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Master Technology and Then Sell Printing

The downturn in the American automobile industry has hurt ADDC Inc.’s business, which primarily works with car dealerships. Commodity forms pricing and laser documents have also nipped away at revenue from traditional business.

Dave Frishman, vice president of ADDC Inc. and an avowed “techno-freak,” is a former electronics engineer who renounced the technical world for selling printing, and has done on-and-off consulting work for more than two decades. His robust e-commerce options help him sell to companies all across the United States, which helps keep him in business. All of his industry knowledge is self-taught, he acknowledges modestly.

“I have just started to get into ad specialties,” Frishman says. “It’s a limited market, but I know all my customers are buying them.” The biggest difficulty, he says, is sourcing the right product from a selection of thousands.

The Last Hurrah: Double Your Sales and Retire

This year, Arnold Greebel, veteran founder of AJ Images, has an ambitious goal: “I want to double my sales in 2008.” He admits that will be a tall order, considering current market conditions and the threat from digital printing. However, for a shop that’s enjoyed at least 5 percent growth for the past 15 years, it’s an achievable goal, Greebel says.

“It’s a last-hurrah effort before I retire,” Greebel admits. Although he plans to still drop in the office, calling it “semi-retirement,” he’s given himself a year to find the company a new 25,000 to 30,000-sq. ft. facility, shop for a 6-color press, and dramatically increase the company’s marketing. AJ Images just hosted a wine tasting and plant tour for 30 people, he says, and they received supportive emails asking the company to do it again. Its next event, he says, will be a plant tour highlighting the company’s eco-friendly initiatives.

“When things get tough out there, advertising usually stops or slows down,” Greebel says, indicating how the larger economy affects his business. “That’s opposite, in my mind, to what we should do and what our customers should do.” When times are tight, AJ Images also works to shore up relationships with existing clients.
In traditional printing, the company’s multicolor work and large runs, its core business, are affected by outsourcing to China, especially for long lead time jobs like quarterly newsletters. “To protect our accounts, we’re starting to look into bidding overseas.” It’s hard to find a reputable trade printer in China, Greebel says. “There are plenty of companies that will quote you in an instant, but it turns out the cost savings might not be enough or the quality could be terrible. You’re just on your own.”

Greebel, who was originally an engineer before he got into the typesetting business, has seen the industry pull through great change and he’s ready for more. “We broker out our digital work right now, but the digital side is where the future of the business is, especially internet orders.” The company is beginning to move in that direction, he says, after a website redesign, a new location and a new order system.

Communicate on Your Clients’ Behalf

Although BJDMedia, Winter Springs, Fla., is only a year and a half old, its founder, Darren Wendrof, knows how to serve clients’ needs while relying on his own instincts. The company produces consumer quarterly magazines for its clients in the health industry, including a gym and a chiropractor. The clients aren’t focused on their internet presence, Wendrof says, but creating a viable online strategy and content will be his biggest task in 2008.

“I always listen to what the clients say and try to meet their needs,” he says, but sometimes the best way to do that is by listening to what the clients don’t say. “They focus on healthy foods, or fitness or related ideas. They might think they know a better way to reach readers, but engaging the audience is our specialty,” he says. Clients hire the veteran writer and reporter, formerly of Men’s Health, to handle communications with their customers.

Right now, the three full-time employees and 20 contractors are busy working on publications, but Wendrof would be “open to working on” a direct mail campaign or other 4-color printing jobs that would integrate with the overall communication strategy.

“Our industry is really about engaging people,” he says. “You don’t have to be first, or the best; you have to figure out how to do it right for that client.”

Say ‘Yes’ to Unusual Projects

In the coming year, Dan Boddie, principal of one-man distributorship Boddie Documents in Delaware, hopes to focus on establishing his niche in several vertical markets to support his income in an environment threatened by downturn and recession. “Although I’ve worked in capital budget planning in big companies like Standard Register, I have never formally laid out the plan for my own business in that way,” Boddie says. “In 2008, I want to focus on identifying some markets, like financial, health care and retail.”

But Boddie already has a practiced hand at identifying niche business opportunities. In 2007, he made his first foray into the legal world through a connection with a copier renting facility. After the facility turned down a request for a one-day rental, the facility’s receptionist remembered Boddie from a cold call months before. “She told me that this law firm needed some copying done for the day, and wasn’t sure if that was part of my business,” Boddie says.

Sensing an opportunity, he phoned the law firm, which was suing a rival legal company. “They had to go to the other company’s headquarters, copy their documents for court records, and had to get it done in a day,” Boddie remembers. “I told them, ‘I’ll see how soon I can get someone there.’ I went into it blindly” Having never done a similar project, Boddie needed time to plan.

