Unfortunately, Steele had selected a printer with a 2-color press for a 4-color job, so getting the colors exactly right was an elusive proposition. The press operator ran the job three or four times. Steele says the printer nearly matched the product colors, but didn't come close enough for one of the partners of the rock company. "The photographer got paid, the color separator got paid, and the print shop got paid," Steele says ruefully. Business Forms Inc. didn't get paid--and lost a customer. "It was a while before we did a 4-color job again," Steele says.
In hindsight, Steele recognizes the mistakes he made. He wishes he had asked the client to hire the photographer. He says he shouldn't have believed the problem could be fixed so easily, and he should have found a printer with more suitable equipment. He says he has learned much since that project, and today commercial printing--including brochures, fliers, posters and annual reports--accounts for 75 percent of his distributorship's sales.
"One of the nice things about commercial printing is there is always a need for something new and different," Steele says. At the same time, he acknowledges that the learning curve to selling commercial printing is steep, and projects aren't always as profitable as they seem because they can be time-intensive.
6 Truths to Recognize
There is little doubt that distributors' ability to offer commercial printing can bring in new clients or prevent existing ones from looking elsewhere. But the distributors interviewed for this article agree that selling commercial printing is vastly different from selling forms and often more challenging than selling promotional products. Anyone who wants to sell commercial printing profitably should realize the following realities and plan accordingly:
1. Complex jobs can eat up time. What happens when a designer delivers a disk that meets the specifications of a printer she works with regularly, but not the one selected for the job? What if the paper your client selected was discontinued? What should you do if an outside designer fails to meet a deadline, threatening to throw a project off press? In all these instances, you'll spend unplanned time on the phone.
2. Rush orders are the norm. This stems, in part, from the nature of many commercial printing projects. A retailer might need signs for a last-minute sale, a manufacturer might require extra brochures for an upcoming trade show, or a distributor might request fliers to help move an overstocked product. Fast turnaround also can result from a buyer's intense interest in seeing the finished project, Steele says. A marketing manager who has spent weeks developing the concept and slogans for a new brochure or a designer who has spent weeks fine-tuning the layout of an annual report will be eager to hold the printed piece.
3. Press checks can occur at odd times. Some clients demand press checks, which invariably occur in the middle of the night, distributors say. Are your vendors willing to conduct press checks? Is someone in your company flexible enough to lose sleep occasionally?
4. Color (the right color) counts. The grocery store chain across the street doesn't want yellow-looking pork chops in its weekly circular, and the development director of a major university wants its school colors to appear precisely as they should in its annual report to donors. Seek customer approval at every phase of the job and cultivate relationships with printers whose standards and abilities match your clients' expectations.
5. Quality is subjective. Chances are you've been house shopping. Did you ever reject a house within seconds, then have a hard time explaining the problem to the real estate agent? The same thing can happen when you sell commercial printing. Image is the paramount concern for clients, and they won't always be able to articulate why they don't like certain designs or paper stocks. It can take time and patience to hammer out the right combination of paper, ink and design.
6. Partnering with commercial printers requires education. If you work with a local commercial printer, it might be used to selling direct. If you plan to work with one, you probably will need to educate the firm about shipping products in blank cartons, providing packing lists without pricing details and more, says Roger Rumble, president of Business Supply Resource Inc., a distributorship in West Chester, Pa. Some distributors require that commercial printers sign agreements promising not to compete on jobs produced for their companies.
David Hurdle, president of Indianapolis distributorship Paradigm Group Inc., has dealt with printers that began competing against him after he had sent them work. Maybe it was just coincidence, he says, but he stopped working with those printers and had his attorney draw up a preferred-vendor agreement. Check with your attorney for assistance in drawing up any legal document.
5 Tips to Follow
Despite commercial printing's challenges (including intense competition from direct-sellers), distributors can thrive in the niche. Try the following ideas:
1. Get in the door with promotional products. Commercial printing often goes hand in hand with promotional products. For example, a client might order giveaways for a trade show, then need 4-color brochures as handouts. Although distributors' experiences are wide-ranging, Hurdle has discovered it's easier to sell commercial printing to marketing managers who have worked with him on promotional product jobs.
2. Expect the unexpected. Rumble prepares carefully for each commercial printing job. At the outset of each one, he creates a detailed production schedule to remind him of intermediate deadlines associated with the project. Because distributors often end up coordinating the work of designers, photographers, ad agencies and multiple manufacturers, crises are bound to occur.
Rumble recalls a recent project during which a designer submitted a disk for a 60-page tabloid guidebook. The price quote had been based on 56 pages, and the job was nearly ready for press. The designer couldn't be blamed because some of the book's content arrived at the last minute from a government office. That content varied in length from version to version. The client couldn't delete anything, so Rumble called his printer to see if enough paper was on hand to expand the book. Luckily there was, but the printer explained that the project could be done more economically in 64 pages instead of 60. Next, Rumble called the designer. Because the index was running tight, the designer easily could expand the guidebook to 64 pages. Despite the hurdles, the project was delivered on time.
3. Beat the bid process by presenting new concepts. Greg Erickson, president of Midwest Specialty Marketing, a distributorship in St. Paul, Minn., doesn't sell much commercial printing in the competitive Twin Cities market. But after receiving a calendar sample from a trade-only manufacturer, he proposed a special calendar to an existing client--a college's development office. The 2001 calendar, which the college mailed to 5,000 of its biggest donors, incorporated historic and contemporary photographs. The college handled the design of the calendar, which measured approximately 10-3/4 x 16-5/8 inches when opened. "I got the job because I suggested it," Erickson says. "[The buyer] could have shopped the idea to 50 printers."
4. Help clients set realistic budgets. In the face of slower economic conditions, clients are converting 4-color pieces to 2-color ones and requesting smaller quantities on repeat orders, Hurdle says. "Marketing budgets have been cut quite a bit," he says. A struggling economy also means marketing managers are less likely to request designs that require custom dies or special varnishes, Steele says.
5. Maintain dialogue with prepress people. Hurdle says prepress problems are far less common than they were a few years ago. Recently, though, he had to tell a client that his printer needed to convert a file to QuarkXPress that had been produced using other software, and that she would be charged accordingly. Paradigm Group employees rely on a prepress checklist from their vendor for assistance. "Prepress people aren't shy about telling you their preferences," Hurdle says. Listen carefully up front, and you'll avoid delays and extra charges later.
Katherine House, a frequent contributor to Print Solutions, is a freelance writer based in Iowa City, Iowa. Email us your comments to bholt@printsolutionsmag.com.
