Create New Products and Grow Your Client Base
The following is a guest post from Ken Macro, author of the February/March Book of the Month, The Future of Print Sales. Below, Ken recalls one company looked “outside of the box” to create a new product and grow their client base. I was contacted recently by a friend who works for a printing company that has expanded into the wide/grand-format market. As a result of product development, they were able to obtain a new client (a furniture manufacturer) by creating the “Good Award”—a small Grammy-like desktop award custom-printed for the company to distribute to employees who have gone above and beyond their assigned roles by helping out their colleagues. The awards were ganged up on a wide-format printer, mounted to foamcore, and then cut out using a Kongsberg cutting table. A crosspiece is slotted at the base of the award to allow it to stand on one’s desk, and it sports the face of the owner of the furniture company that says, “Thanks for being so Good.” As a result, the company is now exploring other printed matter for both their internal and external clientele. The printing company’s sales force has reportedly been able to leverage the “Good Award” into gaining access into other new businesses in their area. The uniqueness of this particular product is that it challenges the traditional roles often stereotyped through the psyche of the potential print buyer. Instead of asking for big volume printing, the salesperson presents a new product idea that is potentially needed—and therefore deemed valuable—by the buyer. What makes this so interesting is that the buyer didn’t even know they needed this product. That is what we—in the industry—must now do, create products that people do not know they need. They know that they need marketing collateral and, as a result, seek to find the least expensive means in which to cast their message. What they didn’t know they needed was a product to assist them in enhancing the morale of their employees. For more fresh ideas and step-by-step guidance on launching new products within your organization, visit www.printing.org/bookofmonth. Enjoy a 15% discount when purchasing this title before 3/31/2013. Use the discount code MACRO at...
read moreService and Attitudes: Branch Out to Your Customers at the 2013 BIA Conference
Does your team understand the value of what “good” customer relationships should look like? In the article, contributed by Leslie Groene, President, Groene Consulting, find out how “bad” customer service can hurt your company. It is interesting to look at the world around me through the eyes of a sales coach and consultant…always evaluating the service of a company’s personnel or their sales person. I seem to see and ultimately measure my experiences by asking the following questions: Do they treat all of their customers like that? Why did they say that? Do they have any clue what conclusion I come to when I hear that? I had a couple of interesting things happen while on a recent business trip…you decide how you would judge the companies… I boarded a one-hour flight at 9:30am out of the Los Angeles area and requested coffee. The flight attendant told me that there was no longer coffee on short flights after 9:30am.”oh really?” I said. He said that that was the new policy of the airline (He did not offer me any other explanation except that I could have Diet Coke.) Upon my return home from said business trip, I realized that I had left a small (high-end brand) travel case behind at the hotel. I called and was transferred to the security department. They said in fact they did have the case and would send it to me. I received it via registered mail a few days later with all of the contents intact. With the first story, I was disappointed that I could no longer get coffee but more displeased with his “dismissive, snotty” attitude and demeanor. The second story was worthy of a letter to the manager of the hotel to express a “thank you” to his staff for not only turning in the case but sending it to me so promptly. Below are some statistics about clients and what drives them away…make sure you are aware of how your service and attitude affect your clients! 96% of unhappy customers do not complain, they just stop doing business with you. 91% of those who don’t complain will share the negative story with at least 9 other people, 13% will tell more than 20 other people about their experience. The average unhappy customer will remember the incident for 23 years. The happy customer will talk about the pleasant experience for 18 months. For every complaint heard, the average company has 25 other customers with the same problem. Want to learn more about improving customer relationships for your company? Leslie is presenting “Who Is the Correct Customer for You and Your Company” at the 2013 BIA Annual Conference, April 8–10, in Indianapolis Indiana. ...
read moreUnderstanding Print: Terminology and Workflow Are Key
The following is a guest blog post from Joe Marin, Sr. Instructor/Manager Training Programs, Printing Industries of America, encouraging graphic arts professionals and industry newcomers to attend Orientation to the Graphic Arts, April 15–18, 2013. The printing industry is complex and constantly changing. I’ve found that one of the biggest problems for those who are new to the industry—and even those who worked in the business for a while—is understanding terminology and workflow. Administrative, sales, and even production employees are often focused on their specific task without completely understanding how what they do impacts the job being produced. Add this to all of the industry terminology and jargon and the printing industry can quickly become a confusing place to work! The Orientation to the Graphic Arts workshop addresses all of these issues and so much more. During this class you won’t just see workflow, you’ll be immersed in a graphic arts workflow set in Printing Industries of America’s amazing production laboratories: Be a designer, and create a job to print on our digital press. Be the prepress operator, and understand digital file problems, create proofs and plates. Be the press operator, and print a job on our 6-color offset press. Be the bindery technician, and operate a cutter, folder, and saddle-stitcher. Check out the video above, which provides an overview of our amazing training facility. Also, check out some of the pictures below that illustrate the laboratories used in Orientation to the Graphic...
