7 Steps to Maximizing the Trade Printer Relationship

For commercial printers looking to broaden their product and service offerings, working with a trade partner is a great option. It provides an opportunity to expand your capacity and product offerings with no capital expense.

But the trade relationship can be complicated. In this relationship, you are the customer. In this relationship, you need to put on a new pair of shoes and look at the project differently. How can you maximize this relationship? What should you know before making that call?

Value of Trade-Only Printers

First is to consider working with a trade-only printer. Commercial printers are often hesitant to work with trade printers out of fear that they will steal their clients, but trade-only printers do not have sales forces and do not work directly with businesses or marketers.

“About 70% of our business is print brokers or distributors and 30% is printers,” explains Vince Trebilcock, vice president of Spartan Printing (Arlington, TX), which offers both small-format and large-format (six-color 40” Komoris) offset printing, along with a five-color HP Indigo 7800 13x19” digital press and 80” EFI Vutek QS2 Pro. “Printers will bring their clients here because they know that this is the only way we will get that business. That client isn’t getting into our door without going through them first.”

Spartan Printing also offers full bindery, including UV coating, and streamlines its workflow using a PressWise web-to-print system.

But working with a trade printer doesn’t relieve all concerns. Once you have worked with a trade printer, it has now seen your pricing, and while there is an expectation that these numbers will be held confidential, people talk. There are also concerns about how errors are handled and whether the job will be gang run (although this is not standard practice among all trade printers).

Be Careful of Over-Internalization

But fear can be deadly to profits. Just because there are risks doesn’t mean the relationship should be avoided. Trade printers point out that too many printers hang onto jobs they cannot produce cost-effectively just to keep their presses busy, whether the jobs are profitable or not.

“The downfall of many commercial printers is their internalization of orders,” notes Bob Ohr, president of CE Printed Products and Georgia Envelope (Carol Stream, IL), which uses its 13 Halm Jet presses (two with UV capabilities) to manufacture 1.5 million envelopes per day. “They don’t have the right equipment and the right expertise in the product line, and they try to retain what would have been more profitable if they had outsourced it.”

CE Printed Products also runs five Ryobi offset presses (including one that is UV ink-capable for flood coat printing) and a Ricoh 7110x digital press with spot UV and white capabilities.

Ohr gives an example of a client that was running its four-color envelopes in-house. “They would print on a flat sheet press, then send out to a converter, trying to create this hybrid. But with our four-color Jet press, I can take a four-color job today, print it on existing stock, and have it ready tomorrow. The cost savings to the printer is 40-50%.”

How to get over the fear and reap the profits? Good communication. It takes work, trade printers say, but it’s the key to long-term growth.

“Traditional offset print market volume has declined for years,” notes Paul Edwards, CEO of FormStore (St. Louis), which prints ID cards, digital printing and mailing, and full bindery, coating, and affixing. “Future growth comes down to M&A and/or strategic partnerships. I favor partnerships because they allow printers to protect and grow their business via horizontal expansion and penetration of major accounts with fairly minimal financial expenditure.”

Edwards gives the example of membership ID cards, which allow a printer to capture the entire membership program rather than just a portion of it. “Look at the massive number of these cards being used for retail marketing, insurance, and associations,” he observes. “By outsourcing the ID card manufacturing to printers like us, commercial printers can also sell data-file management, laser personalization, inserts, envelopes and mailing.”

Don’t Make Assumptions

You know the old adage about assuming, right? That applies to trade relationships, too. Just because both your firms are printers doesn’t mean that you can read one another’s minds. Communication is critical, not just to alleviate fear, but to minimize surprises and mistakes.

“Many commercial printers have their own sets of requirements and often do not review them at the time they quote, leading to additional steps, issues, delays and even cost adjustments at the time of the order,” notes Randy Eubanks, owner of Suncoast Marketing Inc., a distributor who offers commercial printing, cross-media marketing, and product marketing services, as well as creative, Internet marketing, and Web-development services. “It’s the old ‘assume’ issue—I assumed you knew!”

As a distributor, Eubanks says that he will often work with commercial printers who don’t have the time to sort out the diverse vendor network and simply want the job done right. The diversity in the trade, Eubanks says, combined with the fact that not all trade printers have the same production equipment and capabilities at every location, can be confusing for those who don’t have the time to sort everything out. “Trade printers sell to us at a highly discounted price,” notes Eubanks. “We know the network extremely well, so by working with us, commercial printers can focus on what they do best and leave the rest of us.”

