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Consider the Possibilities

Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of the inaugural speech delivered last month by PSDA President Bob O’Connell, president of Vanguard Direct, a distributorship in New York City, at PSDA’s Print Solutions Conference & Expo in Las Vegas.

At Vanguard, we’ve had our share of stumbles. My brother Don and I could tell you how we set out to be a “super broker” of stock paper and ended up holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad inventory. Or we could tell you how difficult and costly it is to own and operate a website development company. Or we could tell you about the salesman who worked for us—and three other companies—all at the same time.

Have you ever been on a sales call that went so poorly that you questioned your future in this industry? I have. It was the mid 1980s, and I was hearing a lot about a new service called forms management. Our direct selling competitors were thriving with it, especially in the health care industry. Overconfident and ill-prepared, I took a prospect on a plant tour. This prospect, the CFO of a five-hospital network, first wanted to see our pick and pack operation, which I promised was state-of-the-art. She expected to see numerous workers and conveyers and racking. Picture her reaction at finding one Vanguard worker at a table with a desktop shrink-wrap machine. That was strike one!

Then I took her on a plant tour. Before we got into the building, she wanted to know why the plant had another company’s name on it. She didn’t quite understand the distributor model. While walking through the plant, I was further blindsided when we saw boxes with Standard Register’s name on them. This manufacturer, unbeknownst to me, did a lot of work for them. My prospect was visibly perplexed by all of this. Strike two!

Undeterred, I took her to our corporate headquarters, a converted residential home on a country road. Quaint, but not quite what she expected. By now, smoke came out of her ears. I put on my best sales face and asked, “How about lunch?” Strike three!

Needless to say, I didn’t get that account.

But we learned. We learned what our customers needed, and we made the right investments. Today, Vanguard has more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse and an automated pick and pack system.

Learning to live with change, to accept it, embrace it and profit from it is what drives our industry. Technology has had an enormous impact on our industry, but it hasn’t been all negative. Remember when you had to call your customer for everything and how there was no documentation trail? Remember how long it took to get an answer? Now we have email.

Remember when you had to be in the office most of the day for fear you might miss an important call? Now we have cell phones. Remember when it took days to get proof approvals? The proof had to be prepared, mailed to your customer and then mailed back to the plant. Now we have PDFs.

Then there’s digital printing, perhaps with the most impact of all. Distributors and printers are having great success with this as a complement to offset printing. Printers also are using this technology in areas such as prepress, resulting in cost efficiencies and improved turnaround times.

These changes in technology have made our workday more productive, and changed the printing landscape. If forms management was the buzz in the ’80s, what is it today? Is it pURLs? Is it data mining? Is it web-to-print? What does the successful distributor look like today? What should a typical project look like?

Let’s say we produce a survey form, a brochure, a folder and a promotional item for our client’s sales meetings. There was a time when that would be the end of that order. Today, perhaps you design the items, assemble the material into kits, store and distribute them to multiple locations. You might design a custom package to hold all of these components or write a program that collects the survey data from the form. You then provide the client with a report of the results of the survey and create a follow up postcard mailing that’s personalized. From there, you might follow with an email campaign and give the client a report of results.

Whatever your focus, it’s no longer enough to print, store and ship products. We need to help our customers at deeper levels of their business. On the front end, it’s competencies such as creative services, database management, digital asset management, discovery and industry research.

In the middle, print will always be the common denominator. Or will it? At a minimum, we’ll be expert outsourcers with our manufacturing partners. On the back end, we use terms like logistics instead of warehousing; fulfillment instead of pick and pack; and metrics instead of guarantees to support our promise of improved results.
Have you thought through your growth strategy? Do you have the people and resources you need to make it happen? Much of our time at Vanguard is spent reinventing ourselves. This is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Our customers continue to come to us for one reason—they trust us. I’ve learned that trust is the dividend of promises fulfilled.

So while you consider the possibilities, please consider some of the things that have worked for me. First and foremost, think of yourselves as an extension of your customer. Our most successful customer relationships are ones where the client thinks we work for them. They come to us with their challenges because they know we will be a resource to them.

Second, develop a project management culture in your organization. Put yourself in a position to solve client challenges rather than go after an order. Don’t we do this now when we make a rush delivery, develop a cost saving solution, clean up a mail list for an important mailing, or design a form or brochure that’s easier to print?

Third, hire the best people. Pay them what they’re worth. Recognize their contributions. The greatest contribution I’ve made at Vanguard was hiring the senior management team we have today. Don and I realized early on that we needed high-level support in core areas such as sales, finance and technology.

Fourth, reinvest in your organization. Over the past three years, Vanguard has reinvested nearly half of our earnings into our infrastructure. We think we are ready for what the future has in store for us. Reinvesting in the look and feel of our corporate headquarters, for instance, has given us the color and vibrancy of an ad agency. Today, customers enjoy visiting our office. They look at us as someone who can help drive their bottom line.

