Print Solutions Magazine, May 2002 -- Spotlight

Growing With Energy

By 2000, the name Sidney Printing Works had grown old to the Deutsch family. "The present generation has seen a shift in the industry," Thom Deutsch says. "We wanted to [offer internet services] as well as print." But prospective clients equated the company's name with presses. So in 2000, with the help of an identity agency, the family changed the company name to SpringDot and added the motto "Energized Communications."

"The word 'spring' denotes energy, fun, boing--you can get a sound out of that," Thom Deutsch says, mimicking one of the many sounds that greet visitors to the company's Flash 5-enhanced web site. (See "Creating an Interactive Web Site" on page 22.) "A dot symbolizes the dot in print or the dot in [dot-com]."

Although the company is almost 100 years old, the Deutsch family strives to gain new clients with a pumped-up, youthful approach. "People need and want to talk to a lot of young people," Thom Deutsch says. The firm's change in focus has allowed it to expand into areas many commercial printers don't focus on. "We're ahead of our time," Deutsch says. "We're the Coca-Cola of the industry."

Today, SpringDot offers commercial printing services (including prepress, finishing and fulfillment) as well as electronic messaging, educational services and an FTP site to a client roster that includes The Kroger Co., Paramount Parks and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. According to Josh Deutsch, SpringDot's executive vice president, the company experienced "extraordinary" growth between 1992 and 2000 and now generates more than $7 million in annual sales.

Blazing an Electronic Trail

Like many distributors and manufacturers, Thom Deutsch is convinced that adding value is the key to a prosperous business. To that end, he and the rest of the Deutsch clan have turned a traditional printing company into a message facilitator. Their goal is to be the leader in hybrid message-delivery solutions.


SpringDot's MessageMaker is a web-based literature management and deployment service that allows clients to create and send highly personalized electronic messages

By utilizing the internet and other technologies, SpringDot explores, designs and executes new ways to effectively deliver clients' messages to targeted audiences. "You have to understand the power of the internet in business-to-business systems," Thom Deutsch says. But, he adds, clients must be willing to learn about the benefits of high-tech message facilitation.

SpringDot's creative services department, dubbed Electronic Media Arts (EMA), is a team of designers that develops personalized communication pieces for clients. According to Thom Deutsch, almost all design is completed in house. One of the creative team's biggest responsibilities is designing clients' printed products. The team also strives to build clients' brands online. It establishes new marketing images for customers, reinforcing those images with new or revised web sites, business cards, packaging and more. The team also registers clients' domain names, finds appropriate hosting services and registers sites with popular search engines.

MessageMaker, a web-based literature management and deployment service, is a result of a strategic partnership between SpringDot and Twelve Horses, a software messaging company. Sales representatives, client-services employees or even CEOs of SpringDot's clients can send personalized electronic messages. (See example on right.) Each e-message includes a "web wrapper," which includes a link to specified areas of the client's web site. The message also includes personalized text. Below the text is a box that summarizes relevant content in the message. For example, a client describing a certain aspect of his or her firm can write words in the content summary box and add links such as "View HTML," "View PDF" and "Download" so a recipient can gain further information. Below the content summary box is a call to action box, where the recipient can write a reply or check boxes next to predetermined replies such as "Please call me today," "Let's do lunch" or "I'd like to schedule a meeting." MessageMaker tracks and reports the responses to the sender.

SpringDot also offers SpringView™, a suite of web-based proofing solutions that enables collaborative, online proofing of high-resolution files in real time through Netscape browsers. The files, which depict actual products to be printed, can be viewed 24 hours a day from any location by multiple people simultaneously. Using PCs or Macs, clients download a free plug-in from SpringDot's web site and install it on their browsers. This gives clients access to SpringView's server. Clients also have access to customizable workspaces (created by SpringDot) that include projects the client and SpringDot are working on. Once SpringDot posts a project, the firm contacts people responsible for proofing. Those folks share comments by using mark-up tools (basically, online sticky notes). Once SpringDot makes the specified changes, the proofers are emailed a direct URL link to the new image. SpringView's patent-pending imaging engine, Pixels-On-Demand™, allows for coordinate measurement and real-time panning and zooming.

Shortening the Learning Curve

"We knew there was going to be a learning curve with our clients," Thom Deutsch says. "I'm sure it took a number of years for Gutenberg to explain that he was a printer, not a scribe."

SpringDot recently launched SpringDot University, a school that began as an effort to teach the company's staff about digital prepress file structures. The firm now offers free classes to clients and the general public. Students can register for the classes online at www.springdot.com. Previously offered classes include "Printing Basics," "Quark Training," "PDF: Vision for the Future," "Sales Management Roundtable," "Leveraging the Web," "The E-Commerce Landscape," "Data Mining," and "Technology-Based Marketing." According to Thom Deutsch (who also serves as dean of SpringDot University), the school is another way the company adds value.

Back at his office in Cincinnati, Thom Deutsch continues clicking through his interactive Flash presentation, proudly pointing out SpringDot's message-deployment capabilities. The company, he eagerly explains, now attracts marketing departments, not just print buyers. The firm is vastly different than the one his grandfather began in 1904, but the family's dedication to its customers--and to each other--remains strong. "This is a fun place to work," he says.

Kara Gebhart, a freelance writer in Cincinnati, is a former assistant editor at Print Solutions. Email us your comments at editors@printsolutionsmag.com .

Creating an Interactive Web Site

When Sidney Printing Works changed its name to SpringDot in 2000, the firm also redesigned its web site (www.springdot.com) using Macromedia Flash™.

According to Josh Deutsch, the company's executive vice president, the price quote for a Flash web site created out of house was "a fortune." So SpringDot designed a simple, 5-page HTML site and used its own creative department to improve the site's content and design. The department includes two people--Erin Deutsch, director of digital media arts, and Matt Bennett, multimedia developer and webmaster.

In January, SprintDot's web site (www.springdot.com)
recorded more than 2,500 visitor sessions.

SpringDot's user-friendly web site includes a demonstration of MessageMaker (the firm's web-based literature management and deployment service), a password-protected client portal, information about its commercial printing capabilities and education services, and more.

"People go to the site and are very impressed," Josh Deutsch says. "It helps when we prospect. It adds familiarity and shows our energy." He says more clients are looking for ways to communicate with their vendors electronically, and SpringDot's site enables them to do that.

According to Thom Deutsch, SpringDot's president and CEO, the web site has helped the company expand its client roster. "I had a call from a prospect who was looking at a number of printers, and we were one of the last ones on her list," he says. "But after looking at our web site, she said that she wanted us to do the work."