read moreAssimilate or Die—CustomXM’s Real-life Transformation Story
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Paul Strack, President of CustomXM, about how his company has dealt with the rapid transformations in the printing industry. CustomXM, formerly Custom Printing Company, is a family-owned operation in North Little Rock, Arkansas that has successfully transitioned from a traditional offset printing company to a provider of integrated printing and marketing services. Paul will be one of the speakers at the 2013 Integrated Print Forum in May, where he’ll share the story of his company’s successful transition. When and why did the company change its name? Do you still consider yourself a “printer” today? The name change occurred in 2007/2008. Our company had been evolving over the years and we wanted to highlight more of our new capabilities. Based on where we thought the industry and our work was going, we felt that we needed to communicate our ability to provide cross-media marketing. Print is still the main engine driving our company and it makes up probably 30-40% of our revenue. However, we are seeing significant growth in other areas like fulfillment and marketing services. How did your existing customers react to the name change? Did the new name help in attracting new customers? It’s funny because existing customers were somewhat confused when they received their invoices and the company name and logo had changed. In hindsight, perhaps we could have provided more advance communication about the change. But in a way the change was a door opening opportunity, because it gave us a chance to explain to existing customers that we could do more than they thought. I think new customers started to become aware of our marketing services when we got involved in social media. Whether it was Twitter or Facebook, it opened us up to a whole new audience who didn’t know us from our “print-only” days. At first, I handled most of the social media outreach. But recently one of our newer hires (a sales rep) has gotten involved on Twitter and Facebook. How has your work changed over the past five years? We’ve been doing more and more integrated campaigns for clients. These are primarily direct mail campaigns that incorporate PURLs, landing pages, emails, and social media. We have seen quite a bit of growth in these campaigns over the last two years. Early on, it seemed like we were doing more one-off campaigns for clients. But I felt that this defeated the purpose, because one of the strengths of integrated marketing campaigns is that you gather information about your clients’ customers, which in turn allows you to refine the process in subsequent campaigns. Over the past few years, we have had success with providing multiple campaigns for individual customers. What are some of the most interesting projects you’ve worked on in the last few years? We’ve recently started to employ augmented reality technology in some of our campaigns. We use a version of the Aurasma platform that is skinned with our logo. We call it VReal. One memorable VReal application was for a medical company’s trade show booth. A printed piece at the client’s booth had a trigger that, when scanned, brought up a 3D image of a larynx. We’ve also used VReal for a recruitment campaign for a college. When prospective students scanned the...
read moreOffice Machines Vs. Production Presses
We recently posed the following question to the members of our LinkedIn group (Digital Printing Council): How do you distinguish between “convenience printing” or office digital copying equipment and “production” digital presses. In our post, we asked if anyone made this distinction solely on the basis of speed or pages per minute (PPM). We received a couple of in-depth responses that explained why simple PPM is not an effective means of distinguishing production equipment from office equipment. John Conley, Vice President Commercial Print and Publishing, Xerox Corporation The nomenclature of “production” versus “office is not driven by speed. It is driven by durability. Equipment that goes into a production environment needs to have the ability be up and running for the time frame the associated printer has designated as his working production period. This could be one, two, or three shifts. A production piece of equipment must be able to run billable work at rated speed over a sustained period of time with predictable outcomes and for the economic life of the equipment. A 100 PPM machine that is not built to produce 2.5 million+ pages a month of billable output over the 5 or more years of expected product life would not be a production device. Said another way, office equipment is used on demand. It is not scheduled and has an expected usage of the average office work day, which is usually 8 to 10 hours and not potentially three 8 hour shifts as you could have in a production plant. Karen Kimerer, Business Development Consultant, Xerox Corporation I agree with John, PPM is not a qualifier. The question isn’t how many pages it can print over a minute, hour, or shift; it’s how many pages it can print over the course of a month—pages that may be unique job to job and that require make-ready and finishing. Along that line, a production press is differentiated by registration—image to page registration as well as front to back registration. Without consistent registration the print can’t be finished and subsequently becomes waste. Media flexibility or substrate range also distinguishes a digital press from a fast copier. With the growth of eligible digital pages comes the growth of media types. a production press will have paper feeding, paper handling, turn radius and fusing elements designed and manufactured to address the challenges of heavier weight paper, synthetics, and even mixed media within a job. Reliability and uptime that withstand the volumes and various media types clearly separates a production press from high-speed office...
read moreStaples Advantage Is Here for Printing Industries of America
Printing Industries of America has teamed up with Staples Advantage to offer an unbelievable cost‐saving program exclusively for its members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. With this Buying Program, your business is eligible to save on office products and more via the Staples Advantage program. This program allows you to leverage the Buying Program of all participating members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. Staples Advantage can help you reduce expenses through our competitive prices on more than 180,000 products available through the proprietary Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® website. The website allows you to place orders, track orders 24 hours a day, check product availability, review pricing, set up reusable shopping lists, and make returns. You can count on Staples to provide you with: Significant savings—an average of 55% off of list prices on office product purchases Online ordering, returns, and control on Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® Hassle-free 30-day return policy Ability to order by phone and fax FREE Next-Day Delivery on minimum orders of $30 Reporting capabilities Members also have access to a dedicated account manager for assistance and special pricing on business machines and supplies, furniture, electronics, bulk purchases, and special order items (i.e., rubber stamps, notary seals, etc.). For additional information or to get started, go to www.printing.org/staples. To see a listing of all the National Buying Programs, visit www.printing.org/buyingpower. For questions regarding the Staples program or any of the Buying Programs, contact Justin Goldstein, Director, Member Services, at Printing Industries of America, at info@printing.org or...
