Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast adds Ricoh Pro C900 digital color press

For the past few years, color printing has been a challenge for the Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast (GSWISE). After replacing its offset press five years ago with digital printers, the in-plant started to notice a growing need for short-run color on thicker, glossier stocks. Its Ricoh 3235C could not accommodate those jobs. As a result, says Amy Drezka, director of information services, “We didn’t do a lot of color.”

Longer-run color jobs, like annual reports, were sent to outside printers, but shorter-run jobs, like appeals letters, which might have benefited from color, were printed in-house on black-and-white equipment, to save money.

That all changed recently when GSWISE installed a new Ricoh Pro C900 digital color press. Now the color printing opportunities are endless, and the organization is taking full advantage of them.

“We’re able to do those small runs of really dynamic color,” Drezka says, such as a recent run of only 50 invitations. “We can do a phenomenal color invitation on card stock for those 50, and it’s incredibly cost effective. We could never do that before.”

The in-plant is producing membership certificates, training materials, solicitation letters and more on the C900.

Vickie Silberschmidt, the in-plant’s sole operator, praises the C900’s ability to print on card stock and to fold an 11x17˝ sheet, which saves her a trip to the folding machine. The 90-page-per-minute machine produces very consistent color, she adds.

“We have been very pleased,” she says.

Upper management was supportive of the in-plant’s efforts to improve its color printing.
“What really drove it is, our new CEO of the organization wanted to enhance our image, and wanted to do that by [using] more color and [producing] some different types of pieces,” explains Drezka. “We were at the point where it made more sense to look at replacing our in-house machines than continue to send things out of house.”

For one thing, points out Silberschmidt, sending jobs outside took a lot longer, so the C900 has improved turnaround time tremendously.

“It saves us probably three days per job,” she estimates. Plus, the shop now has more flexibility, she adds.

“We have stopped a run in the middle because we have seen that we needed to make changes,” Silberschmidt says. Now those jobs can be fixed quickly and finished, without the additional time and expense that would have been incurred from an outside printer.

“It has certainly made our lives much better,” concludes Drezka. IPG