Today's Reader Reaction piece is a thought-provoking read. Mention 'commodity' printing and the natural reaction is to view it as a negative. Understandable enough when becoming nothing more than a commodity supplier is not something that many people aspire too. And commoditisation is all-too-often something that happens to print suppliers against their will, rather than being an actively-pursued strategy.

However, it's a fact that a lot of printed items are commodity purchases from the customer's point-of-view. An increasing amount, even. So I found Mark Cornford's comments refreshing and illuminating. Integrity Print, you will remember, was formed after Cornford and his colleagues led a buyout of an unfashionable corner of the Communisis business. One of the firm's main markets is business forms, a product that has supposedly been dead in the water/in terminal decline for the past decade or more. Yet last year Integrity posted better operating margins than its former parent.

As Cornford so succinctly puts it: commodity manufacturing only becomes a trap when you can't make any money from it.