If You Build It, They May Come…
Shops have two options when it comes to strategies for adding wide-format capabilities: “buy first and ask questions later” or the reverse, “ask questions first, then buy.”
Wide-format printing is a hot topic of conversation in commercial shops these days. In fact, there’s almost a stigma attached to not being involved in wide-format printing, as if it were the hot party that everyone simply has to be at. Equipment, software, and “applications” are starting to take over traditional print shows like Graph Expo, while specialty graphics shows like the SGIA Expo and the International Sign Association (ISA) Sign Expo are getting bigger and bigger every year. Articles in trade publications across the industry—including this one—extol the virtues of commercial printing establishments adopting some kind of wide-format production capabilities. But is it as easy as just buying a piece of equipment and getting on with it?
Essentially, shops have two options when it comes to strategies for adding wide-format capabilities: “buy first and ask questions later” (aka “if you build it, they will come”) or the reverse, “ask questions first, then buy.” (Actually, there is a third which is “ignore the whole thing and hope it goes away, but we’ve never actually seen that strategy be particularly effective.)
While there have been printers who have said, Charles Foster Kane-like, “I think it would be fun to own a wide-format printing business,” invested in all the right stuff, and set out to become the best damn wide-format graphics printer out there. And with enough pluck and determination they have succeeded.
For the run-of-the-mill print shop, that can be a bit of a gamble. So companies that have successfully added wide-format and other kinds of specialty printing have tended to opt for the second strategy, and using their own current customer base and those customers’ wide-format printing needs to drive investment plans.
A Bright Future In Sales
For one commercial printer that successfully added wide-format capabilities, the actual technology and even finding clients were the easy parts. It was transitioning certain elements of the company culture that posed problems. In particular, salespeople.
“You’ve got an infrastructure that’s wrapped all around commercial print, so they [sales reps] understand paper, folding, and stitching, but they don’t understand polystyrene or flexible substrates that are on rolls,” said Bill Gillespie, Vice President of Atlanta, Ga.’s Bennett Graphics. “There’s a learning curve for your company infrastructure, your estimating, and materials acquisition and handling. All of a sudden, you’re handling 100-inch skids. Your estimating logic isn’t accurate for wide-format. You’ve got a lot of immediate internal adjustments to make.”
Bennett Graphics was founded in 1967 and has been very a much a traditional commercial printer. Nearly two ago, they drew up a list of possible services to add to the business. Wide-format printing was one of them, and was ultimately deemed the one to pursue. Gillespie, who had just joined the company, had a background in point-of-purchase graphics, and knew his way around that space.
The wide-format business took off almost immediately. The secret to Bennett’s success was pitching it to pre-existing customers. “We were doing business with convenience stores doing their direct mail,” said Gillespie. “And we started doing shelf strips, wobblers that would be near the cooler, window graphics, graphics that go over the top of the gas pumps. Our whole relationship with that account changed in an afternoon when we got into that space.” Likewise the business that Bennett did with colleges and universities. “We’re doing recruitment mailings and commencement programs, then all of a sudden, we’re doing banners for the campus, signage around events, lobby graphics for the administration building,” added Bennett. “We’re doing things that were invisible to our sales reps before.”
Going Shopping
Bennett Graphics had taken the plunge into wide-format printing by investing in entry-level hybrid equipment that let them do both rigid and flexible materials. However, larger commercial print companies have an option that smaller ones do not: instead of buying the equipment and adjusting the infrastructure, they can simply buy a company that already has the equipment and the infrastructure. That was the option that Jefferson City, Mo.’s Brown Printing opted for.
Brown Printing—not the Brown Printing that was recently acquired by Quad/Graphics—is part of Missouri’s Modern Litho and specializes in publication printing for associations, special interest groups, and other clubs. They saw wide-format printing as a perfect complement to the services they were already offering those customers.
“Most of those organizations also have some kind of annual meeting, trade show, or regional meetings throughout the year,” said Jeff Davidson, General Manager of Brown Printing. “We felt like wide-format was something that fit well, in the form of trade show graphics and booths, signage for annual meetings, and things like that. We felt like it fit well with our current client base.”
Brown Printing had initially considered investing in the equipment itself, but realized early on that it wasn’t necessarily the ink-on-substrate part of the process that would be the challenge. Rather, said Davidson, it was workflow, and experience in producing signage. “Mainly we were concerned with finishing,” he said, “and we stumbled upon a company in our market that was a signage producer for the trade, so they were producing signage for other smaller sign shops. We went ahead and acquired the assets of that company.” And thus was born the new division Brown Printing Signs and Banners. “We started with the experience and knowhow from the employees we brought on.”
As did Bennett Graphics, so, too, did Brown Printing find wide-format printing the easy part. “We could move material through a press as well as anyone,” said Davidson. “The challenge became everything after that. Finishing and packaging were our biggest hurdles.” That is, packaging in the sense of packing up the finished wide-format graphics and delivering them. It’s tempting to focus on the most conspicuous part of the production process—the printing—while the finishing becomes almost an afterthought. Take a banner. “You’ve got to cut it, hem it, and you’ve got to put grommets in it and those are the processes that we didn’t think about beforehand,” said Davidson. “We’re really fortunate that we acquired a company that brought those things with them. Hemming and sewing a banner is an acquired skill and it takes time to train an operator to do it. If you want to sell a banner, and you’re going to stitch and hem it, having somebody that’s good at that and knows how to do it well and is fast is pretty important.”
Customer Satisfaction
Both Bennett Graphics and Brown Printing experienced better, more intimate relationships with their clients as a result of taking on this added dimension of work, and it has uncovered new kinds of work that had been invisible the salespeople used to thinking only in small-format, commercial printing terms.
“Commercial clients that are relatively small, especially in the manufacturing area, buy small things like tickets and forms,” said Davidson. “Then all of a sudden you find in a manufacturing setting that signage is very prevalent. Things like Six Sigma initiatives where everything needs to be labeled, so you need signage for all that. We found little jewels in the manufacturing area where you can get in with the facilities manager. Normally it’s a very small [commercial] print client, but can be a fairly large sign client doing facilities signage.”
Wide-format print opportunities everywhere—if you can train your sales reps to look for them. “Almost every business you drive past is a potential customer, like commercial used to be,” said Gillespie. “Almost every business you pass, certainly in a retail environment, is a prospect. Just look around at the graphics in industrial parks, in retail centers, the next time you’re pumping gas, the next time you’re in a restaurant. Somebody like us did that.”
Still, this is not to say that you can just buy a printer—or buy a company—and customers will flock to your door. It takes due diligence, and it takes a strategy.
“Wide-format is not just about printing, it’s about understanding how retail works and helping the customers support their sales activities in the field,” said Gillespie.
“Number one, you need to have a clear champion that either has experience in the industry or is willing to learn it to really dive deep into it from the sales side,” said Davidson. “Someone who can ride along on sales calls and speak the language and be your product specialist.”
Davidson is also skeptical of the “if you build it they will come” mindset. “I think some people think that if you spend $150,000 on a flatbed or maybe a hybrid machine, then you’re in the sign business,” he said. “That’s really not how it goes. Printing is the easiest part. What you do with it after that, who your client is, what they want, how you’re going to finish that product, how you’re going to get to your destination, is a considerable challenge. I’d advise against jumping in head first.”
