The Writing’s on the Wall…and Paper…and Acrylic

What a difference a few years can make. As early as 2012, the growth potential of the print industry beyond the depths of the Great Recession was still in question. Clients large and small were closing their doors for good, already reduced marketing budgets were strained to their limit, and a demand for more economical yet greener printing began to take hold. In the Phoenix market, hard choices were being made – adapt by generating shorter runs, using newer materials, venturing out into new sectors, and engaging new clients, or slowly but surely run out of steam, and ink.

“The game has changed,” says Robert Anderson, CEO and founder of Prisma, a 35-year-old Phoenix-based commercial printer specializing in online marketing supply chains. And he should know. In 2013, after 18 months of planning and strategizing, Anderson and his executive team rebranded the company, absorbing a smaller, local digital printer as well as a marketing and strategy firm, all in an effort to transform the business from a local boutique printing resource, to a nationwide full-service marketing provider. And the venture paid off. In 2015, Prisma is experiencing exponential growth, somewhere between $34-35 million in sales, which Anderson directly attributes to his firm’s evolution, incorporating moves that went beyond the economic downturn of 2008 and subsequent years.

For Anderson and his team, the writing was on the wall: Stay exclusively local and watch the business shrink year-over-year, or open up and expand into a variety of markets. Through research and exploration, Anderson’s team settled on the field of chain businesses: hotels, restaurants, educational, retail, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and the financial sector, including banks and credit unions. The company purchased new printing and production equipment and began experimenting on a variety of substrates, including aluminum and wood for grand-format prints, as well as digital mediums that could print on metallic or clear acetates. They also made the move to UV and latex inks, like many others in the industry.

Logistics became the company’s watchword, “Because whether it’s 150 stores or 1500, you need logistics. If we’re printing a quarterly campaign or producing new store openings, signage, barcodes, bins, and boxes are required to keep it all in check. Right now, we have 700 pallet racks of grand-format prints, promo items, and in-store signage, all ready to ship,” Anderson says. He estimates Prisma is shipping 9000 to 10,000 items a month that are digitally printed, then kitted, and finally shipped to locations worldwide. And that doesn’t include around the same amount in digital downloads, which Anderson sees as a burgeoning revenue opportunity.

With nearly 300,000 orders processed to date and 200 popular brands, including IHOP, Applebee’s, PetSmart, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, utilizing Prisma’s proprietary online ordering platform, dokshop, the company is able to offer its 40,000 dokshop users protected and secure access to more than 13,000 documents stored online. For Prisma, a G7-certified printer, color accuracy is also extremely important to their reputation and their clients’ brands, as precise color matching must be maintained across the country and all over the world.

Additionally, the company is finding great success in on-demand, in-house direct mailing for the healthcare industry. Distributing more than two million pieces per month, Prisma must maintain strict HIPAA and PCI compliance at their locked-down facility, including granting access to secure FTPs and online data while conducting mailing on behalf of their healthcare clients. And Prisma isn’t the only Arizona-based business finding new success in nationwide fulfillment and online strategies these days.

“Private equity firms came into the state, buying up clients considered ‘troubled assets,’ while other businesses were moved out of state, or were once public and are now private,” says Mike Sparaco, owner and CEO of AlphaGraphics on University, a franchise print shop near the main campus of Arizona State University in Tempe. “We had to really look at who our ideal client was and how we could best help them.” Coming to the same conclusion as Prisma, AlphaGraphics decided to keep many of their existing clients, some of whom have worked with AlphaGraphics for more than 20 years, while finding additional growth in national restaurant chains and retail locations, as well as the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Now, in addition to their local print business, the company is fulfilling orders of 125 packages per day, shipping nationwide.

Part of the Blackstreet group of companies, Salt Lake City-based AlphaGraphics is a franchised chains of PSPs with 300 franchise locations throughout the US, Brazil, China, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the UK, with almost 4000 employees worldwide.

Still, even with an entire franchise network behind you, a standalone store still has to survive and, more importantly, thrive on its own. “We’re employing considerably less staff, but we’re serving clients better,” Sparaco says. To compete against larger printing companies and other AlphaGraphics locations, Sparaco and his team created an online ordering system to not only fulfill client work, but automate processes and minimize touchpoints, thereby streamlining productivity, reducing errors, and tying the service in with clients through integrated MIS/ERP software. “We had to get smarter, find the right clients, and develop ways to produce repeatable work that pulls from inventory or prints on demand. That allowed us to increase throughput and still run no more than two shifts day-to-day.”

The franchise is also finding new opportunities in both specialized digital color printing and large-format digital, an area Sparaco says carries the most significant growth potential for his operation. To that end, the company purchased an HP Indigo 7800 with CMYK plus white inks. They can now print on 13 x 19 sheets of 18-point stock, as well as on plastics and PVC materials. That, along with a commercial-grade router, means the company now has the ability to create packaging and P-O-P materials. “We’re doing lots of prototype work. Short runs for the tech, pharmaceutical, and food industries, like packaging for Costco, Walgreens. It’s exciting and profitable,” Sparaco says.

