Plenty of what a London firm puts on paper is not read once and binned. A consultancy hands over a quarterly client report. A letting agent gives each new tenant a welcome pack. A wholesaler sends its trade customers a price list. All three tend to end up in the same place, slotted into somebody’s ring binder on an office shelf. That is the point at which a standard stapled brochure runs into trouble. The reader either forces a hole punch through the spine or gives up and leaves it on the desk, buried under the next pile of post.
What loop stitching actually does
Think of an ordinary stapled brochure, but with each of its two staples bent into a small loop that slides straight onto the rings of a binder. No hole punch, no damaged spine. Few business owners have heard of it, yet it can decide whether a report is kept or thrown away.
On its UK page for brochure and booklet printing, HelloPrint sells both filing formats, listed as Loop Stitched Brochures and Loose Leaf Documents. The stitched version is held together by two loop-stitch staples, and it is those loops that hook it onto a ring binder. The loose leaf option comes ready hole-punched instead. Loop stitched brochures run from 8 up to 68 pages, and loose leaf documents from 6 up to 200 pages.
Should the document stay together or come apart?
That depends on how the pages will be used. A report that is read as one piece, start to finish, should stay bound. Loop stitching keeps everything in order and still lets the whole thing sit on the rings next to last quarter’s version. HelloPrint pitches the format at internal reports and price lists, the paperwork most likely to be kept for reference.
A price list that changes a few lines at a time is a different case. Sheets that arrive punched suit it better, because the client can swap one of them when a rate moves instead of throwing out a complete booklet. So the rule of thumb is simple. Stitch what is read as a whole, punch what gets updated. The same goes for a tenant pack in which only the contact page or the house rules change.
Ordering both formats online
Neither format needs a trip to a print shop. Both sit on the same UK brochure page at HelloPrint and are ordered online, so a small business can settle on the filing method while it picks the page count. It is worth deciding early, because it shapes how the reader stores what you send.
Print marketing still earns its keep for London businesses, as LondonLovesBusiness has reported in whether London businesses can still benefit from print marketing. A booklet that stays on the shelf simply does that job for longer.
So before signing off the artwork, ask what happens to the paperwork once it has been delivered. If a London business expects its reports and price lists to finish up in a client’s ring binder, HelloPrint can print them as loop stitched brochures or as hole-punched loose leaf documents, so they get kept rather than binned.
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