Eventually, the law firm paid him half the quoted fee up front, effectively financing the operation. Boddie rented a machine for a month, paid a temp to do the copying, and collected the balance after the documents were delivered. “They wanted the convenience of me handling it and were willing to pay for that service. I put this together over the phone; I never saw the copier or the temp,” he says. Although the deal could have soured quickly, the law firm was so pleased with his work that they asked for Boddie’s brochures.

“Admittedly, it wasn’t a purely print project; it was value-added services. Not saying ‘no’ to services and being creative with our industry is going to be the key to surviving,” he says.

Dominate High-Value Spaces with Large Format Printing

According to Sam Sheng, 15-year industry veteran and president of the Virginia-based CosmoBLS printing company, the print and advertising worlds suffer from a blind spot about large-format printing. “Oftentimes when we look at a large-size print in a store display window we see pronounced dots or washed-out color,” he says. As urban environments become cluttered with cheaper color print advertisements, Sheng sees a growing need for large-format print, which has also benefited from a demand surge with the falling cost of color. His plan is to invest in large-format offset UV printing, under the trademarked name of Large-Format 2.0.

In the coming year, CosmoBLS will focus on retail stores, architects, builders, fast food chains and designers. All of them compete to capture the end user’s attention in high-value urban spaces or high-volume shopping environments, often against multimedia displays and sounds or lights. Other than turnaround time and quality, customers ask Sheng for lenticular elements, which the company has begun offering. The lenticular posters, as large as 47 by 62 inches, offer a high profit margin for CosmoBLS as well as an opportunity for customers to stand out.

A lot of the reason the company stands apart from its competitors, Sheng says, is the technical capabilities it offers, as well as the substrate versatility in its UV work. The wide-format market is one that many companies are just dipping into, he says, but CosmoBLS’s two decades of history gives it a lot to draw on when advertising. “The advertising agencies we work for find the screen printing and dye-sub processes aren’t a good fit for their businesses, in time or technology or expense,” he says. “With the advent of large presses this year, I think 2008 will see strides in large-format offset printing, even as clients struggle to curb discretionary spending in response to the economy.”

Learn to Sell “Beyond Print”

Dave Lipinski and Jon Clark, the distributor partners who formed Harris Media Group in late 2006, came from established companies in the print industry. When they started their joint venture, printed products were the alpha and the omega of their business. “But months into the startup, it was so obvious that it couldn’t just be about printing,” Lipinski says. “In our minds, the future is not secure if all we’re doing is printing.” The thought jumpstarted a “kind of genesis” for Harris Media Group.

The biggest challenge for the duo this year is to fine-tune their offerings outside of print. “We’re trying to truly step into those consultant shoes that every sales guy talks about wanting to be, and determine with the client whether print is truly the best fit for their project or not,” Lipinski says. Most of their work is with nonprofit organizations, and he finds many of them are spending more on electronic media than print media this year, a “total flip-flop” from five years ago.

Lipinski is selling more web-based communication, direct mail, self-mailers, booklets, magazines and all types of digital short run work (under 7,000 pieces). Clients, he says, are looking for print-on-demand collateral, creative work and direct mail. “I am not going back to school to learn that,” Lipinski laughs. “I can’t code a website myself. That’s why we use partners to help design a solution.” Although Harris’ strategic partners aren’t formally part of the company, their expertise and credentials are featured on the website and they often make joint sales calls. “It just makes the process seamless and turnkey for the client. Why confuse them?” Lipinski asks. The electronic media experts have helped the founding partners grow and offer a greater variety of integrated programs, the backbone of what Lipinski hopes will be sales of more than $1 million next year.

Except for one unusual project for an insurance company—the Harris team redesigned an enrollment form for the company, providing the principals with several options to choose from. The client decided on the 8.5 by 11-inch 15-part carbonless unit set. “It was tough even to find a manufacturer with that kind of collating capability,” Lipinski laughs. “By far, it was the weirdest thing we did last year.” However, he emphasizes, the goal with this client was not to approach the account to take an existing forms order away from another distributor. “Their process was totally screwed up and we gave them a few ideas of how to fix it. It’s just that they decided to go with the 15-part form.” The profit was welcome, however, and it’s the end goal Lipinski keeps in mind.

“There are 50,000 of us out there who can do this work—whether it’s printing a form or coding a website. So no matter what it is, how you handle it for the client and what the communication does for them makes your business stand apart. Solving that problem is the gratifying part of my job,” Lipinski says.

