Commercial printers who haven't delved into the lucrative world of wide format printing are missing a golden opportunity. The gold could be an existing profit center right under their noses, with little or no capital outlay required to get started.
Generally printers have not diversified into the wide format product range because they are unaware of the existence of the opportunity, according to a 2002 study published by Graphic Arts Marketing Information Service (GAMIS). The study states that even though ink jet wide format devices have been demonstrated at printing industry trade shows, there is not enough emphasis being placed on the capability of the equipment to produce saleable end products.
Printers who want to explore the burgeoning opportunities in wide format have even more reason to attend PRINT® 05 & CONVERTINGSM 05 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, September 9-15, 2005, where more than 10,000 of the almost 900,000 square feet of the show's exhibit space will be devoted to Wide Format technology and education. Some will come to learn how their $1,000-$2,000 Epson or HP can pull double duty as a dependable, reasonably priced proofing system AND a new profit center for the POS, POP signs and banners that, until now, they had been sending down the street. Others will walk the Wide Format Pavilion and its Innovation Gallery where they'll see examples of extreme ink jet output from fine art reproductions to billboards and super sized building wraps to decide what their next foray into wide or grand format output will be.
Competition
Meanwhile, other industry segments such as sign, photo, and quick-print shops, have been expanding their wide format capabilities by leaps and bounds. In the past, commercial printers might not have minded referring their short run requests to these vendors, but times and technology have changed and printers can and should be doing some of the same jobs in-house with their existing equipment.
"That's just for starters," said Tim Greene, industry analyst and associate director at CAP Ventures. "Wide format is an industry unto itself and growing at a healthy rate of 14% a year." Plus there is already a high concentration of competitors, including in-house agencies, photographers and graphic design shops, taking on more and more of the wide format work.
One of those competitors is David King, vice president for sales at Castle Graphics, an indoor and outdoor large format graphics company in Concord, Mass. He says, "It's not what you know, it's what you don't know that you don't know that gets a printer into trouble." King and his wife turned their graphics design firm into the multi-million dollar operation it is today thanks to King's intuition and savvy and an ENCAD NovaJet that he test drove in 1992. "I was amazed at what it could do and knew that there was a way for us to do work in-house that we would traditionally have farmed out after design."
Getting Started
King admits it was a struggle getting started, like buying the $43,000 printing and laminating system that printed images that made everyone look drunk. "The rest is history" says King, who now has more than 12,000 square feet of production space, a NUR FrescoTMhe uses for vehicle wraps, a Durst Lambda photographic printer, a Mamaki JV-4 for Dyefabs and HP3000 for high res vinyl prints.
"The beauty of someone getting into wide format today," says King, "is that all of the bugs we encountered getting started when the wide format boom began are pretty much worked out." The quality just gets better and better, so the questions that remain are what additional services do I want to offer my customers and how can I make it profitable? Today, the three 30-foot high Coca-Cola bottles at Boston's Fenway Park are prime examples of the fruits of King's labor.
Get Smart
King says that for anyone interested in enhancing their wide format capabilities, spending time getting smart by talking to vendors, users and suppliers is "a must."
"Go out and do your research," says Bob Quinlan, president of 40-year-old UniGraphic, originally a prepress shop - that added commercial printing - now offering customers a total print solution from postcards to billboards, in Woburn, Mass. Quinlan, who's been with the company through most of its big transitions, saw it through its migration to wide format in 2001.
He says "Changing a business model is tough and not for the faint of heart. You have to know what you're getting into from all sides: cost, competition, and equipment." The 'ah hah' came when Quinlan realized that over and over again they were creating and preparing the files that their clients would then send away for re-purposing elsewhere." So UniGraphic looked to their current client base for support and today 90% of their wide format business comes from original (current) customers.
UniGraphic didn't have ink jet printers at the time, so they jumped right in with the VUTEk 2360 for printing up to 5'. Today, the sky's the limit, literally, with an impressive grand and wide format equipment lineup including a 16' Scitex GrandJet, a 16' VUTEk 5330, a NUR Salsa, a Mimaki JV-3, three SpinJets and three Epson printers.
"But first things first," says Bill Lamparter, president of PrintCom Consulting Group. He hears too often that printers are too busy proofing to use their machines for anything else. Lamparter says its "malarkey" because that proofer is usually sitting there waiting for the next job. "If they are so successful that they've run out of capacity on the machine… they've just proven it's good business and it's time to buy another one."
For a nominal investment in finishing tools for sewing, laminating and grommeting, a printer can add a measurable and tangible high margin segment to his business. "By suggesting and offering additional services like signs, posters, and banners to your client off the same data file you just used to produce 20,000 brochures, you're saying to them, 'we can save you time,'" says Lamparter. He says that's an immeasurable secondary benefit. "A printer already has the digital file," says Lamparter. "What more does he want?"
Good News for Printers
According to an article Going Big in the March 2004 issue of Graphic Directions, a newsletter published by AF Lewis Market Information Services and TrendWatch Graphic Arts, wide format as a medium has become firmly entrenched in the canon of media that comprise the "media mix" we speak about ad nauseum. Thus, including wide format as part of a campaign or project is as strategic a decision as the decision to use any other medium. The article concludes with the prediction that wide format will continue to be a profit center for print providers, while they don't see huge levels of continued penetration of wide format devices into creative shops.
The bottom line is that a printer already has the equipment, the technical skill, expertise and a customer base that will likely support a new offering. All that is needed is to get out there and explore what an ink jet printer can do for his business. Equipment vendors and manufacturers are a great place to start when seeking information. Industry publications such as The Big Picture, Digital Graphics, and Digital Output, among others provide equipment reviews, trends and advice and all have Web sites. Spending time online can be useful at www.whattheythink.com and www.printwriter.com as well.
Investigate In Person
Up close and personal is still the best way to get smart. PRINT 05 & CONVERTING 05 is one of the best places for customers, equipment manufacturers and suppliers to get together under one roof to:
Show wide and super-wide print engines imaging everything from delicate banner fabric to rigid 1.5' substrates
Learn the many applications and how they let you up sell existing customers and expand into new markets
Learn what it takes to adopt this technology
Discover all the ways digital proofing can save time and money, and position printers for the next level of information handling
For more information on this global event, visit www.PRINT05.com
