easier?

Well, I think the important thing you said upfront is that we proactively… We pester the mills so to speak. We are taking the initiative to be in touch with them on a constant basis. We don’t wait for them to make a press release or to, you know, find something out through the grapevine. We really are in touch with the mills on a constant basis to find out what they’re planning, what’s going to happen, how this is going to effect the information that we do show. Naturally, the more press releases or the more information the mills provide us in a more systemized format, the better it is for us. In the case of LCI Paper, for example, sometimes we don’t need a full-fledged press release. Just providing us with a general gist of the information is enough for us to work off.

Okay. How has online ordering of paper changed your landscape?

Not really very much because we are in a very unique position. The 2 things that we offer is up to date and comprehensive information. So that means somebody comes to us and we show them 70 different mills so they don’t havego from…to meander from web site to web site and say, “Oh, they don’t carry this” and “They don’t carry that.”

They can find all the information and basically, it’s a 1 stop shop so to speak. And our members can then decide to either go back to their own swatch books and look live, up close and personal, on a sheet of paper or they can order sample sheets or swatch books through us just with a click of a button. We have a great relationship with all the mills and they’re happy to provide our members with their requested sample sheets or swatch books.

I was reading on your site about PaperSpecs being independent and being sort of free from certain types of sponsorship and I wondered why is that important and what do you really mean by that language on the site?

I personally as a designer feel it’s very important because we don’t sell any paper, so we provide you with the utmost comprehensive information. We, I don’t want to say we don’t care what you spec, we obviously want you to spec the perfect sheet for your project, but you know, whatever criteria you are looking for, this is what is the perfect sheet for you. So we don’t make any money off you searching or specing a specific sheet. We don’t put anything upfront that should be possibly in the back. You can search by anything that is important to you and the information that is important to you. And that’s where it’s, I feel it’s very important to be comprehensive and objective.

Let’s talk about your blog which features many different writers. With so many points of view, how do you make sure the blog is focused?

Well, maybe we are a little bit unfocused. [laughter] The focus, our focus, is basically paper and printing, so we feel that, yeah, I could sit there and write my musings and my thinking every day, but then you would only get one point of view. And we feel that there are so many specialized point of views out there, let it be a print buyer or from a printer’s point of view, from a designer’s point of view. So we try to give our readers and our members the most comprehensive overview that they can get from different angles.

Your web site offers a lot of facts and features for free, before folks actually sort of enter their login and sign up with you and actually pay money. Can you talk about ways that you promote membership by offering some free services like that on the site?

In my haydays as a designer, I always felt it was much easier to work with an educated client than with somebody who had no idea about design or printing and came with some really unreasonable expectations, anything from, “Oh, can you match this to the printout of my laser writer?” on press so to speak. And I feel the same way about paper now. The more designers and paper specifiers know, the better for everybody involved. So we provide a large amount of information already up front. There is a lot of mystique or mysterious information out there, let’s put it this way. That’s why one of the things we provide, or we do offer, is a free e-book. It’s called the “Top 5 Paper Myths Exposed.” And it’s a free download on our web site. I just encourage everybody to go there and download it just to get an idea of…have some reality checks, what is really going on and what is a grade, what is recycled, things like that. Again, the more educated everybody involved is, the easier the job is for everybody.

Last question. There have been quite a few mill consolidations and re-structures. How do you see the future of the paper industry, and can you speak on the US specifically?

Overall, and this is nothing you haven’t heard before, yes, there is consolidation. There will be probably less paper lines overall as some of the larger mills merge or consolidate. But we’ve also seen that gives room for smaller, what I like to call boutique mills, to emerge with their very unique papers. So there is niche markets that have opened up in the last few years for these boutique mills and I hope there’s more and more coming into the market, so we’re getting more into the specialized papers which I think is great.

Recommended Links:
PaperSpecs official site
Top 5 Paper Myths Exposed e-book

Joshua Birch