From artwork requirements to various coatings, for instance, Eubanks also notes that not all vendor relationships are created equal. It might be determined after the order was delivered that the job was supposed to be aqueous-coated and that little bit of information was not clearly shared, or that lack of communication meant that the job was delivered by the trade printer to the end client, not to the commercial printer or distributor, and confusion results: “The truck pulls up and the client is saying, ‘Who’s this?’"

The answer, Eubanks says, is in the old adage: “Measure twice, cut once!”

While there can be miscommunication, those in the trade business insist that true error rates in the trade tend to be very low. “In $16 million in sales, ours is less than 1/10 of one percent,” says Eubanks. “We have to operate on those efficiency levels because one major error can destroy the margins of many other successfully produced orders. We have increased responsibility to make sure everything goes right the first time.”

Take the Next Steps

Let’s say you’re ready to begin developing a strategic partnership with a trade partner. What are your next steps?

• If possible, visit the manufacturing location: Like commercial printers, trade printers have a wide range of specialties, so plan a visit to get a sense of the full scope of their capabilities, their capacity, the types of projects for which they would be a good fit.
• “A lot of printers will come and ask, ‘Can you do this?’ If I say, ‘not really,’ they insist on us doing it anyway because we already have a relationship,” says Trebilcock. “One printer sent me a job and said, ‘Get this done,’ but if he had been over here, he’d have known that it wasn’t a good fit.”
• Ask lots of questions: Tap into the trade partner’s expertise to learn about the products outside your wheelhouse.  This time, you aren’t the specialist — they are.
• Join a new trade association: Consider joining the Print Services and Distribution Association (PSDA) to learn about trade printing from the inside. Use the membership to develop relationships that will serve you well over the long term. “Come to our trade shows, our seminars, and learn how to utilize the vendor network we offer,” says Ohr. “Develop those relationships in advance so you don’t pass on business just because it’s unfamiliar territory.”
• Don’t expect the trade printer to wait on payment: Printers will often expect to pay trade printers once they, themselves, get paid. However, trade printers negotiate terms with you, as their client, and those arrangements should be independent of the terms you have with yours.
• Communicate—on paper: Get everything in writing to avoid ambiguity. “Email and written communication are huge,” says Trebilcock. “Giving specs over the phone will get you into trouble right quick.”
• If possible, go on a press check: “Not all printers do press checks, but it’s helpful when they do,” Trebilcock continues. “It’s just another checkpoint.”
• Extend trust: Errors can occur in any outsourcing relationship, but working through issues that arise is something that goes with the territory.  Most trade printers believe in the value of long-term relationships and will work through issues quickly.

Handled right, working with a trade partner can provide an excellent addition to your service capabilities, and for the right projects, they can often result in more profitability than doing the work in-house. As with every other expansion, do your homework, research and match providers with your needs, then push the envelope!

Choosing an Online Trade Printer

When looking to develop an outsourcing relationship, a local trade printer isn’t your only option. There are quality online trade printers to choose from as well. How does choosing an online provider differ from a brick-and-mortar one? Consider this advice from Preston Herrin, vice president of sales and marketing for 4over, an online trade printer with offset, digital, and wide-format digital capabilities.

1. Price is important, but always explore total value.

What other perks does the printer offer? Free delivery? Marketing support? Design or other services? For example, 4over offers its customers access to free, downloadable white-label content (ranging from email blasts to promotional videos) to help its customers promote and sell more print.

2. Does their business delivery model provide speed to market?

Where is the online printer located?  How many production facilities do they have? How fast are they turning your print jobs?  The closer the production location(s) are to your facility or the customer’s, coupled with the provider’s turnaround times, the faster the product gets into your customer’s hands. Like real estate, it’s often about location, location, location.

3. Do they offer free delivery services?

Most printers charge for delivery of the printed products.  Others, including 4Over, leverage their distributed print network to deliver for free. 

4. What is the ease of use of the online ordering system?

The online user experience should be simple, informative, and offer file upload and management tools that ensure the print output matches the customer expectation.  

5. What is their equipment distribution?

Do all facilities have the same equipment and production capabilities? Or does it vary from facility to facility? Just because an online printer offers certain production capabilities on its website doesn’t mean that that those capabilities are available at the production facility closest to you. Be sure to ask.