The challenge
Seven years ago Longridge Print moved into digital production by investing in a Canon imagePress C7000VP. For a traditional litho firm, such a move can be difficult as staff often feel digital print is inferior. And five years later when it came to launching into web-to-print, Penfold and his business partner, managing director Neil Long, once again had to sell the proposition to staff.
“The trouble with printers is they would spend huge amounts of money on litho presses but not do marketing because they had the customer base to do the work. That’s how printing was for a long time, but machines get bigger, better and faster and there’s more competition, so you have to think differently,” says Penfold.
“From about 2009 budgets were getting slashed, reinforcing the need for new ways of thinking. Meanwhile software was getting better and better, so the idea of web-to-print not only became more of an option, it became the next logical step. I always saw web-to-print as a positive, and when the staff realised its potential to streamline ordering and turnaround a job in two hours, they agreed.”
Penfold pitched the web-to-print idea to a few companies, one of which was a travel agency with around 1,200 franchisees in the UK. Problems with brand management included franchisees using different outlets for stationery, leading to mismatches on branded materials such as the use of out-of-date logos and old colour schemes.
Ordering was laborious and lengthy, often done by phone and taking 14 days to deliver. Making matters worse, many litho firms would take orders only in multiples of 1,000, which, for a small franchisee, meant needlessly large amounts of printed copy, often rendered obsolete after yet another rebranding. Ordering such quantities of branded material was also expensive.
“For a small franchisee with little disposable income and a need for only 50 or 75 items of stationery, being forced to take at least 1,000 items, then clutter up a premises short on storage, was a real bind. It was absurd, given brands move on and change. Using web-to-print could reduce the timescale to 48 hours and speed up the process.”
Penfold wanted a centralised e-commerce site to create a virtual marketing department for sales agents at the travel company. This simplified the ordering of business cards, letterheads and promotional flyers and ensured consistent quality. The portal would also enable the travel agency’s HQ to upload centralised promotions for agents to customise for local campaigns.
But it wasn’t merely printed material Penfold had his eye on. Sales agents were sending their customers promotional items such as key rings and chocolates with personalised messages. As Longridge Print was managing the web-to-print portal it could also brand non-print items and send them out providing a ‘facilities management service’, says Penfold.
He went on a Canon ‘business builder’ workshop, a one-day course in London with 10 other print professionals, on how to use digital technology to boost trade. His team also needed advice on writing up the contact between Longridge and the travel company. “We had never had contracts other than a standard magazine contract to produce X amount of journals every month for a year”.
The method
EFI Digital StoreFront software solution was loaded on to the Longridge servers, with Canon working with the print company’s IT consultant; it took about one week to install the system, while two staff members went to the EFI headquarters in Amsterdam for software training. Initial cost was around £35,000 while the company has spent about £11,000 a year for ongoing costs.
This, says Penfold, is a price worth paying when it comes to one big issue. Customer loyalty is elusive, but web-to-print can help secure it, he explains. “Pick an industry, any will do, there is little if any customer loyalty. Most people buy from whoever delivers quicker and at better value; a client who buys print from Longridge one day may vanish for two years or never return, having found a better deal elsewhere. Good use of web-to-print can reduce this erratic pattern.
“For starters the client is contracted with us and happy because it’s a big weight off their shoulders: we do everything and are almost a subsidiary for them. They want consistency and we want more digital work. We run on average about 40 orders a day on the digital press and a few on the litho machine. However, the size of orders can also be smaller, which can be a bit of a staff culture shock.
“Our guys are used to processing orders from £500 to £30,000 every day – the kind of numbers to get excited about. With web-to-print they are often much lower, as little as £2.50, so it can be a bit hard to get as excited. But the speed of turnaround, level of automation and ease of the process from order to delivery won them around very quickly,” he says.
Longridge Print went web-to-print two years ago, in June 2013. It took two months to set up the website. That first site started with 40 products such as business cards and posters. Around 15 of these included variable data for personalising. Agents logged in with their own username and password, accessed all the templates, for example letterheads, and made changes.
