Elon University Fires Up Envelope Press

Ever since he arrived at Elon University three years ago as manager of Printing Services, Wesley Grigg has had one overriding mission: “My goal was to change it from a ‘copy shop’ to being a full service printer,” he says of his three-employee in-plant, based in Elon, N.C. With this in mind, his first move was to install a Ricoh Pro C900 in 2010 and start printing more of the university’s high-quality color printing.

Recently, though, Grigg took another step toward that goal when he added a new Xanté Ilumina Digital Production Press for printing envelopes. In the four months the shop has had the Ilumina, it has produced color envelopes for departments like athletics and advancement, and Grigg is hopeful that university communications will approve of the sample envelopes he sent them, opening the door to a lot more of the university envelope business.

“In doing all the information gathering for justifying purchasing a digital color press, I saw lots of invoices for envelopes,” he recounts. He estimates the school spends about $300,000 a year on envelopes ordered through the purchasing department, not to mention the scores of smaller orders that don’t need to go through purchasing, which could triple that total.

To justify the purchase of the Ilumina, he gathered invoices for envelope printing from the purchasing department for a one-year period.

“That was my justification right there, once they saw that number,” he says.

Once he knew he would get an envelope press, his next challenge was deciding which one to get. He narrowed it down to Xanté, Pitney Bowes and Oki.

“I researched it for a long, long time,” he remarks.

Xanté gave him the best deal. The Ilumnia came with Xanté’s free iQueue 7 Ultimate prepress workflow software with spot color matching. Grigg couldn’t be happier with the software.

“It was able to hit our school colors dead on,” he proclaims.

He struggled with the choice between top and bottom feeding, but ultimately chose the top feeder. Not only was it less expensive but he felt it would have fewer potential problems. So far it’s been working out well.

“I can put a box and a half of number 10 regular envelopes on there and start it running,” he says, “and it will run every one of those without me having to get up. It’s such a breeze to run.”