Making Your Mark in Mass Transit

Mass transit is a wide vertical, with many opportunities.

Toni McQuilken
August 1, 2017
CircleGraphics1
"We’re very good at billboards - at the end of the day that’s printing big rectangles," said Andrew Cousin, CEO, Circle Graphics. "Transit graphics isn't rocket science, but it is more complicated - there are tighter specifications, the print quality has to be significantly higher."

When you hear the word “transit” what do you think about? Subways? Buses? Train stations? The reality is, transit covers a lot of ground, and for enterprising print shops, it can be a lucrative vertical to break into.

The trick is to start with one small portion of the proverbial pie, and then let it expand from there. For example, Signarama Lewisville, Texas decided to just take the plunge one day. “To be honest, we were signed up on several bid platforms, and 100% of the time ignored them. We thought the jobs were ‘out of our league’ until we purchased our second location, our Frisco store. This location had experience with House Accounts, and as I passed the Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) every morning, it gave me the courage to ‘get in the game,’” said Stephanie Spies-Cunningham and Todd Cunningham, Signarama Lewisville, Texas. “Having multiple national accounts, repeat business, and government entities would help grow our business and get our name out in the local community.”

For SpeedPro Imaging of Denver, it was a more deliberate vertical that they targeted. “We got involved in this vertical by design. I wanted to focus the studio on larger jobs,” said Darin Schneider, owner of SpeedPro Imaging of Denver. “Our first big client (Comcast) was landed from a cold call to the Mountain Region Fleet manager.”

And Circle Graphics took a third approach. The company had been incredibly successful carving out a dominant niche in grand format billboard graphics, but when it decided it was time to expand, said Andrew Cousin, CEO, Circle Graphics, “the next obvious place was the non-billboard out-of-home market, which is transit.”

And as different as the three approaches to getting involved in the transit market are, the shops are just as different in how they do the work, illustrating the depth of opportunities the vertical can offer.

Circle Graphics, for example, decided to focus on their current customers, since, as Cousin noted, many times the same clients buying billboard graphics are also the buyers for various transit applications. He noted that, “We have three types of customers: the media owners themselves — billboard companies or folks that own or control the media assets like buses, shelters, street furniture, stations, etc.; the media buying advertising agencies, who also provide print production for their clients; and finally the large advertisers who do their own media buying in house and purchase their print production directly.”

Cousin said that for the most part, Circle Graphics is just focusing on the print production — the creative comes almost exclusively from the brand owners or ad agencies, and while they do occasionally coordinate installation, they are mostly working with companies that own the media locations, which have their own installation crews ready to go.

SpeedPro Imaging of Denver has taken the opposite approach, however. ‘Currently for Comcast, we are only the installation partner. For Boulder County & Colorado Department of Transportation, we are soup to nuts (except design) on their bus wraps for various Denver-Boulder routes,” noted Schneider. He also noted that when they do produce the graphics, they also get into more than just printing and installing the vinyl. “We have had to add painting vents/grills on the buses to roughly match the applied vinyl graphics,” he noted as one example of additional services the shop expanded to offer as they got more involved in the vertical.

Get in the Game

So, how do you go about securing this type of work? Spies-Cunningham and Cunningham noted that it is all about putting the shop out there. “It’s about submitting bids with specific parameters, and tailoring solutions to meet a unique need. Learning the client’s business needs, industry terminology, and regulatory and compliance specifications. Open communication, working closely with contacts, and creating that customer service relationship.”

They pointed out that, especially at first, there are costs involved with learning the industry. It’s about more than just knowing how to apply a bus wrap, for example. The successful shops in this vertical understand their specific client's needs, which segments of the transit market they are looking to target, and how to get the best response for each of those segments.

Especially when a shop is involved in the installation part of the job as well, logistics becomes a challenge the shop will need to create efficient and organized workflows to tackle. “Logistics are the hardest part of this vertical,” said Schneider. “When the client asks you to rebrand 600-plus vehicles in 10 weeks time, and to minimize down time — or have 20 buses completely wrapped in 45 days — making sure we have adequate staffing for installation and graphics ready to go are not simple and straight-forward.”

The Equipment List

Transit graphics are the realm of wide-format printers, there is no getting around that. For example, Spies-Cunningham and Cunningham said that their location is currently running an HP Latex 360 Printer and HP Scitex FB750 Industrial Flatbed Printer, Graphtec 8600, and Roland SoljetPro3 XC540MT press. However, that was not always the case. “When we started working with DCTA, we did not have the flatbed yet and were still able to fulfill their large mass orders. They took a lot longer though, and our profit margin was not as high as it is now. We knew a flatbed purchase was in our future, so acquiring the account was important to us. Now that we have the flatbed, we can get these large orders out in no time with very little cost to us.”

Cousin noted that his shop is also running a wide range of presses from the likes of Durst, EFI, HP, Fujifilm, and Screen. Nearly all of them, he said, are solvent or UV-cured, with the exception of their HP equipment, which are latex. “For the whole business, we have 88 grand-format printers — we are the largest grand-format printer in North America,” he said. “For transit work, we are using around 20 of those — we use the higher-end, higher-resolution presses for that work.”

And resolution is important. Some wide-format work, such as billboards, are made to be seen from a distance, so the resolution can be lower. However, a bus shelter or subway wrap will be seen from a foot or two away, meaning the graphics have to look perfect from any distance.

The Payoff

So why should a wide-format printer look into adding the transit vertical to their product mix? There are many reasons, but, as Schneider pointed out, one big one is the ability to get in front of a wider range of potential customers. “We are now able to go after more, larger fleet jobs after demonstrating our proficiency in completing these projects,” he noted.

Spies-Cunningham and Cunningham agreed, noting, “We are also gaining references from DCTA, which has given us credibility with other government entities as a true one-stop provider for anything and everything visual.” They did note that one way they have made themselves a go-to partner is by pricing accordingly. “We consistently charge them about 50% less than the average standard order customer,” they said. “With quantity discounts considered even on standard orders, and importance of considering cash flow, we feel it has been more than beneficial. Vertical customers have long-term needs, which can also help you offer them a wide portfolio of products and services.”

Cousin said that for his shop, the biggest benefit has been the ability to capture more of the work his clients are purchasing, allowing the shop to grow. “We definitely had to step outside the comfort zone and develop new expertise with things we were less familiar with,” he said, "but the payoff has been worth it."