Finally, think big and think boldly. One of my brothers taught me early on that no customer is too big for us. Our limitations are only what we think they are. Nor is there any customer challenge that we can’t handle, provided we have the proper resources in place.

You will find many successful members of PSDA doing incredible things in our industry. Stu Boyer of the Cooley Group, a New York distributor and a founding PSDA member, developed a fulfillment program for kids’ apparel in local school districts. This turnkey program includes preprinted order forms, a web ordering system, payment processing and distribution.

Schools love this true fulfillment system because they don’t have to do a thing, and when it is finished they simply receive a check from Cooley.

Rob Whitman and Chuck Clifford, of Innovative Print Group, a Pennsylvania distributor, partner with an interactive company to offer web development services and email campaigns to Innovative’s existing customers. These services complement Innovative’s traditional product offering of documents, commercial print and direct mail.

Our industry does lots things to deliver faster, cheaper and better solutions, but we must also keep a keen eye on the competition. It starts with knowing who our competition is. Is it the web-based printers such as Vista Print or Print4Less? Or is it the retailers like Staples and Office Depot?

In August, Staples announced that it can now design, proof, and print business cards in 30 minutes for $19.99. That is certainly fast and cheap. Office Max answered that challenge and announced a partnership with VistaPrint to provide custom printing at an affordable price. Office Depot introduced its in-store Xerox Certified Print Specialist—staff that undergoes special print training.

They’re all looking to capture market share, and they’ll succeed, but isn’t it commodity printing they’re after? What value do they bring besides low pricing? Where is our opportunity?

The challenge for us is to firmly take hold of the “value added” print market. And value added means focusing on the services that our customers need help with. Rather than sell products, focus on the message and the many different ways we can deliver it. I believe our industry is extremely well positioned to do this. Industry reports show that nearly two-thirds of the traditional forms market is handled by independent distributors and it’s going up each year. Other printing segments are moving to the independent channel as well. NAPL recently reported that commercial printers expect “value added services” to grow to 15 percent of their business in three years. This will be up 5 percent from today’s numbers.

If we are to seize this emerging market, our association needs an appropriate brand identity. No longer will our brand be an underground association name. A fresh start deserves a fresh face. The DMIA name and brand has served us well, but it’s time for a change. The Print Services and Distribution (PSDA) brand will enable us to gain market awareness and acceptance. As your president during the next year, I have a few promises to make.

First, I promise to bring fresh thinking about what’s best for this association and for you. I will fight hard to change the natural gravitation to the “same old, same old” thinking. During the coming year, we’ll look at partnering with other associations, attracting new and relevant members, evolving our Print Solutions Conference & Expo and, of course, improving ways for you to network with one another.

Second, I promise to listen. I want your thoughts and ideas. The board of directors, the staff and I all look forward to engaging with you. This year, the board will have more direct communication links to our Regional Directors so that we have a strong grip on the pulse of the membership.

Third, I will work to build on the progress PSDA made in recent years. Current and past board members have been committed to improving our meetings, membership and information. As for our brand, I will work hard to make it something we can all be proud of.

Meetings will continue to be a primary focus, and we are pleased they are getting strong reviews. The CEO summit, Small Distributor Summit and Print Manufacturer/Supplier meetings were relevant, informative and well-attended. These meetings are geared specifically to the sub-sets of membership. We’ll continue to tailor them to the membership’s wishes.

At the Spring Technology Conference this past year we learned a lot about pURLs. We will continue to focus on technology and will bring in industry and non-industry experts to achieve this. Our Print Solutions meeting this year included education sessions on the show floor, a technology showcase featuring equipment suppliers, and the Green Pavilion, an area with FSC and environmentally friendly exhibitors. TradeMarts will be very different in 2008, with a focus on vertical markets. And we’ll continue to be the source of information that you can’t get anywhere else. Our publications, listservs, webinars, Source Hotline and the Print Education and Research Foundation are just some of the ways you can do that.

Now, what can I ask of you? Every now and then I hear someone say, “I’m not sure if PSDA is worth it.” Do you attend meetings? Do you participate in meetings you attend? When is the last time you looked at the PSDA website? Have you ever volunteered your services to PSDA?

I’m living proof that you get out of it what you put into it. In the early years of our membership, I did not participate much. As a result, I got very little benefit from being a member. Once I reached out to the members, they were there to help me. When I volunteered, I got back way more than I gave. I now have a remarkably diverse network of peers. Many of them have become good friends as well.

For this association to be most successful going forward, each of us needs to give and take. If you do, I assure you that you will benefit tenfold from it. I know I have. There are many ways for you to get involved.

Expect active support from your association. Help your association work for you. I believe that is a winning formula for PSDA and for all of us. I look forward to working with you to make 2008 an exciting and rewarding year.