Accessories: Hole-Y Puncher

The rise of affordable printing equipment and digital cameras has made it easier than ever for people to generate documents at home and print digital photographs. That’s been a boon to those retailers who sell printers and the ink cartridges that go with them.

And for projects too large to print at home, office superstores are growing their print and document services business, too, by offering ever more elaborate capabilities such as online submission and stores that are networked.

With all that printing going on, it’s no wonder other categories are benefiting as well and creating demand for a new breed of accessories. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the printing boom is the presentation supplies category. The binder and folder business is now a more important component of the office supplies category than it was before the advent of affordable home printers and increased access to services in office superstores as well as the growing network of FedEx Kinko’s locations.

Along with presentation products to help consumers arrange and organize their handiwork, an unlikely product is also making resurgence, thanks to some new technology. Staples recently applied its “one-touch” technology, first introduced in a stapler, to a line of paper punches. As the name implies, the product requires gentle pressure on the part of the user to penetrate a thick stack of paper up to 40 sheets thick.