Geneva College Expands and Rebrands

Joel Palmer knew he could provide more than a copy center for the Geneva College community. By transitioning the college’s small duplicating facility into a full-fledged print operation, he was confident he could provide the school with top-notch work and significant cost savings.

In order to make that transition, Palmer knew he had to capture much of the printing that the college was sending out to external providers. Equipment upgrades would be essential.

“With my background, I felt we could be more than a copy center,” Palmer says. “I felt we could be a print shop. And that’s what we are now. I’m trying to rebrand ourselves too. We were called Duplicating, and now we’re Geneva Print Services. I don’t want to be known as a copy center. We still do copies, but we’re more than that.”

The college’s public relations and admissions departments were skeptical of his plans at first, but after they were provided with concrete figures on how much the college could save from bringing more work in-house, the departments grew more confident.

“I got all the jobs from our PR department and I sent them out to different vendors to give me an idea of what kind of money we were looking at as far as savings,” Palmer explains.

With the VP on board, Palmer sent out a bid. After plenty of deliberation and an invite to Xerox’s Rochester, N.Y. plant, he says he decided to pursue Xerox equipment through Amcom, a Xerox company. The in-plant ended up acquiring a Xerox Color J75 Press, a Xerox D110 and a Xerox WorkCentre 7775. Palmer says he also brought in a Triumph 5551-06 EP paper cutter to accommodate the increase of post card style mailings the in-plant planned on bringing in.

With the new gear scheduled for installation at the Beaver Falls, Pa., in-plant, Palmer says he knew he would need to expand his space. Initially, Palmer says he wanted to add 10 feet to his 24x14-foot facility, but because of costs, was only approved for a three-foot expansion.

“That extra three feet was enough,” Palmer says. “I had to have a bigger paper cutter, because otherwise I couldn’t make this work. Over spring break this year, we went out three feet and when our contract with Canon was up, we brought in the new Xerox equipment; it just fit perfectly.”

With the equipment in place, Palmer says the new machines have been admirably handling the workload. Previously when departments like admissions or institutional development wanted to mail out personalized cards to prospective students or donors, they would be printed externally and then brought into the in-plant to be addressed and mailed.

With the addition of FusionPro VDP Creator software, Palmer can now provide the variable data services these departments need for their mailings, keeping the work in-house.

Thanks to the new gear, Palmer expects to save the college $20,000.

“The pressure’s on but we’re getting it done,” he says.