Since Drew & Rogers Inc. opened its doors in 1944, flexibility has been a key to the distributorship's success. When business partners Aubrey Drew and Fred Rogers started the Fairfield, N.J., firm, they sold carbon paper and engraving services. In response to customers' demands, they gradually added business forms and commercial printing to their firm's product mix. Today, Drew & Rogers--now led by Rogers' son, Tom--offers business forms, commercial printing, promotional products, packaging, labels, direct mail and more.
After taking the helm as Drew & Rogers' president in 1993, Tom Rogers began looking for ways to grow the distributorship's sales. "When I came into this business in 1987, we were 100 percent business forms," he says. "Today, we're probably 40 percent business forms and 60 percent other [products]. I keep looking for value-added products that have growth potential and that aren't going to be replaced by technology."
In 1997, Rogers purchased The Wyan
Group, a West Caldwell, N.J., firm that sells packaging products such as audio
and video packaging, binders, mailers, slipcases, tabbed indexes, presentation
folders, totes, point-of-purchase displays and portfolios. The Wyan Group, which
operates as a division of Drew & Rogers, primarily targets health care
firms. It also provides packaging for kits that pharmaceutical companies send to
doctors' offices. After noticing that the pharmaceutical companies filled the
kits with promotional shirts, hats and other products, Rogers added promotional
products to the division's product mix. Now located in the same facility as Drew
& Rogers, The Wyan Group also provides warehousing, fulfillment and
distribution services.
Valuable Letters: FTP and CAD
"If you incorporate technology into your overall scheme of things, you make it easier for customers to do business with you," Rogers says. Three years ago, Drew & Rogers began offering e-commerce services. Clients can log on to the distributorship's web site and place, proof and track orders. Customers also can view real-time inventory information and details about items previously ordered, including order dates, monthly usage, and shipping and billing information.
Drew & Rogers also maintains an FTP site for clients and manufacturers. Customers log on to the site with their user names and passwords to upload artwork that manufacturers then easily can download for particular jobs. "It saves us time and also allows us to print in all kinds of places," Rogers says. "Right now, we're printing in Canada to [capitalize on the strength of] the dollar."
Earlier this year, The Wyan Group began using computer-aided-design (CAD) software for its packaging sales. The software allows the division to create full-color 3-D models of packages that clients can view on their computer screens. The Wyan Group emails files to clients, who then can proof package layouts or present them to clients via projectors in their conference rooms. By clicking on the 3-D images, clients can open, close, unfold and otherwise manipulate the packages. Once clients approve digital versions of packages, The Wyan Group uses its large-scale plotters to economically produce prototypes. Its large format digital presses create package color proofs. This process saves The Wyan Group and its clients both time and money.
The Wyan Group currently is using the CAD software to design rum packaging for a liquor company. The project requires approval from designers, product managers and marketing managers at multiple locations worldwide. "We don't have to make one prototype and try to get it to 12 different locations," Rogers says. "[The CAD software] allows us to work with pretty remote areas very easily."
Offering High-Tech Solutions
Approximately four years ago, a mutual fund company approached Drew & Rogers for assistance with several small but complex mailings. The mailings required the company to analyze large amounts of customer data stored in multiple text files. Each mailing would include letters personalized with names, account numbers, investment amounts and more, as well as business-reply cards or envelopes. The mutual fund company usually worked with a large mail house to produce other mailings, but the mail house couldn't handle small, complex jobs efficiently. The client turned to Drew & Rogers.
To manage the mutual fund company's mailings, Drew & Rogers created AutoComposer, a raw data manipulator that sorts, analyzes and, in some cases, makes calculations using the mutual fund company's client data. It generates mailing lists, personalizes documents, calculates statement information, and creates customized bar charts and pie charts. AutoComposer outputs the information in Adobe PostScript® format, allowing for flexibility in printer choice and seamless web presentment without additional programming.
Using AutoComposer, Drew & Rogers provides the mutual fund company with approximately nine different mailings to 2,500-30,000 customers several times a year. The mailings include low-balance notifications to customers whose investments fall below certain dollar amounts, fund cancellation letters for holders of discontinued funds and tax notification mailings.
—Kara S. Carpenter
To manage a mutual fund company's small but complex shareholder mailings, Fairfield, N.J., distributorship Drew & Rogers created AutoComposer, a raw data manipulator that sorts, analyzes and, in some cases, makes calculations using the mutual fund company's client data. One of the mailings includes 20,000 81/2 x 11-inch, full-color year-end performance reports for fund holders with more than $2 million in assets. AutoComposer creates reports, such as the piece shown here, that include personalized bar charts and pie charts.
