Apex Color, Jacksonville, Fla., recently installed a second G7 Certified, Konica Minolta C8000 bizhub to increase both redundancy and capacity to better serve its customers.
"In response to customer requests for shorter runs with accurate color, two years ago we installed our first Konica C8000 color press, and 1200 press for black-and-white," said Richard Ghelerter, president of Apex Color. "Customer enthusiasm was so overwhelming it became clear that our new digital offerings would play a vital and strategic role for future growth, and today we find ourselves with a second C8000 color press."
"We began looking into a digital solution about 4 years ago," said Eric Adloff, vice president of sales and marketing. "We recognized the trends regarding shorter runs, marketing from a one-to-one perspective, and offering solutions that fit into today's cross-media applications. We did our homework, looking at everything from a Xerox IGEN and HP Indigo to lower end solutions and everything in between. We ended up partnering with Konica Minolta because we felt we could maintain the highest quality standard we are known for, while still being able to offer the most competitive pricing possible. By adding another C8000 press on the floor after just two years indicates our decision was the right fit."
Apex Color has found that its remarkable growth was not only due to being able to simply run short run static and variable high end color, but adding digital has given the company the ability to expand in a plethora of vertical markets including direct mail and promotional products as well.
"Both color presses are G7 Certified, but together our three Konica presses add more value for our customers than just perfect color and on-time delivery.Synthetics, pressure sensitive and embedded magnet substrates, along with specialized die-cut substrates, and variable data and versioning create endless product offerings for vertical markets," Ghelerter said.
"The notion that print is dead is not only greatly exaggerated-when done right, print is still a viable, measurable part of any marketing campaign using one of our most renewable resources," Adloff said. "We realized we could no longer simply be a high quality print provider. We needed to think differently in terms of how we present and enhance our products and services to our customers and digital has been an important part of that transition. Our continued growth in a long-term, struggling economy is a testament to that."
For more information, visit www.apexcolor.net.