Digital Dreams Come True In Color

In-plants that have added digital color printing capabilities are thriving—and the call for more on-demand color work is only getting louder.

By Cheryl Adams

ACE Hardware certainly has a loyal customer base.

"We have 6.2 million customers in our ACE Helpful Hardware Club," maintains Rick Salinas, production manager at the company's in-plant in Downers Grove, Ill. He says the club—which awards customers points, and eventually store credit, for purchases—is the "second largest customer-loyalty program in the country."

The company's in-plant has played a major part in creating that loyalty, chiefly through the huge number of personalized color marketing materials it produces. In 1998 it installed a Xerox DocuColor 70 and started producing postcards to promote customer participation in the club and tout sales in individual stores. Each time a customer would come in, information about his or her purchases was entered into the database.

Five years—and two Xerox 2060s, two 6180s and a DocuColor 100—later, the in-plant is still sending out postcards. But instead of producing 200,000 variable data pieces each year, the number has soared to 7.5 million.

"The postcards get customers into the store, where we can capture the buying trend," says Salinas. "The main goal is to know what type of shopper that customer is and gear the marketing toward their specific buying habits. The program has been extremely successful, and the success goes hand-in-hand with our investment in digital color technology."

All over the country, in-plants of every type are discovering the value of digital color printing. They can print the targeted, short-run materials their parent organizations need to market themselves and increase sales. And this, in turn, makes more money available for the in-plant's own expansion.

Double-digit Growth

The ACE Hardware in-plant has had double-digit growth in its variable data products since it made the digital leap five years ago. Since the installation of the two Xerox 2060s a year and a half ago, the shop can now produce 32,000 full-color postcards per hour.

The color shells, or spread sheets as Salinas calls them, are produced on the 2060s, eight up, without variable data. The shells are then cut into four-up sheets and sent through the high-speed 6180s, where they are customized with personal information—at the rate of 180 (four-up) copies per minute or 8,500 per hour.

"The 2060s allow us to do smaller jobs from 5,000 or 10,000 pieces, but we can also do a target market of 200 or 300," says Salinas. "It's a lot more cost-efficient then offset."

With its digital color technology, Salinas says his shop can do a 500-piece, full-color run with four or five variable data images, from conception to completion, in a couple of days.

"We design the mail piece, insert variable fields, match them to the database, do postal sortation on the database, print it, cut it, sort it, tray it and deliver it to the post office," he says. "This would be impossible with offset."

Digital printing also allows ACE Hardware to target specialized markets, such as stores serving Spanish-speaking communities, and print material for special events or regional promotions. The in-plant averages a "manageable" three- to five-percent increase in digital color volume each year, Salinas says, adding "If it was much more than that, we couldn't handle it."

Fast And Furious Techno Leap

ACE Hardware is just one of many in-plants experiencing widespread success with digital color technology. At the University of North Texas, an HP-Indigo 3000 was installed in November 2002 to print variable data material for the school's Recruiting/Marketing Department.

"The new HP machine has enabled us to do more complex jobs that we wouldn't have been able to do without digital technology," says Jimmy Friend, who heads the UNT in-plant. He points to the Dance and Theatre Arts Department's season ticket brochure.

"It required multiple variable data images relating to past performances," Friend says. "Another example would be the Freshman Orientation confirmation cards that are printed for new students and their parents. The data is often from several sources, and it has to be accurate. The technology ensures that it is."

Variable data capability was the main reason the University of North Texas in-plant invested in the Indigo 3000, but Friend notes several others: Lower technology costs, better maintenance/service, more choice of format sizes, stock versatility and six-color (vs. four-color) capabilities.

"And, it was the right time to take the leap," he says, confident the move will pay off big in the future. By the end of the decade, Friend predicts, in-plants offering high-volume digital color will be in the driver's seat in an increasingly competitive printing industry.

His "crystal ball" for projecting digital success comes from the in-plant's operational records: Up and running for just 14 months, the Indigo 3000 already produces 35 percent of the shop's total volume.

"I believe we are going to see an unbelievable migration into digital over the next five years," Friend claims. "Machine prices and maintenance costs will be much lower, and we're going to see some unreal equipment capabilities as technology improves. It's going to be quite a ride, so fasten your seat belts."

High-speed Digital Dream

The digital ride at the County of Riverside, Calif., in-plant has accelerated sharply since the January 2002 installation of two new Xerox DocuColor 6060s. Since then the number of impressions has surged from 20,000 in 2000 to 140,000-plus.

"We started out with a Canon six-per-minute, then a Ricoh 12-per-minute, then a DocuColor 2060 and a DocuColor 12," says Tino Castro, Printing Services manager.

The growing demand for short-run color prompted the next step: The DocuColor 6060s. All this digital equipment didn't mean there was no longer a need for offset, though.

"We just don't print color jobs that are less than 5,000 copies on the offset presses any more," explains Castro. "Any color work under 5,000 is done on the digital printers. We'll print more than 5,000 on the digital equipment if the job contains variable data."

Castro says the in-plant has seen steady growth in variable data requests.

"We are hoping to double our variable data jobs on the color side in the next year or so," he says.

Castro also credits the shop's digital color/variable data capabilities for a surge in insourced work.

Winning Essentials

Across the Colorado River in Mesa, Ariz., the city's in-plant took the digital plunge in 2000 when it added a Minolta CF3102 digital color printer.

"Work that we used to outsource has now been brought back in-house—at a lesser cost and quicker turnaround," says Tim Dougherty, manager of the city's in-plant. "Customers who used to go to outside printers are now bringing those jobs to us."

Not only is the City of Mesa's in-plant producing more material more quickly, it's also producing it with better quality on a wider range of paper stocks. The photographic quality is better than ever, says Dougherty.

Farther east, yet another government in-plant, the Prince William County (Va.) Graphic Arts & Print Shop, has also used digital color printing to bring more work in-house. The shop installed a Heidelberg NexPress 2100, and its digital color work has tripled in volume, according to Supervisor Terry Fulcomer. He says about 20 percent of the in-plant's work is now produced on the NexPress.

In addition to doing work for the county, the in-plant takes on projects from other local governments.

"Other agencies have seen our products and have contacted us to do their digital work," Fulcomer says. "We are more than competitive on pricing."

Fulcomer reports an influx of variable data jobs from county customers.

One of the things Fulcomer says he likes the most about digital color printing is "the ability to meet tight schedules and still deliver a high-quality product. Our digital capabilities allow us to proof larger color documents for the customers' final approval with no impact on our workflow. If the customer wants a reprint of a project, we can guarantee it will look like the first printing."

Also, he says, customers no longer have to print large volumes and worry about storing the pieces.

"We encourage customers who are looking at a large-volume project to determine the amount of copies they'll need now, not later," he says. "With digital, we can print a fiscal quarter, not the entire year. If the customer needs to print more, we can print as the need arises."

One thing is certain, the need for digital color printing is arising all over the printing industry. In-plants like these that have made the move, are experiencing major growth, and positioning themselves for even more.