The number of products soon started to snowball: from stationery to branded roller blinds, pens, calendars and even wine with personalised bottle labels or Christmas cards with unique messages. That first site was up and running by September 2013, with “remarkably few teething problems”, recalls Penfold.
The result
Longridge Print now has sites for the travel company in Ireland, Holland and Belgium. “They are our shops branded to the travel company and we sit quietly behind them.” By the end of the year, sites in Canada, South Africa, Dubai and Australia are due to be running with a product portfolio jumping from the initial 40 items to 363, the latest being personalised umbrellas.
The company is working with the travel company to roll out a photo-book option for client customers to load holiday snaps on to calenders. It aims to increase work with the agency by 25% in the next two years, and turnover from that client to date has gone from £35,000 to around £200,000. Meanwhile Penfold is in talks to offer a similar service to a big car manufacturer and a wedding company.
“But web-to-print is not something you can buy or build and forget about,” says Penfold. “You have to work with your system all the time, keep it updated and monitor it. That way you’ll get more from it, such as buying trends, so you can go to your client and say, ‘you sold 10,000 items in two days, how about printing more?’ or ‘none of these items sold in Ireland, do you want to stop producing them?’
“And I wouldn’t say I know everything, because every day brings new challenges. Software, after all, is a moving, ever-changing beast undergoing constant upgrades. And now the system is up and running, those upgrades can be the biggest pain, resulting in systems being shut down while the upgrade is installed.”
For this and other reasons, printers must understand web-to-print, its potential and how it changes the dynamics of the industry, insists Penfold. “Print used to be a black art focused on the printer. Then came the Apple Mac and focus switched to designers, before the internet put web creators in the spotlight. Now data itself is the black art because it’s a moving target and you must keep up.”
You must also know your limits – and web-to-print’s: “People say your website is a shopfront, which it is. But there’s no point having a shop in a field with no access roads. You have to direct traffic to that shop and using web-to-print in partnership with a client with a strong brand is a great way of doing this. It offers brand management and is an ordering system, open 24/7 and delivering within 48 hours.
“It’s a massively brilliant brand-management tool with everything checked against colour swatches for consistency and produced in the same place. This ensures the brand remains as strong as it can, which makes it more likely the brand will grow. This in turn means we will get more work.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Longridge Print
Location Crowborough, East Sussex
Inspection host Sales director Mike Penfold
Size Turnover: £2m; Staff: 24
Established 1969
Products Leaflets, brochures, stationery and metallic-effect vouchers for sectors including music, travel and cars; runs range from 50 business cards to 40,000 magazines.
Kit Canon imagePress C7000VP digital colour press, B2 five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74 with coater, eight-station Muller Martini, two Stahl folders, Morgana bookletmaker, other kit including ring-binding and drilling equipment
Inspection focus How to get into web-to-print
TOP TIPS
Know the client Know exactly what your client wants and needs to achieve from web-to-print, which will help you identify the potential and limits of the service.
Do your homework Investing in software is a big commitment in time and money, so weigh up the market and pinpoint web-to-print capabilities that are key to your business.
Be reasonable Set sensible objectives during the purchasing process and set out your goals on what you hope to accomplish with this investment.
Don’t give it away It’s crucial web-to-print is a paid-for service, not a free add-on, as the latter can blur budget issues, responsibility and effectiveness.
Deliverance Factor in delivery costs as this is likely to have a fairly sizeable impact on the cost and speed of the service to the client.
Ease of use If it isn’t easy to use, no one will want to use web-to-print, especially clients with multiple sales forces wanting to standardise and simplify their marketing efforts.
Automation is everything The less human intervention from print staff in the ordering and printing process the better, making the process faster, viable for small orders, and profitable.
Win over staff Drive home the plus points of web-to-print and devote enough resources to teach and support staff throughout implementation or they won’t appreciate the benefits.
Take me to your leader Assign a person to be the point of contact for users and to oversee software is used consistently and properly.
