New In-plant Expands Again

Even as some organizations challenge the cost effectiveness of their in-plants, other more enlightened businesses are realizing what a tremendous cost savings they can find by starting a new in-plant. One example of this trend is Love’s Travel and Country Stores, a $17 billion company based in Oklahoma City that ranked 18th on Forbes’ listing of privately held companies.

Two and a half years ago, Loves hired Eric Roth as creative and production service manager. After being discouraged by the slow turnaround times and high costs of jobs he sent to printers, he started adding equipment and gradually bringing some of those services in-house. As a result, Loves now has a four-employee in-plant that provides everything from direct marketing pieces to full-bleed business cards to in-store promotional tags and banners.

“We keep getting more and more business, and as we continue to explore more internal customers, that business continues to grow,” declares Roth. “Right now what we’re doing is building that print empire to the point that we can produce all of our in-house P.O.P.”

After three upgrades due to increasing volumes, the in-plant is now the first in Oklahoma to have a Xerox 800 digital press. It also boasts two Roland wide-format printers for producing 36x96” banners for stores and a new Duplo DC-645 slitter/cutter/creaser.

“The DC-645 allows us to produce a box of business cards in two minutes, whereas previously it would take us 20,” says Roth. The cost of business cards has also gone down since moving the printing and cutting in-house--from $40 for a box of two-sided cards to just $17 now, he says.

The DC-645 does more than just business cards, though.

“We also use it for custom marketing pieces, custom cards, specialty marketing programs and in-store promotion tags,“ Roth says. “The amount of time it saves us in our finishing work is incredible.” The in-plant now outsources less finishing work, which has reduced its overall costs and turnaround times, he adds.

Another example of cost reduction through in-house production is laser engraving. “We produce 200 name tags a week,” says Roth. When an outside company made them, they took a month and cost $4.95 each; now they take three and a half days and run just $1.95, he says.

Roth is proud of how much the in-plant is saving Love’s. “We were able to very conservatively calculate that we saved the company about $1.27 million,” he says.

Roth’s latest improvement is an online ordering system that he plans to roll out by Memorial Day. In partnership with TrackIT, the in-plant has developed software to allow store managers to order decals, location guides, posters and other items. This should increase the amount of printing the in-plant does and help it expand even more, bringing Roth even closer to his goal: “Ultimately being able to produce everything in-house.”