Field Notes

Writing on tech for the print & promo industry.

Patterns, integrations, and AI playbooks we've shipped - written for owners and operators, not theorists.

Featured

AI chatbots for print shops: what actually works in 2026

Most print chatbots fail because they're trained on generic data. Here's the architecture that gets 70% deflection without dropping CX.

Which PromoStandards services to integrate first, which suppliers actually implement them well, and how to design your fallbacks.

Twenty-three things every modern print storefront needs - and the five that print shops consistently skip.

Local SEO still wins for printing. But AEO - Answer Engine Optimization - is where the next decade of buyer intent lives.

Pricing drift, order-status latency, file routing, and two more subtle failures we see every quarter.

Three real workflows where idea-generation AI doubled close rates on event and onboarding kit RFQs.