read moreStaples Advantage Is Here for Printing Industries of America
Printing Industries of America has teamed up with Staples Advantage to offer an unbelievable cost‐saving program exclusively for its members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. With this Buying Program, your business is eligible to save on office products and more via the Staples Advantage program. This program allows you to leverage the Buying Program of all participating members through Printing Industries of America affiliates. Staples Advantage can help you reduce expenses through our competitive prices on more than 180,000 products available through the proprietary Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® website. The website allows you to place orders, track orders 24 hours a day, check product availability, review pricing, set up reusable shopping lists, and make returns. You can count on Staples to provide you with: Significant savings—an average of 55% off of list prices on office product purchases Online ordering, returns, and control on Order.StaplesAdvantage.com® Hassle-free 30-day return policy Ability to order by phone and fax FREE Next-Day Delivery on minimum orders of $30 Reporting capabilities Members also have access to a dedicated account manager for assistance and special pricing on business machines and supplies, furniture, electronics, bulk purchases, and special order items (i.e., rubber stamps, notary seals, etc.). For additional information or to get started, go to www.printing.org/staples. To see a listing of all the National Buying Programs, visit www.printing.org/buyingpower. For questions regarding the Staples program or any of the Buying Programs, contact Justin Goldstein, Director, Member Services, at Printing Industries of America, at info@printing.org or...
read moreDo More with Less—Three Steps to Creating and Maintaining Lean
Many companies say they want to increase their company’s competitiveness and accumulate improvement goals more quickly. They want to maintain higher profits, increase production, and reduce waste. But where do you start? Lantech, a leading U.S.-based manufacturer of shrink wrap equipment used in the printing industry, turned to Lean Manufacturing over a decade ago in order to regain its competitive edge. It created a successful Lean environment and maintained it, becoming a benchmark for the application of Lean practices within U.S. manufacturing. Here is Lantech’s advice to other manufacturers: Implement Standard Work and Kaizen Lean Manufacturing is a management system born out of the philosophy and practices of the Toyota Production System—considered by many to be the world’s best manufacturing company—and have since been adopted by North American companies to systematically reduce waste, lead time, and achieve a better production flow. This is a proven model to implement a Lean system. Jim Lancaster of Lantech on the importance of Lean management Maintain Your Past Improvements After all of the effort you put into making your improvements, make sure they last. Stabilize your conditions and focus on continuing to improve. Do not concentrate only on the planning but rather more on the execution. This is done by relying on management to maintain quality as a key initiative. Each subsequent improvement should aim higher than the last, so that the pace of progress continues steadily. Practice PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act/Adjust) By applying PCDA principals throughout your operations, you repeat a cycle until you achieve sought-after results. Plan: Develop a way to effect improvement Do: Implement the plan on a small, manageable scale Check: Review for any variance between the predicted results and the actual conditions observed Act/Adjust: Take action or modify based on your review By creating a standardized management system and a process to continuously make improvements, your company can reach goals and not just fall back into the same old processes that were setting you back. If you are interested and would like to learn more about creating and maintaining Lean Manufacturing practices, take a look at the video featuring Jim Lancaster, CEO and Owner, Lantech. Lancaster will also present Lean Management: Staying on Course with Improvement Goals at our annual Continuous Improvement Conference, April 7–10, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The conference also features a tour to one of Toyota’s largest plants in North...
read moreThe Laser Revolution in Finishing
By Don Piontek The business of diecutting, kiss-cutting, perforating, and creasing has always been accomplished via mechanical tooling, or rotary cutting or routing tools. Dies and blanks, various rollers and wheels, are all employed in the service of creating…
read moreAugmented Reality Update
Marketers are always looking for ways to get more from their print budgets. Historically, printers have responded through the use of customized print, and more recently, quick response (QR) codes. One of the latest innovations in print is augmented reality, which allows for the creation of unique 3-D experiences that add another dimension to print. Printing Industries of America’s Joe Marin has updated a popular Digital Printing Council white paper on augmented reality. This white paper, which is free to all Printing Industries of America members, provides an overview of augmented reality technologies and highlights their relevance to print. New information includes an updated tutorial and additional resources. Members can download the new white paper here. Additionally, Marin has created a series of video tutorials to accompany his white paper. The first three videos of a planned six-part series are currently up on the Digital Printing Council website. The topics explained include how to download and install augmented reality software applications, how to use some basic tools to create and navigate around a 3-D object, and how to trace a 2-D object and turn it into a 3-D object for augmented reality software. Members can view the new videos...
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