Last week, we looked at the uncomfortable truth that most printers, when pressed to name their top three differentiators, end up with the same list as the printer sitting next to them. Quality, price, and customer service. Rinse and repeat.

Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll be following up with printers who can answer the question differently. The Hartley Press in Jacksonville, Fla., is one of them. Founded in 1963 and now in its third generation of family ownership, Hartley operates a 75,000-sq.ft. facility and claims more in-house production capabilities than any other printer in Florida. We wanted to find out whether that claim holds up and whether they can articulate it in a way that means something to a buyer.

For this interview, we spoke to Patty Brantley, managing director of The Hartley Press.

WhatTheyThink: Let's start with the question we will put to every printer in this series. If we take quality, price, and customer service off the table, what makes Hartley genuinely different from its competitors?

Patty Brantley: First, the depth of our in-house capabilities. Second, the fact that we run all of it under one roof. Third, the press equipment itself, which includes formats that very few printers in the country can run.

WTT: Don’t a number of printers say that?

PB: Most printers who say they’re full-service are full-service for the majority of jobs, but not all of them. When something gets complicated—an oversize format, a high-page-count signature, a complex finishing requirement—there’s a vendor somewhere in the chain. At Hartley, we mean it literally. Sheetfed, heatset web, digital, bindery, die cutting, foil stamping, mailing, and fulfillment, all in-house. For us, that’s not just “marketing speak.” That’s our daily production reality, and it changes how we handle deadlines.

WTT: What’s the equipment story?

PB: We run a RotoMan 5-Unit Heatset Web, which is the only press in the country capable of efficiently producing 16-page, 9.25 x 11.875-in. signatures. For publication printers and trade customers who need that format, the list of printers who can actually run it is very short. We're on that list.

We also run a 38-in. European-size web press that produces true 9 x 12-in. magazines and catalogs. That format is something buyers frequently need and rarely find. When a trade customer or a publication comes to us with that spec, we don't have to figure out how to make a standard press accommodate it. We just run it.

WTT: So is it just the specific niches where you differentiate?  

PB: No, because the difference isn’t just in what we have. It’s also the combination, and what that combination allows us to do for a buyer. There is an old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It’s the same in printing. When all you have is certain types of press equipment, you look at jobs in terms of how you can run them using the equipment you have, even if it’s less than ideal for the buyer.

Having heatset web, sheetfed, and digital in-house means we can choose the right production method for each job rather than fitting the job to whatever press we happen to run. That's a conversation most printers can't have with a customer.

WTT: It’s true that the 16-page signature capability and the 9 x 12-in. web format are genuinely rare.

PB: Yes, it’s the reality of what’s out there. Trade customers who need those formats know exactly how hard they are to find. When they find us, they tend to stay.

WTT: You mentioned the single-vendor model. If you can actually deliver on it, that is a true differentiator. What does “actually” look like?

PB: It means finishing is in-house. That’s where the single-vendor claim usually falls apart. A printer can run the press work in-house and then send the job to an outside bindery. Now you have two schedules, two queues, and two places for something to go wrong. At Hartley, saddle stitching, perfect binding, die cutting, foil stamping, folding, gluing—all of it is in-house. We make our own dies. We run our own cutters. When a job comes off press, it goes to our bindery floor, not to a loading dock. Mailing is the same story. We have a complete mailing department in-house. That camera matching capability is something most mail houses don’t have.

WTT: You mentioned third-generation family ownership as a differentiator. How so?

PB: It’s not just sentimental. Third-generation ownership means something specific about how we operate. Sixty-plus years of solving print problems (non-standard formats, impossible deadlines, jobs that other printers declined)—that experience lives in the people here. There's institutional knowledge. You don’t get that at a national chain or a PE-backed roll-up.

WTT: Many printers have real differentiators at the operational level but fail to translate them into clear market positioning. Is that something Hartley has struggled with?

PB: Honestly, yes. We’ve had the capabilities for a long time. The 16-page signature capability, the European web format, the in-house mailing. Those aren't new. But for a long time, we relied on word of mouth and our existing client relationships. We didn't put the work into articulating what makes us different in a way that a prospective buyer could immediately understand.

That’s something we’ve been actively working to correct. The website, the way we talk about our capabilities, the specificity of how we describe what we can run—all of that has gotten sharper. The goal is that a trade buyer or a marketing director who lands on our site for the first time should be able to answer “why Hartley” within the first 60 seconds.

WTT: Last question. If a print buyer is reading this right now, what’s the one thing you want them to walk away knowing about Hartley?

PB: When the job gets complicated, we don’t flinch. The non-standard format, the tight deadline, the complex finishing, the job that two other printers already said no to—we’ve been running those jobs for more than six decades. When those customers find us, they tend to stick around. So those are the jobs we want.