It’s That Time of Year Again...

At Products Finishing, we work hard each month to bring you information on the latest finishing technologies and how they’re being used in shops large and small. And once a year, after pouring all our efforts into creating what we hope is a compelling and useful monthly magazine, we ask you to tell us if it’s all been worthwhile.

What am I talking about? If you’re a current subscriber, you may have noticed the subscription renewal card attached to the cover of this month’s issue of Products Finishing. With just a couple minutes’ effort, that renewal card can be your ticket to 12 more issues of the magazine through 2008.

PF is different than other publications that you may receive at home or work. Unlike such magazines as Time or Newsweek, National Geographic or Sports Illustrated, we are a trade magazine. That means we present only information that relates to a specific industry—in our case, the finishing industry in all its incarnations, from plating to paint/powder to mechanical finishing and other related processes.

But an even more significant difference between PF and those mainstream magazines is the subscription fee, or lack thereof. While you pay to get other magazines, you receive Products Finishing free of charge.

Why is that, you may ask? It’s because you’re a “qualified” recipient, and that makes you special. Not everyone is qualified to receive Products Finishing. Our circulation is controlled so that only people like you, who work in the finishing industry and have influence over the finishing processes used in their shops, can receive this magazine. We do this so that advertisers and potential advertisers—the finishing technology suppliers who pay the bills and help us keep the magazine free of charge for you and our other subscribers—will know their message is reaching their target audience.

PF mails to about 40,000 people like you each month. Over the course of a typical year, we add and delete about 8,000 names—roughly 20%—from our circulation list. Frankly, finding that many new, qualified subscribers is more difficult and costs a lot more than renewing current subscribers. That’s why we try to maximize retention of qualified persons on our list.

And that brings us back to the card. If you’re already qualified, you should have received a copy of the magazine with the renewal card attached. All you need to do to renew your subscription is fill out and sign the card and drop it in the mail—we pay the postage. If you happen to have a fax machine, you can also fax the card back to 513-527-8830.

Maybe you just blew by the card, or even ripped it off to see what was underneath on our cover. It’s OK if you did. The card’s primary function is to serve as a reminder from us to sign up for PF for another year, but even if it’s gone you can renew online by going to www.pfonline.com/subscribe. Grab the mailing label from a copy of PF—you’ll need a couple of bits of info from it—and click on the link for current subscribers. Online renewals are fast, simple and available 24/7.

Regardless of how you do it, promptly renewing your magazine subscription has several benefits. For one thing, it guarantees that you won’t hear another word from us about renewal until this time next year.

It also ensures that you won’t miss a single issue of PF, and we hope that’s important to you. We want you to renew for the best reason of all: because the magazine contains information that’s useful to you in your work specifically and in advancing your finishing knowledge in general.

So, however you choose to do it, please take a moment to renew your subscription. Thanks for your loyal readership, and we look forward to continuing to serve you.