Business Management - Marketing/Sales

IT WAS a reunion well worth waiting for. Two years after its last conference in Florida, the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) finally met again in April in Charlotte, N.C., bringing old friends and newcomers together for an enjoyable and enlightening event.

Do we really understand what the customer experience is like? And why that experience might drive customers to look for alternative sources for printing?

LOCATED ABOUT four miles from the state capitol building in Santa Fe, N.M., the state's Printing & Graphic Services operation has been serving New Mexico for a quarter century. For most of that time, the shop has focused on black-and-white reproduction of business cards, letterhead and forms. High-quality color work, however, was eluding it, and as the demand for this work increased, the in-plant found itself losing business.

WHAT WOULD you say if you learned you could earn a 40 percent margin on a product you wouldn't have to manufacture or inventory? And what if we told you that this product would be desirable to the customers who are already purchasing your printed products?

There is nothing wrong with failure if you learn something from it—especially if you use what you learned to fix a problem.

I had an experience several years ago that illustrates this point. It was a Saturday, and one of our press operators was running the program for an event at our performing arts facility. The pressman noticed a mistake—a photo had an incorrect caption, as I recall—so he shut down the press. And he went home, but that’s another story.

I WAS proofreading this issue, just getting to the end of John Sarantakos’ article on reporting to upper management, when I saw it. It was perfect. John had hit upon what is essentially the theme of this entire issue: “The best strategy is to become indispensable.”

HOLDING AN open house is a great way for your in-plant to promote its capabilities and generate new business. All it takes is a little planning. To help you and give you some ideas, we spoke with three California in-plants that have held open houses. San Diego State University (SDSU), California State Polytechnic University-Pomona and California State University-Sacramento built on each others’ experiences to make their events even more successful. In all three cases, open houses were organized around the acquisition of new digital printing equipment. Leslie Rutledge, manager of ReproGraphic Services at SDSU, was the first of the three to take the plunge.

“I market for the same reason a pilot keeps his engines running once he is off the ground.” – William Wrigley Jr. IS MARKETING taken as seriously as it should be by your in-plant? After all, you’ve got a captive audience, right? Wrong! You’ve no doubt heard about outsourcing attacks. I’m not about to tell you they’re all due to an absence of promotional activities. What I will say is that in-plants that create and foster a positive awareness program among their “stakeholders” have the best shot at being successful. For our purposes, I’ll define stakeholders as: • Supporters: administrators and executives

EAST HAMPTON, NY—This past week the Board of Directors of DICE, The Digital Imaging Customer Exchange, sent a letter to Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, as well as other top Adobe managers expressing its members’ concerns over the Adobe’s decision to include a “send to FedEx Kinko’s” command in Acrobat 8.1. DICE is perhaps the oldest digital printing users group in the industry, boasting 328 member companies, all who own high-end color digital presses from either Kodak, HP, or Xerox In the letter it was stated that “DICE members collectively own thousands of Adobe applications, Adobe font packages, and Adobe RIPs. They helped to make PostScript

PARAMUS, NJ—JUNE 27, 2007 – On behalf of the members of The NAPL Network, Joseph P. Truncale, president and chief executive officer of NAPL (www.napl.org), the trade association for excellence in graphic communications management, and Steve Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP), sent a letter to Adobe Systems, Inc. Chief Executive Officer Bruce Chizen expressing their concern over a recently announced agreement between Adobe and FedEx Kinko’s in which the newest versions of Adobe® Reader and Adobe Acrobat® software feature an embedded connection to FedEx Kinko’s PrintOnline application. The views in the letter