CGX Emerge from a end users point of view

Nathan de Paz Creative Services Coordinator for Mattress Firm, shares his experience at Emerge learning about how the printing industry works and where we are headed. He highlights some of the new technology, like QR Codes, that his business is currently looking into.

Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm here with Nathan de Paz who is Creative Services Coordinator for Mattress Firm. And Nathan, we’re here at Consolidated Graphics and Merge, what was your reason for joining us here today?

Nathan de Paz: For me it’s just to learn more about printing in general and as an end user I just tend to order things and not really know how they’re done. I generally am aware most of the time with timelines and all that. I think being here will let me be exposed to how everything works.

Cary Sherburne: And Mattress Firm is you have 700 stores now.

Nathan de Paz: We just reached 700 stores and we’re working towards 1,000 before the year’s over.

Cary Sherburne: Wow that’s great. And so is the kinds of things you buy is it mostly signage?

Nathan de Paz: Signage, in-store graphics, anything from a price tag to coupon to flyers; yes. It’s anything that’s printed inside a store.

Cary Sherburne: And so you’re here to learn a little bit more about some of new technologies that might make that better.

Nathan de Paz: Definitely, just to be ahead and be familiar with what is the latest and greatest and make sure that our stores pop and we attract the customers.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great. And so when you work with Consolidate Graphics, how does that work? I mean do they produce for all 700 stores and then you distribute them or they distribute for you or how does that work?

Nathan de Paz: Definitely as a growing company we are looking for vendors who are capable of a lot of different things. We struggle with vendor juggling so to speak and trying to find one vendor for this, one vendor for that. I think we found that Consolidate Graphics has the resources, not only the equipment, but also everything from customer service from concept to point of delivery is something that we’re getting used to and we kind of like it, so.

Cary Sherburne: And so they actually distribute stuff out to your stores for you?

Nathan de Paz: Yes, at some points, yes. There’s been some market specific events. We definitely as a company we have campaigns that are limited to certain parts of the country, so some of that has been taken care of by Consolidated Graphics.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great. Well, I hope that you learn some new things here. I don’t know if you guys are using QR codes yet.

Nathan de Paz: We’re exploring options.

Cary Sherburne: Oh, cool.

Nathan de Paz: We’re learning. We’re trying to find a way to use it. It’s a neat concept and people are generally unaware of it. But, yeah, I think there’s potential for it.

Cary Sherburne: Yeah, I think they have a whole session here; intro to QR codes.

Nathan de Paz: I actually signed up for that. Yes, I’ll be here.

Cary Sherburne: That’s terrific.

Nathan de Paz: I’ll be there.

Cary Sherburne: Well great. So we’ll have to talk to you afterwards and see how it all went and what you implemented as a result.

Nathan de Paz: Yeah, yeah.

Cary Sherburne: Thanks for your time.

Nathan de Paz: Thank you.