(Watch the WhatTheyThink Films Profiles in Print documentary on Imagine here.)

There is an old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” That’s the way many printers run their businesses. Their production floors are packed with legacy equipment, so when jobs come in, they figure out the most efficient way to use what they have. That’s not the way things are done at Imagine. Headquartered in Twin Cities, Minn., Imagine is a shining example of how things can look when you are working with a full toolbox.

Imagine runs four locations, each focused on a different market. Its clients are some of the most successful brands in the country.

• Midnight Oil, Imagine’s Los Angeles location, serves primarily the entertainment industry, including major Hollywood studios, and recently expanded into hospitality and museums.
• Imagine’s Charlotte, NC. plant produces secure direct mail and traditional signage, billboards, and displays.
• Imagine’s Twin Cities location (an 850,000-square foot facility that CEO Don McKenzie refers to as “the Mother Ship”) specializes in the medical industry.
• Imagine’s Chicago location specializes in décor, including signs, displays, and storage racks.

“Each location supports each other, but they have their own specialty,” notes McKenzie, who has spent 45 years in the industry, including as chairman of the board for Imagine. Recently, he came out of retirement to run the company. “It’s medical in one location or in-theater displays in another, but together, we can produce almost anything.”

With the four locations often working together, Imagine can offer services that many of its competitors can’t. There are many cases where it will service a client from all of its locations.

With a team of “extremely talented” designers, Imagine offers a full beginning-to-end solution. This includes design, ideation, creative, production, kitting fulfillment, and shipping—and it does them all well. How does it do it? Its full toolbox!

Down to the Regional Level

Indeed, “full toolbox” might be an understatement. Across its four locations, Imagine operates 42 digital presses, eight litho presses, seven analog flexo presses, one digital flexo roll press, and three EFI Reggianis. If one plant doesn’t have the equipment to produce everything a client needs, another does.

A particular differentiation for Imagine, according to John Mack Jr., Imagine’s vice president of manufacturing, is its EFI Nozomi C18000 Pluses. These devices allow its customers to regionalize their content. “From boxes to posters, the Nozomis give our customers the ability to produce market-specific content no matter where in the world they are,” he explains.

Another powerful facilitator of regionalized content is Imagine’s online campaign management, Dotti, a single, flexible platform designed to help clients manage and order in-store marketing assets.  

The platform offers multiple modules:

• DottiShop
• DottiPrint
• DottiCampaign
• DottiScreen

Clients can manage budgets and user roles and can customize assets down to the store level.  The results are quantifiable. According to Imagine, Dotti slashes the time required to create campaigns by 25%, and 75% of its clients reduce inventory and material waste, as well.

All the “Right Stuff”

Melanie Moran-Grover, director of sales for The Imagine Group Twin Cities, adds that another thing that makes Imagine truly unique is commitment to three things: quality, precision, and speed to market.  

“Every printer says it offers those things. But the longevity of our customer base tells the story,” she says. “Of our top 50 clients, the average age of relationship is 15 years. So when we say invest in long-term partnerships, we really do. We know their businesses. We have built a lot of trust, and we understand their business models.”

This takes not only an investment in capital, but in people. Imagine has invested in large teams that allow the company to service its customers exceptionally well. “We can start with the marketing and figure out what clients want to achieve,” Moran-Grover explains. “Then we offer them a good-better-best strategy to maximize their budgets.”

For example, Imagine offers its customers rapid prototyping so they can see what a project looks like before making a final decision. “Being able to rapidly prototype (almost while you wait) and make decisions in the moment really helps with speed to market,” Moran-Grover explains. “Especially when clients are working against tight deadlines.”

Investment in Sustainability

Sustainability is important to Imagine’s client base as well, and the company is committed to being a sustainability partner that walks alongside its customers throughout the journey. That starts with making sure it is tackling its own house, including its ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) commitments and improving them year over year.

“For us, this looks like continuous improvement of equipment (making it as efficient as we can be),” says Moran-Grover. “It also looks like using smaller and smaller amounts of energy to create the same products, ensuring that our hiring practices are in order, and keeping our employees safe on the job.”

One of Imagine’s achievements of which it is particularly proud is that its Chicago facility achieved the printing industry’s coveted Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP) certification over a decade ago. It is only the 27th in the nation to do so. In addition, both its air and water sustainability metrics continue to improve year-over-year.

How does Imagine track its progress? It has invested in FigBytes (now called AMCS ESG), an all-in-one client sustainability management system that provides detailed tracking. “A system like this tells us, ‘Are we getting better at what we are doing?’” says Moran-Grover. “Once we have those answers, we can share our progress with our team.”

Kitting Down to a Science

Imagine’s commitment to excellence doesn’t stop with creative and production. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or well-executed a project is, if it isn’t kitted properly and to the stores on time, it misses the mark.  

That’s where Imagine’s Dematic Pick-to-Light plays a key role. Pick-to-Light optimizes warehouse efficiency by using light displays to guide operators to the correct items. “You can take incredibly complex kits, and for even for a large retailer or client with several thousand locations, you can pinpoint with accuracy the items that need to be picked,” notes Andrew Gilreath, Imagine’s distribution manager. “That is really invaluable, especially since we can be producing up to one-thousand kits per day.”

Imagine swings for the fences, striving for 98% accuracy rate.

Red and Gray in the House

While you can’t see the software that powers much of the productivity, efficiency, and sustainability of the Imagine group of companies, what you can see is the fleet of EFI equipment that dots the production floors with red and gray (EFI’s brand colors).

“We have been working with EFI for nearly a decade, and it’s really exciting to walk out on the floor and see all of the red and gray out there,” observes Mack Jr.

For Mack Jr, as well as the rest of the Imagine team, the sea of EFI brand colors is a reminder of just how a great partner EFI has been for the company, both now and in the future. “I can see EFI being part our business for years to come,” he concludes.