David Hess, Vice President of Sale and Marketing, Proven Direct, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Proven Direct is actually an interesting case study in terms of we actually began as a letter shop, as a posted traditional offset printer and in 2003, we picked up our first digital press, HP Indigo.  And now interestingly, we have seven. And I get the question a lot is to, “How did you go from one to seven in such a short time?”  And we invested heavily to support the photo industry.  So, while we are a marketing services provider, we also have a manufacturing arm called Proven Pictures that is photo books, photo greeting cards, and photo calendars.  And the common denominator between those two divisions is the HP Indigo Digital Presses that sit on our press floor.  And there has been some interesting benefits from that that one has been the economy of scale in terms of our consumables as well as our overhead because the volume is driving both from the marketing side of the business and from the photo side. 

And another real interesting development has been in the quality control efforts because, essentially, in photo books and photo products, they’re a consumer product that they have to be perfect.  So, with that in mind, the quality control that we put in place to keep color and everything right on the mark, we use those same quality control efforts for the market services side as well. 

So, ultimately, we have found that we can operate as a business almost in a manufacturing model for two completely different segments, but still leverage digital print.