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This series focuses on thriving or up-and-coming companies in the print industry. Many of the companies featured won’t fit the traditional distributor or manufacturer model. Some are investor darlings, others have created industry buzz with technological innovations or a new approach to selling print. If you have suggestions for companies that should be profiled in this series, email them to abrown@PSDA.org.

Adding A Little Strategy to the Mix

TFC Inc. unites print with marketing know-how to attract big-name clients

By LaShell Stratton

The goal of most print providers is to be more than the occasional supplier. Many hope to one day become their clients’ one-stop shop, integrating their services into the workflow of the customer’s business operations so that they handle everything from the client’s stationery to its HR forms, marketing material and promotional products.

This transition requires more than just up-selling or cross-selling. It may mean diversifying product offerings beyond the traditional world of print or tendering new services such as mailing and fulfillment or personalized online stores. It may even mean undergoing an image makeover to reflect the change in focus. Some companies elect to change the company logo or drop “print” from the tagline in the hope that customers will understand that they are now multi-service providers.

TFC Inc., a marketing support service provider in Napa, Calif., didn’t have to take that step. Its client base already knows that it can handle every aspect of a marketing program, from direct response campaigns to print-on-demand solutions to marketing inventory management and fulfillment. But one thing the company does not handle is individual print orders.

“We’re not a job shop,” says Constance Hill, president and founder of TFC. “Clients don’t just bring jobs to us."

Since TFC Inc. began in 1988, the small company has gradually increased its sales, purchased more digital and inkjet presses and hired more employees.

“We’re definitely a bootstrap start-up,” says TFC’s Director of Marketing Erin Jacobs. “We’ve been experiencing double-digit sales growth annually for quite a few years.”

Now the company brings in nearly $9 million in revenue, has more than 45 employees and has a client list that includes Costco, Häagen-Dazs and Apple Computer Inc. TFC has taken the traditional print provider business model to the next level by offering sophisticated solutions that simplify its clients’ business processes. The company also has decades worth of marketing experience that help ensure the successful implementation and higher ROI’s for clients’ programs. Those components have helped TFC make itself invaluable to customers.

“We’ve developed partnerships with our clients that will continue for a long time,” Hill says. “Our competitive advantage is the way we handle our clients.”

Bringing Experience and Strategy
TFC understands clients’ pain. The empathy is articulated in the sales pitch on the company’s web site where TFC lists the top 10 reasons why prospects should use its services. “Your CMO wants to know who is responsible for spending 10 percent of the marketing budget storing last year’s summer and holiday displays,” the web site states. “Your reps are ordering golf shirts for their family and friends on their T&E budgets to meet quantity price breaks.”

That empathy can also be articulated by TFC’s employees, many of whom have both printing and marketing backgrounds and could share their own stories about the pitfalls of direct marketing and maintaining a company brand. This includes Hill who is a 23-year marketing veteran and a vice chairman on the Mailing Fulfillment Services Association’s board of directors.
“We are supported by both talent and intellect,” Jacobs says. “A lot of our guys have a background in the marketing services space in general or they have special talents or niche orientation like in direct marketing or other specifications.”

Hill and Jacobs admit that an important part of their business formula is having employees who know technology-driven marketing and certain vertical markets. For example, when TFC took over the production and distribution of California-based Purple Wine Company’s point of sale marketing and wine samples this year, it supplied its client with an account team that had experience marketing to the food and beverage industry.

Bringing this level of expertise is what TFC believes differentiates it from much of its competition in the printing industry. “Having these people really brings a depth of experience and execution strategy,” Jacobs says.

“It helps you to really know and understand the business problems of the clients,” Hill says.
TFC also carefully organizes its staff, playing to their strengths. Within the account services division, where teams help clients implement marketing programs, there is a “3-tiered approach to managing the client relationship,” Hill says.
First are the executive sponsors “who know and understand where the client is going,” Hill says. Then there are the project management and client services teams that are responsible for tactical execution of the programs. Finally, there are the client relationship managers who handle both the strategy and implementation of the programs. “They monitor the programs and help manage the clients’ success,” Hill says. The client relationship managers can work with companies for months or more than a year to determine how the program should evolve.

Supported by Technology
Much of TFC’s client management efforts are enhanced with the help of CORe, an e-commerce system that integrates the end user’s print strategies. TFC developed the program internally years ago and maintains and upgrades it with the help of five IT staffers.

“It started as just a web-enabled marketing collateral fulfillment web site,” Jacobs explains. “Now it has the capability to manage department budgets, does GL reporting, and some sites even have credit card functionality….We offer personalized sites for some of our clients where they can restrict use for some individuals or share address books. We’ve also developed capabilities to integrate with our print-on-demand devices so we can manage corporate material and come up with dynamic designs that enable our clients to do versioning of their collateral.”

This online solution came in handy for one of TFC’s clients, Delta Dental. The carrier of dental, oral health care and medical benefits had to send program information to new health plan members within tight deadline constraints or be subject to fines under state and federal regulations. The insurance documents by the health care provider had to be constantly updated to maintain government compliance and had to be mailed in a timely fashion. But when TFC reviewed Delta Dental’s new member welcome kits, they saw that much of the collateral was merely photocopies with no personalized information, and the kits were being assembled manually using kitting instructions from spreadsheets that had to be constantly updated.

“They were managing the lists internally and trying to maintain the compliance guidelines,” Hill says. “They were constantly falling behind.”

To improve the process and reduce management time, TFC integrated the order requests and benefits collateral into a POD application. The new process allows for TFC’s client service project manager to upload the spreadsheets directly into the print queue and the system pulls the variable data from the spreadsheet and merges it with the program collateral so that they can quickly produce customized print materials.

Barry Licht, Delta Dental’s manager of strategic accounts, says the change to the new fulfillment program “was a smooth process. They definitely cut down on our turnaround time and the accuracy rate is really unbelievable.”

Plans for the Future
TFC wants to continue to grow, and to do that Hill says the company has a plan that includes “bringing on capabilities to help us bring solutions to the customers.” To bring on mailing capabilities, for instance, TFC made an acquisition. “It was our first,” Hill says. “We’re looking to acquire another company.”

Another part of the growth plan involves utilizing what TFC already has to offer. “We’re trying to package our offerings,” Hill says. “We can create service products around our site. We want to continue web enabling our solutions.”

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