Green Printing and Postage Are Natural Allies

Gary Emmott, president of Texas-based MailAgain Envelopes and an industry consultant, was “green” before it became fashionable. After starting his business in 1988 and going full-time in 2001, his primary focus was eco-friendly mailing and packaging. “Now, it’s expanded and grown, and as I’m working with companies on their projects and progress, that’s just another thing I bring to the table.”

Emmott, who holds two industry patents and has worked with Pitney Bowes, Böwe Bell + Howell and the U.S. Postal Service, brings process improvement plans to big companies. “I target companies that can realize savings fairly quickly, in a simple way,” he says, such as a penny per envelope.” But that’s not all he does. Recently, Emmott has worked with customers who own sophisticated inserting and data tracking systems to mail custom DVDs.

“There are a lot of instances where this saves on postage and, of course, paper,” Emmott says. “If you’re a phone company and you’re sending bill records to big businesses, such as law firms who charge clients for phone calls, typically you’re sending something the size of a book.” Putting that information on a DVD makes it easier to mail to the client, he says, as well as easier for the law firms to manipulate the data and bill their clients.

In addition to making things greener and conserving resources, Emmott’s processes make packages easier to open and use. Sometimes, eliminating components and changing things creates resistance from the client, but Emmott professes he can save 50 to 60 percent of fulfillment costs up front for major retail clients like Walmart.com.

After testing MailAgain’s EZ pull (the envelope is opened by tearing a flap from the front window), mortgage and financial clients reported they had a higher response rate and recipients were very pleased with the process. In beta tests for earlier envelope designs, older people found it easiest to open the envelopes, and doctors and attorneys, whom Emmott says don’t read directions, found it the most difficult.

Emmott, who “grew up” in the printing and engineering world, is enthused about the future and how digital information is changing mail and print. “The most exciting thing right now is how the reusables are getting to be more viable and user-friendly. Packages can be both intuitive for the customer and eco-friendly. The way ahead is green.”

Sell Uncomplicated Products to a Niche Market

The times have changed, and MGM Printing has changed with them. “We changed our market outlook the last couple years and it’s helped us,” says Jim Schneider, CFC, vice president. “For years we went after traditional forms business and some high-quality 4-color work. Recently, instead of going after the high-end printing, we’ve gone after some simpler stuff.” Schneider includes letterhead, business cards and booklets in his definition of simpler products.

The company has been successful selling standard products because it has positioned itself as an expert in the education market. “We used to be very slow during the summer,” says Schneider. “My partner, Tony Bartolowits, has always been looking for a market to help us out in the slow times. We talk about the upturns and downturns of our business. Our area of the country is growing. People are moving in. We’re always going to need schools. If the economy goes bad, businesses are going to slow down, but kids will still be in schools.”

Serving a niche market has helped MGM Printing avoid constant negotiating over price of its services. “We used to fight the price all the time,” says Schneider. “It’s not a constant battle for us anymore. As soon as we get into the facility, it’s not nearly the issue that service and delivery is.”

MGM produces some products in house but continues to outsource its forms and 4-color projects. The company adds to its competitiveness by offering clients online ordering capabilities and streamlining its workflow. “We’re in the process of adding some new prepress equipment that will make us more efficient,” says Schneider. “We try to understand what technology is out there and utilize it in our business.”

Schneider, who has been part of the industry for nearly 30 years, also puts stock in relationship building. “When I started, it was a matter of going out and making the calls. If we aren’t prospecting daily, we’ll go backwards,” he says. “We can have all the technology we want and all the equipment we want, but if we aren’t constantly in front of people, farming that business, we’ll fall behind eventually.”

The End of a Good Run

This is George Echerd’s last year in the printing industry. The 77-year-old entrepreneur and 1983-1984 National Business Forms Association (now PSDA) president started his distributorship in 1969, after 13 years as a UARCO sales rep. He plans to sell his business to an employee and retire at the end of 2008. “It’s a different industry than what it was when I was in my heyday,” he says. “That’s fine. That’s progress.”

After the forms business peaked in the ’80s, most distributors began selling other products and transitioning away from their traditional product lines. “The industry turned to other solutions, and I take my hat off to these younger guys who learned how to sell ad specialties and commercial printing,” he says. “I have some people who made the transition and they are selling a lot of commercial printing now. I kept selling forms-consuming accounts.”

Much of his lasting forms business comes from retail accounts, but other markets, such as education, have declined. “I had a university that did $150,000 a year with me. Now they probably do $5,000 year with me because they don’t buy forms,” Echerd says. “They just transmit information back and forth on their computers. That’s typical of a lot of accounts.”

