Market Opportunities: Playing the Game

In this month’s installment of the Market Opportunity series, we’ll be taking a closer look at a type of printing most of us have seen and experienced — festivals and outdoor events. Great signage can help make a good event even better, and bad signage and printing can drag a good event down.

The first thing to keep in mind with creating materials for these events is that the turn-around time can be incredibly short. “Sponsorships generally come in late, and because of that there is a tight window to get everything done,” noted Douglas Cole, president and owner of the Speedpro Imaging in Rochester, NY, “The Imaging Capital of the World,” he pointed out. “A lot of times, I don’t get the final imagery until two days before the event, so we’ve got to be prepared and there is not a lot of wiggle room.”

The reason for the tight deadlines is that most events continue to sell sponsorships right up until a few days prior to the event starting. And every one of those sponsors needs to have their logo on all the prominently signage and printed materials. Shops that go into this type of work expecting to adhere to their usual timelines will find they lose the business fast.

Even larger events with a wider variety of signage needs that don’t require logos can have much tighter deadlines than many other projects. SpeedPro Chicago Loop had the opportunity to create the signage for the inaugural Chi-Town Rising event, the largest New Year’s Eve celebration in the city. And they found deadlines were just as much of a challenge.

“Another challenging factor to this project was the short time frame we had to work with and large volume (over 7,000 sq ft),” said the Manager of Client Accounts and Marketing for the shop, Grace Musante, “After we received the project, we had 6 weeks to pull everything together. When we were first given the project we had a long list of signs that needed to be created. Throughout the following weeks however, pieces were continuously added and edits to previously submitted signs were being requested, including some edits that really came down to the wire.”

Winning the Work

Another factor that sets festival and event work apart is in how it’s won. Unlike traditional print sales, most of these jobs don’t go to the print salesperson who does the best job selling. Both Musante and Cole noted that they won the work through networking and relationships.

“Eric [Lazar, President and Owner, SpeedPro Chicago Loop] started selling with SpeedPro in August and was open to working with any industry that had large format print needs,” Musante said. “He met the founder of Chi-Town Rising, John Murray, at a Marine’s for Life event where the two got the chance to discuss their respective businesses. As Marine veterans, both John and Eric are actively working with this organization. At the time, John was planning the inaugural Chi-Town Rising event. This was an extremely attractive project for us because Chicago had never had an outdoor New Year’s Eve event that was similar to NYC’s NYE in Time Square event. Working on this event offered SpeedPro Chicago Loop a lot of publicity. After their initial meeting, Eric and John met up again in mid-November to discuss their print needs for the event. After it was established that we had the capabilities to complete the project which entailed many more meetings and conversations, we were offered the job.”

For Cole, the relationship happened much slower, building over time. “This client needed a bunch of stuff donated, so we did that a couple times for them. And then, the last couple of years we graduated to doing everything for the event: directional signs, backdrops, flag displays, pavement/floor graphics, general banners, and informational signs. This business is all based on reputation and building alliances. This client contracts print work through an ad agency who I had done enough work for on other projects. So there was already a comfort level that I could do the entire project.”

In both cases, the owners themselves were out talking to the organizers and the agencies handling the specifics of the event, making sure they built a good rapport, and even being willing to donate some time and materials as a way to get a foot in the door. They took the time to create connections and build relationships, rather than just making sales calls.

Reaping the Benefits

So why would a shop want to go after clients that take more time and work to build relationships, to produce projects with tight deadlines and multiple rounds of changes? Exposure.

“Working on a large, high-profile event like Chi-Town Rising is great opportunity because it not only gives us a well-known large scale event to add to our portfolio, but it also lends to our studio’s credibility,” Musante said. “When we took on this project our studio space was still under construction and we did not have any in-house printing capabilities. We had to partner with other SpeedPro studios and project manage to get everything done on time. Because of our involvement with this project we are in a good position to work on other similar events down the line.”

“We get a lot of exposure,” agreed Cole. “They let me put a lot of my banners up throughout the festival, and I got a lot of exposure that way as well. But I’m not only getting exposure to thousands of people, I’m also meeting a lot of the clients who are also part of the event. That’s a great benefit — they all need something.”

Cole went on to point out that as the print vendor, he is often talking not just to the event organizers and the agency, but also to every company that is involved with sponsorships and providing graphics. It is a chance to show off what the shop is capable of, so when the time comes for them to do their own print work, he already has an established, proven relationship. It is a strategy that has paid off in spades. “I’ve been doing this for a long time — I don’t know how many years now — and I get to work with a lot of interesting people through this event. I get to meet the big sponsors, and build my client base — I get to meet all the important characters in the area.”

Festival work might not be the easiest, or have the best margins in and of itself. But the chance to meet the movers and shakers of the area, to show off what your shop is capable of producing, and build relationships that can turn into highly lucrative jobs down the line all make this vertical a worthwhile use of time and energy. And it’s a vertical that almost any shop in any city can take advantage of — there are always craft fairs, church festivals and a wide range of outdoor events that can be tapped into. Get out there and start building those relationships today.