Copy Factory Improves Efficiency and Exceeds Customer Expectations

Located in Palo Alto, Calif., Copy Factory is a full-service digital printing and bindery shop committed to providing customers with on-time, quality work at affordable prices. Run by the husband-and-wife team of Kimberly and Todd Axtell, who have 45 years of combined printing industry experience, Copy Factory serves customers large and small, ranging from local neighbors, nearby Silicon Valley tech firms and print brokers to clients located in Seattle, Chicago and Brooklyn, NY.

After the Axtells purchased Copy Factory in February 2007, they set about implementing best practices gathered from years of working for the area’s top printing companies. With just themselves and two part-time employees to handle the workload, they needed to invest in more technology to make their business thrive. The duo primarily manage the high volume production work themselves and to stay competitive needed to streamline the production process. Many of their orders require color and black & white output and they could either do this manually or use technology. Some of the capabilities they were looking for included: the ability to easily set up documents requiring imposition; print color and black & white documents inline without manual collation; combine files from different formats to create the final output; and build multi-chapter documents easily.

Already familiar with EFI technology, Todd Axtell installed EFI MicroPress, a high-performance document production system that streamlines prepress work, automates manual processes, and optimizes engine speed to efficiently produce color and black & white documents. MicroPress supports the latest industry standard file formats, with the power to natively process PostScript, PDF and XPS, resulting in faster, more accurate output. The powerful MicroPress solution included all the capabilities that the Axtells needed to grow the business while keeping costs down.

Impressive makeready tool

Copy Factory is particularly impressed with the TrueEdit makeready tool, which automates manual processes such as inserting tabs, hand collating, and creating booklets. TrueEdit enables operators to prepare documents that have already been RIPped for printing and to scan directly into existing documents, which “is a huge time saver,” says Todd Axtell. “I can easily add new pages and the system will re-order the pages for me without having to start over with the setup.”

Axtell regularly uses the advanced tab functions in Tab Editor, which he calls “elegant and easy to use.” He also often uses the Make Pad feature to easily and quickly produce collated jobs. What could take hours of setup can be done with a right click of the mouse allowing the
Axtells to do three times as much work as they could without the MicroPress.

On the prepress side, Copy Factory relies on TrueCluster to increase engine output by printing multiple and large jobs simultaneously and quickly, and PowerRIP to maximize throughput by allowing simultaneous processing of multiple files. Axtell notes that these tools are especially key when he does variable data print work. “The files RIP quickly and print right away, which eliminates any bottlenecks,” he says. All of this allows them to produce more while keeping the staff small and efficient.

Axtell is looking forward to using MicroPress with his color equipment to extend the benefits he’s already seeing on his black & white machines.