Remember that kid in high school who seemed to be everywhere at once--the one who was on student council, the track team, the debate team, the yearbook staff and the honor roll? There's a good chance the kid became a commercial printer.
Commercial printing is ideal for people who can multitask. In one month alone, it could mean supplying pamphlets, brochures, newsletters, annual reports and books, and handling logistical issues such as list management and development, and distribution.
Apopka, Fla.-based Performance Press Inc. developed a marketing booklet for a bank. The client wanted a piece that would promote the services available at each of its 18 branches, while maintaining the bank's overall corporate image. The distributorship developed a mini pocket folder that contains staggered inserts.
"Everyone can print a piece that looks good—it's ink on paper—but our job is to give them a return on their investment," says Greg Gill, president of Apopka, Fla.-based distributorship Performance Press Inc. "A better design, a better idea, a better-engineered piece—we focus on that." The company produces customized marketing pieces from one-sentence ideas and follows them through production, distribution, and list and inventory management. For many customers, the desired results are effective, to-the-point, customized marketing pieces.
Recently, Performance Press developed a booklet for an Orlando, Fla.-based bank. The client wanted a marketing piece that would promote various services available at each of its 18 branches, while maintaining the bank's overall corporate image and reducing the bulk of its current pieces. "They wanted a marketing product so that when a customer came into a branch wanting to know about its services, they didn't have to leave with 20 different brochures," Gill says.
Performance Press focused on maximizing the message in one shot. Consolidating 14 individual brochures about the bank's services, Gill and his team developed a mini pocket folder that contains staggered inserts. Each insert outlines an individual service, so bank patrons can walk away with one branded package instead of a bundle of literature. Also, with Performance Press' online ordering options, each branch can reorder easily without approval from its corporate office.
Online ordering isn't just reshaping the way customers order; it's also making it easier to sell commercial printing. "E-commerce is the wave of our industry," says Gill, adding it's especially appealing to clients with multiple locations. The initial challenges—a financial commitment to technology and software, an investment in IT staffing, and the learning curve of setting up an ordering site and system—are outweighed by the benefits. "Once those challenges are overcome, the benefits are tremendous," Gill says. "Clients then have an easy way to procure their product. They can protect their corporate image because the pieces are already developed. They can order online 24/7." Performance Press also develops mailing lists, offers warehousing and monitors client inventory.
—Katie Weeks