Echerd is pragmatic about his declining forms sales: “As owner of the firm, it’s probably better that the firm doesn’t depend on my sales to be a success,” he says, leaving him more time to manage the business. Though the products his company sells have changed, Echerd has some timeless advice for distributors just starting out. “Learn all you can about the products and services you can offer,” he says. “Find out what your customers are going to want and then tailor your business to their needs.”

Capture Niche Markets by Working With Clients’ Other Suppliers

The TransForm Group has found a successful approach to penetrating vertical markets. They partner with other suppliers that serve those markets. For instance, a large part of their client base includes staffing agencies, including recruiters and those supplying temporary workers. The TransForm Group sells a significant number of tax forms to these companies, and one way they were able to position themselves as experts was by partnering with the software companies that supply payroll software and automation to these companies. “We partnered with software companies and they were very gracious in giving us the forms templates that went with their software,” says Marilyn Mraz, vice president.

As the industry has changed, so have the products that The TransForm Group sells. That’s one reason it’s advantageous to be associated with a niche market. To be considered an expert, it’s important to anticipate what clients’ issues will be and how to respond to them. For instance, Transform Group finds much of its new business through referrals and then solidifies those relationships with online ordering solutions. “We have a lot of our clients set up so they can order on the web,” says Mraz. “That’s been a big growth area for us.” The company uses operations software to monitor clients’ inventory and alert them when it’s time to re-order.

Payroll and tax records are a critical area of staffing agencies businesses. By focusing on making that process easier, TransForm Group has kept itself valuable to its clients. “Staffing agencies use a lot of checks,” Mraz explains. “They have to include MICR numbering that has to be read by the banks. Years ago, we just sold the checks, but now they print the checks themselves. So we sell them the MICR cartridges.”

The TransForm Group stays alert to trends in the industry that will affect their sales and allow them to offer new application-based products. “We’ll have to look for other areas as time goes on,” Mraz says. She uses one example of how the industry is changing: Instead of checks, some staffing agencies give employees plastic cards that act as pre-filled debit cards. “The agencies give out cards instead of checks,” Mraz says. “The bank will do a direct deposit.”

Break Into Promotional Sales With Branded Apparel

Pete Kelly offers his clients the ability to put their logo on anything, even if they don’t have one. Kelly’s son serves as the distributor’s in-house designer, allowing PrintAll to act more as a branding and corporate identity consultant than product supplier. “When I start out, I’m just looking for something small to get my foot in the door, and then I can expand on that,” he says. “Even if it’s just letterhead or envelopes, you try and turn those opportunities into more printing, obviously.”

Though he started by selling traditional print, Kelly has found additional profit by selling promotional products and branded apparel. “They truly do go hand-in-hand,” he says. “They’re pretty easy to cross sell.” In his experience, apparel sales are easier to jump into headfirst. “You just set yourself up with a good screenprinter and a good embroiderer, and then there are some major apparel suppliers. I try to stick with one or two.” On the other hand, learning the promotional products industry takes more time, due to the sheer number of products and suppliers available to distributors. “At our disposal, Advertising Specialties Institute says there are 3,500 suppliers, with close to one million products to choose from, so there’s a tidal wave of knowledge that you have to sort through,” Kelly says.

Still, it’s crucial to offer your clients more than one solution. Kelly tries to be the single-source provider for all his clients’ brand identity products. “Once you’ve got them as your customer and they’re happy with you, it only makes sense to sell something else to them,” he says.

Behind Every Envelope Is a Mail Expert

Bobbie Schade proves that commodity products like envelopes can be sold profitably. Schade was a sales rep for Mail-Well (now Cenveo) before the plant she worked for closed in 2006. Now she owns a nascent distributorship focused on helping clients with mailing problems. It’s not the envelopes that win Schade business. It’s her expertise in postal regulations that help her save clients money. In particular, she helps clients who have been affected by the USPS’s postal rate changes in 2007. “It’s made a huge difference in the mailing for companies, because it’s so much more expensive to ship out flats,” she says. “In order to realize savings for the bottom line, companies must rethink envelope designs along with postal strategies.”

Schade’s primary focus in 2008 is growing her business. She hopes to attract new customers by introducing them to a CD/DVD mailer from Media Mail Solutions that allows the pieces to be processed as letters rather than flats. “There’s a huge market for this, and there would be a tremendous savings for clients if they used it,” she says. Although she sometimes misses the benefits and financial resources available at a large company, Schade insists that she prefers being a distributor. “It would be very difficult to go back to working for another company again,” she says.

Andy Brown is managing editor of Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to abrown@psda.org. Rebecca Trela is assistant editor of Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@psda.org.