Ray Spinner has been in the printing business for 21 years every since Spinner Printing opened in 1979. His parents, Ray and Fran Spinner founded the company. In his early days, Ray did everything from running a small press, bindery, pre-press, accounting and even deliveries. Ray has a BS in Information Systems from North Texas, and shares his responsibilities with four other family members who manage various parts of the business. Teri Spinner is Vice President of Marketing, Sherri Urias is Vice President of Accounting, Debbie Morales is Vice President of Sales and Hector Morales is Vice President of Production.

As one of the top 20 mid-sized commercial printers in Dallas, Spinner Printing’s path for the next five years is to expand their vendor managed inventory program, update their pre-press through print capabilities and focus on supporting their client's overall marketing and promotional needs. Ray says they will continue to enhance their website capabilities with customized online ordering and primarily build closer relationships by providing a one-source partner for marketing projects.

Ray, tell us about your niche and annual volume.

We are primarily a full service turn-key printer with sales of $3.5 - $5MM, specializing in medium run 4-color. As an ASI distributor, we provide our customers with a full range of logoed specialty products, and assist them with their entire marketing portfolio.

Besides being an ASI distributor, you also have full service capabilities with Heidelberg and AB Dick equipment. Tell us about your equipment from prepress to post press.

Spinner Printing has an experienced design team that offers creative services as well as desktop publishing. We have all major graphic and typesetting programs for both Macintosh and IBM, with state of the art technology for image capture, retouching, page assembly, film output and proofing.

From fine art lithographs to pocket folders and brochures, die cutting and embossing, our pressroom is currently outfitted with the following equipment: 36" Heidelberg SORDZ best suited for signatures for booklets, pocket folders or posters. A 20" Heidelberg GTOFP - 5 color w/ perfector which will handle long runs of 2/2 or 1/1's efficiently. A 20" Heidelberg GTOFP - 2 color, which takes up most of our 1 or 2 color shorter runs. Both of our 20" presses are equipped with an "alcolor system" which provides our customers with color consistency, and our 19" and 17" A.B. Dick's handle the majority of our vendor management inventory printing as well as short business card runs, and one color stationery packages. Our letterpresses provide embossing, debossing and foil stamping for unique projects, and our bindery capabilities include shrink-wrapping, collating drilling, folding, GBC, Tape and Wire-O-Binding. We have a full copy center for producing manuals and books. In addition to equipment capabilities, we have both an inside and outside sales team available to provide you with assistance in getting your project from design to print, and handle over 10,000 promotional products as an ASI distributor.

You have recently upgraded your web site with an ecommerce feature. How has that affected the bottom line?

We have recently enhanced our web presence through redesigning our website (www.spinprint.com) and offering customized online ordering for frequent re-orders of business cards, stationary and forms that fall under our vendor managed inventory program. This has increased our customer satisfaction - it saves them a considerable amount of time in submitting orders, .pdf proofs via email help to expedite their jobs, which results in shorter turn-times. Our profits have increased due to the added volume of corporate identity packages, vendor managed inventories, and the ability for our internal processes to be expedited - including the elimination of paperwork.

Are you watching what is happening in the ePrint space and have you examined any of these solutions to further enhance your site?

Our customer loyalty is based more on the personal service they receive, and for us that doesn't fit our company at this time. I am, however, looking at what is happening in consideration for future avenues of growth. We are exploring the pre-flight software to our website, and I'd say a reduced initial rate or free testing with key customers to see if it is actually a viable solution that would help.

What capital spending plans do you have this year?

We are exploring an enhanced rip/autotrapping system for better throughput of customer files, and direct-to-plate options available in the marketplace,

What do you attribute the large market share you have in the area?

Our increased market share has largely been contributed to word-of-mouth referrals, longevity in the industry, and an aggressive outside sales team. We will continue to enhance the materials that are used by our sales team and focus primarily on relationship building and meshing our online presence with our sales team's efforts. Our most important goal is to familiarize ourselves with each customer by obtaining an in-depth knowledge of each individual situation. We feel this helps us to provide tailor-made solutions to printing and marketing objectives. Because we also specialize in promotional items, we can provide the service of a one source partner for creating and implementing successful marketing strategies.

How important is it for print buyers to utilize their print firm’s sales rep?

Always use your sales representative to help plan your project, as you can use their knowledge of the printing process to make your job more economical. Giving them as much information about the entire project, and conveying what is most important about the job helps us to help our customers the most.

Has being a member of the Dallas PIA Chapter helped your business?

Their greatest benefit lies in their broad knowledge of local printer's challenges, and they can provide helpful information when we have workman's comp issues, trade customs, sales training materials and slow-pay/credit problems. They also provide industry specific training from pre-press to outside sales, which is of great value to our employees.


Thank you very much Ray for sharing with our members.