Print Solutions Magazine, January 2005 -- Case Study: Presentation Folders

While many distributorships bemoan the challenges of prepress, Steinborn sees them as an opportunity to provide customers first-rate service. "I've seen $8,000 and $10,000 jobs enter the shop and go away because of arguments over a $100 prepress problem," he says. PrintGlobe works on both PC and Mac platforms and supports all popular desktop publishing software.

Steinborn and PrintGlobe's designers worked with BWH to ensure the project's success. "We try to give our best service," he says. "We're an online company, but I have a traditional background and appreciate the best of offline service--the personal rapport with customers."

Folder Express, Omaha, Neb., manufactured the rush order for presentation folders for BWH. Steinborn says, "It's easy doing folders with a company like Folder Express in my back pocket." To meet the hospital's tight deadlines, Steinborn sent 100 folders to a conference center in Martha's Vineyard where the program officials were meeting and 1,000 to the program head's home via overnight delivery. The remaining folders were shipped ground to the customer's offices.

Price was a secondary concern for the hospital. "For them, it was about having a solution quickly," Steinborn says. "They wanted high-quality folders done right. [With most customers] that trumps price a lot of the time."

Since placing its initial order, the hospital has reordered the folders twice, making changes both times. A couple months after receiving the folders, the Lyme Disease Prevention Program requested 2,000 more with all text in Spanish. Last September, BWH ordered 5,000 folders featuring a different organization's name and new paper: PrintGlobe replaced the Cadillac Cover with Rite Cover, an 11.6 pt. stock paper carried by Folder Express.

Reorders are one of the reasons PrintGlobe counts presentation folders among its top-selling products. "We specialize in a couple dozen products, but folders are one of my favorite categories," says Steinborn. "Building a base of folder business has been a wonderful thing for my company."

--Susan Keen Flynn

The head of BWH's Lyme Disease Prevention Program wanted top-notch presentation materials about the disease, its symptoms, preventive techniques and vaccines. The hospital hands out materials primarily at schools. So the head of the program researched suppliers of presentation folders online, where she stumbled upon PrintGlobe Inc.

The Austin, Texas, distributorship was founded as a one-man company in 1995. Two years ago, the company launched its web site with e-commerce capabilities. PrintGlobe now provides an online ordering system for an entire line of business printing, including labels, forms, envelopes, promotional products, signs and presentation products. "Customers can put in a dynamic range of variables and receive pricing," says Dan Steinborn, president of PrintGlobe.

PrintGlobe has customers in 50 states and conducts all its marketing online. "We've got an A-list of clients we never could've achieved as a local company," says Steinborn. Among those is BWH, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The hospital placed its first folder order with PrintGlobe in 2002.

The 4 x 9-inch folders were printed on C1S silver Cadillac Cover®, a 12 pt. stock from paper supplier Decorated Paper. The words "Lyme Disease Prevention Program" and a graphic of a tick were foil stamped in black on the front. The back included contact information. The inside contained two pockets, which held literature about Lyme Disease and a magnet promoting the program. A high-quality folder was critical: "[The folder] is the centerpiece of their program," Steinborn says. "The hospital places them on display tables at schools."

Another top requirement was fast delivery. PrintGlobe received the order for 15,000 folders in May and had only a few days to turn around the project. The client provided the copy and artwork, a tiff file of the tick graphic. It was a low-resolution file, unsuitable for printing, so the distributorship recreated the artwork using Adobe® Illustrator® software.

Approximately 300 cases of Lyme Disease are reported each year in Massachusetts. The disease, caused by bacteria carried in small deer tick, was first identified on Cape Cod more than 40 years ago. Because the disease lurks in its backyard, Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) started a prevention program to fight the ailment, which causes flu-like symptoms. It turned to a seemingly unlikely ally for help--a distributorship in Texas.

Expand your client base. Presentation folders are commonly ordered by law firms, schools and trade show exhibitors. But there's an application for almost everyone--including celebrity Carmen Electra. PrintGlobe Inc., Austin, Texas, sold 1,000 presentation folders to an ad agency to market Electra's Aerobic Striptease DVD series. The 9 x 12-inch folders were blind embossed with a silhouette of Electra's body on the front. They included a full flood of a pink PMS color inside. "It was very elegant," says Dan Steinborn, president of PrintGlobe.

Finish strong. Orders for presentation folders often contain many components, including pockets, die cuts, embossing, foil stamping and more. While it's critical to get specifications correct, an important one that's sometimes overlooked is the paper finish. Choosing matte, high-gloss or something in between can make or break a project. Steinborn recalls a client who ordered a black folder with a full flood varnish from another printer. The folders were covered with fingerprints within seconds of handling them. "They were totally unusable," says Steinborn. "It's great to sell a $1,500 job, but it stinks to reprint it."

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