Kathy Redford is the executive assistant for the vice president and controller of All American Semiconductor, Inc. She has worked in the electronics industry for over 19 years and for All American in various areas of responsibility for over 8 years.

All American is a publicly traded, national distributor of electronic components. A leader in distribution technology and supply chain management, All American is recognized as the 5th largest distributor of semiconductors and the 12th largest electronic components distributor overall. With 36 strategic locations throughout North America, All American distributes products from some of the world's leading suppliers to a diverse end market industry mix of OEM customers as well as all of the leading contract electronic manufacturers.

Kathy, tell us about the overall structure of print procurement at your company. Is there a centralized system or does each person have the autonomy to order?

The structure of print procurement varies. Our marketing department in San Jose, uses an advertising agency who outsources their print services, to produce various advertisements and color brochures which appear in trade journals. Our various sales offices each order their own stationery and business cards via a central source - a local printing company who is our preferred vendor. We, at corporate, order from this local printing company as well. At corporate we have various forms, stationery, business cards, labels and catalog envelopes. Some of the forms such as quote order forms and purchase order change forms are printed by this local printing company and stored at corporate for later use by the branches.

So you ship some of your documents to your branch locations?

Our documents are used in trade journals, forms are utilized by sales people and there are printed materials which are used for shipping purposes. We utilize our shipping discount and send the printed material to the branches via corporate rather than utilize the local printing company's freight service. It comes out more cost effective in the long run.

Who handles the required print (as a publicly traded company) like your annual report?

We used to have internal capabilities to do print and design projects; however, it was so small scale that we decided to utilize an advertising agency with their enormous resources in order to achieve more professional and eye-catching results. We use the advertising agency to outsource for our annual reports, 10-Ks and 10-Qs.

You mentioned that you store some of your printed material. Has All American experimented with “print on demand” or requesting lower quantities?

One lesson I have learned is not to order too much printed material such as stationery. In the short-run, you save money on quantity. However, if your logo changes or you acquire another company and your name changes, you won't be able to utilize all the stationery you have in storage. It also takes up much needed space for inventory of parts; therefore, only order what you need and never order excess.

How many print vendors do you use and describe your satisfaction level with them.

We have a very good relationship with our vendors. They give us a tremendous discount because of the volume we order. We also have been with them for many years, and they try to give us the best possible cost as well as excellent customer service. We use 2-3 different vendors. They gained their initial business from us because of their quality, turnaround time and customer service. Their customer service is what keeps our business with them.

Tell us a bad experience you have had in ordering print.

We stopped using a printer a few years ago because they were a small entity which took on a tremendous print job which they obviously couldn't handle. They were unable to deliver what they promised and the quality of the job was terrible.

Has the Internet affected your print requirements?

Trends I see in the spending of print overall within our firm include limiting “over ordering” of printed materials, printing out less press releases and having people visit our web site instead of faxing or mailing to these individuals. I see less spending on printed material in the years to come. In fact, we are heading to a paperless office.

Have you been approached about automating your workflow via the web in regards to print?

I have been approached by several printing companies about utilizing the Internet to automate print ordering. However, due to the nature of our ordering process and the various individuals who need to approve various print jobs, ordering through the internet would almost be impossible for us. We need to automate the office more before we get to that step.

As a publicly traded company, explain the proofing process of your financial documents before they are printed.

We have a very elaborate proofing process. Because our annual and quarterly reports are filed with the SEC, we scrutinize all our printed material. It is proofed by the secretary who types it, then it is proofed by several other individuals in the accounting department, then it is proofed by the CFO and CEO. When it comes back, it is proofed again. They draw lines to make sure everything is lined up. More editing takes place. Then it is proofed again. It goes on blue-line and is proofed the same way. Then it goes final and is proofed one more time.

Thank you very much Kathy. You have educated us well!