A Win At Waterloo

It's not often a school district print shop lands the printing for an entire city. But Carson Bartels, coordinator of central print services for Waterloo Community School District, saw an opportunity to grab an extra 17 percent of additional revenue for his in-plant, and he took it.

Nine years ago, Waterloo, Iowa's city print shop had just said good-bye to its veteran manager as she left for retirement. The city was considering outsourcing the abandoned in-plant's work, but Bartels stepped up, insisting that his four-employee shop could pick up where the old manager left off.

Bartels proved his in-plant could save the city money, and the city handed him the keys to the old in-plant, inviting him to take whatever he needed.

"But that equipment was even older than ours," he says.

With new revenue flowing in, Bartels saw to it that all of the major equipment in the shop was updated, with the rest of the money going to a supplies account for everything the shop needs to run on a daily basis.

"We do contracts for the city engineering office, all the carbonless forms, all the letterheads, pamphlets and business cards," he lists.

Word spreads fast in the Hawkeye State, and soon enough, the school district in-plant was taking on even more work from nearby Black Hawk County and the State of Iowa itself.

"We don't solicit at all, really," says Bartels. "We don't want to compete with local commercial printers, and word of mouth brings us the jobs." He adds that the in-plant only prints for government agencies.

Over the past nine years, the insourcing revenue has been a boon for this four-employee shop.

"Except for an A.B.Dick 360, we've turned over every piece of equipment in the shop. We've pretty much got all the new equipment we need," he says.

—by Mike Llewellyn