As forms margins shrink, commercial printing offers new opportunities
By Barbara A. Bucci
As demand for traditional business forms products declines, it is increasing for colored brochures, catalogs and direct mail pieces.
Distributors are "naturals" for this market because they already know some printing techniques. However, making the move from forms to commercial printing can be daunting.
"From my experience at trade shows, neophytes don't want anything to do with commercial printing. If you want to keep selling printing, you'll have to sell commercial printing as well," said Joe Kulis, director of sales for Ed Garvey & Company, Niles, Ill.
According to Kulis and other commercial printers who sell to distributors, education about commercial printing technology and terminology is a must.
Here are some suggestions.
Address Marketing Issues
"Distributors ask us how to sell commercial printing work and we don't have a magic solution for that," said Kulis. "They have to learn about the product and how it will be used by the customer. Selling to the marketing department is also different from selling to the DP or purchasing agent for business forms. You're relying on personal preferences for what colors should look like. Every job is unique."
"Somebody might want floppy disk labels, but they may only need 500. The same customer may need 10,000 full-color brochures. Consequently, there's more money for the distributor to earn," said Tom Giannini, a salesman for Color Express, King of Prussia, Pa.
Learn About Prepress
"The aspects of prepress with which distributors should become familiar depend on what type of business they're in," said Terry Richards, president of Victor Printing, Sharon, Pa. "If their customers are small companies, the distributor may have to compose and design files. If the distributor works with larger firms, he might not have to compose or design. Some of our distributors do prepress work in their own offices. They design some of the work themselves and send us an e-mail file or a Zip disk."
If the idea of complex computing terrifies you, don't fear. Communicating the printer's concerns to the end-user may be enough.
Giannini believes that distributors should become familiar with the different types of prepress technologies to determine how the end-user prepared the job for the printer.
"The prepress area is where people get hurt a lot," said Giannini. "When we quote on a job, we're very clear on how we expect distributors to supply information. We prefer disks that are prepared in a commonly used format, along with color-separated laser proofs. If a job comes in on a disk that was prepared in a consumer-based desktop program rather than a professional desktop program, it will be considerably more expensive and turnaround time will be extended."
Many design programs are not made to be output to an imagesetter. However, there are other disk problems, like missing fonts or incorrect trapping information, which can affect how a job is quoted and how fast it can be produced.
"There are many problems with incoming disks. We've designed a few spec sheets for distributors so they know what information to request from the end-user about computer files," said Richards.
"We'd rather see what the piece looks like much earlier in the production process. A good commercial piece starts with good film, so prepress work needs to be done correctly the first time," said Kulis. "If possible, have the printer create the film. That's the only way you know if trapping has been done correctly. If the printer can accept the disk file, he can adapt it to the press."
- Companies:
- Victor Printing
- Places:
- Niles, Ill.