Another Tempe-based print franchise, Signarama Tempe, has found its customers making a big push to digital – but not just digital printing, digital TVs – according to General Manager Kenneth Meyer. “Interactive touch screens and displays are the future,” he says. And with customers increasingly focused on greener, cleaner technologies, he may be right.

“There are plenty of churches in the Phoenix area, but they only need so much print work per month,” continues Meyer. “We’ve found that these new screens are a bigger sale, and churches love them because they can showcase new events, school fundraising info, really anything. They’re an easy way to communicate changes to a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule, and many churches are now looking to invest.”

With more than 850 locations in the US and more than 1400 shops worldwide, according to Meyer, even smaller Signarama locations can generate $20,000 in sales per month with only one or two employees, in some cases the store owners, while other larger locations can produce $3-5 million a year in sales. “It’s all about finding your niche,” says Meyer. “What are you going to specialize in? What would be most profitable?” One of the Signarama locations in Phoenix, he notes, exclusively produces and installs all of the fabricated pan channel letters for the other area stores, so even though they share the same business name, each franchise can deliver a completely different set of products, services, and materials to bring jobs in and get them out the door, meeting a multitude of client needs.

As the price of wide-format printers has fallen significantly over the last few years, companies like Signarama Tempe are looking to move into new product niches to maintain market share and stay relevant. Meyer believes smaller businesses aren’t necessarily able to make the switch to digital screens quite yet, but prices are coming down and availability is opening up, and that rise in access should also bring about a continued rise in sales.

According to Meyer, from 2003 to 2008, before the economic downturn, one of his company’s larger client sectors, construction businesses, couldn’t build fast enough, causing a rise in housing prices and shortages in building materials. Now that the economy has shifted, however, and things are tighter, print production budgets are in short supply, so everyone’s looking for the best deal. But high-quality work should come at a premium price, says Meyer. “Signarama has really never been the cheapest. We’re not the lowest bidder, and we’re OK with that because our clients know we won’t sacrifice quality for cost. They trust that we’ll deliver top notch finished pieces right to their doorstep, or into their customer’s hands, every time. And that sets us apart from 80 percent of the competition.”

Things are picking up though, according to Meyer, and shops and strip malls that were empty for long periods of time are now beginning to open back up. “Because of this upward momentum,” Meyer says, “Signarama is making a commitment to be experts in our field, to really understand the products we’re working with and the industry we’re working in, and to not just be a commodity.”

The company, he continued, is looking to retain existing clients and gain additional clientele who are more interested in a great final product, and not necessarily cost. “Creating added value by offering the best advice on the best product for use in the best application, all at a reasonable cost, the client appreciates that. It tells them their interests are being looked after and they’re not going to price shop you. Those are little bonuses that keep them happy and coming back year after year.”

Anderson, of Prisma, reiterated this client-centric approach: “Our continued success is in direct relation to our focus on exceptional customer service, high-quality products, and state-of-the-art technology that brings our client’s message to market quickly.”

Green products and environmentally friendly services have also made a big push through the industry over the last several years, with some clients requiring their use in exchange for a continued business relationship. The same goes for employees asking for safer, healthier work environments.

As a result, print providers of all sizes are acquiring a variety of green-alternative products and services, such as moving away from solvent-based inks to water-based, latex, or UV, which require fewer filters in production and less time for outgassing, a process in which excess solvent ink evaporates from the surface of the print. Not allowing for this extra curing time, which can be anywhere between 24 to 36 hours, may lead to failures in a print’s laminate or adhesion. Moving away from solvents therefore eliminates this waiting period and gets the final deliverable into a client’s hands faster.

These days, delivering high-quality work, while staying green as much as possible is considered an exceptional – and sometimes expected – service whereas, only several years ago, green technologies were virtually an afterthought or, at the very least, too cost-prohibitive to be seriously considered by many businesses or their clients.

As the economy continues to rebound, and as client’s print and marketing budgets grow, the advice offered by all three print providers isn’t necessarily to go out and buy new equipment or expand into a larger location, but rather to deliver great service and find your niche.

“Again, it’s not about being everything to everyone anymore,” says Meyer of Signarama Tempe. “Be strategic. Pick a direction and move toward it.”

For Signarama, it’s digital displays. For Prisma, it’s heavy fulfillment and smart logistics. For AlphaGraphics, it’s streamlining productivity, reducing touchpoints and errors, and increasing accuracy and customer satisfaction in the process.

What trends are you seeing in the industry and around your own locations? Where are you thinking of going next?

“Remember,” says Meyer, “there’s more opportunity out there right now than you think.”