On November 15, about three dozen print shop owners and managers from around the Northeast braved an oncoming winter storm and trekked to Grant Graphics in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., for a day-long program of wide-format educational sessions and equipment demonstrations.

Serving New York State, New England, and Pennsylvania, Grant Graphics sells and services wide-format printing and finishing equipment, sells supplies, and provides other kinds of technical and sales support. Grant Graphics sells printing equipment from Roland, Mimaki, OKI, and—as was just recently announced—EFI. The company also offers finishing systems from CWT, GRAPHTEC, Universal Laser Systems, and others. The company not only sells and services the equipment, but uses it as well, experimenting with new inks and media, and printing a wide variety of applications for its own internal purposes and events and for local businesses and organizations.

Called the “Print & Cut Conference”—and a reprise of a similar program presented the previous week in Pittsburgh—the morning session focused on providing an overview of the myriad wide-format applications that printers can provide, while the afternoon session looked at the nuts and bolts of profitably offering wide format, including effective pricing. (The morning session was livestreamed and can be seen via Grant Graphics’ Facebook page.) Presented by Grant Graphics founder and principal Skip Grant, the goal of the conference, he said, was to “teach all the aspects of running a successful [wide-format] business.” He pointed out that there was an expanding market for not only wide-format printing but also various other kinds of specialty graphics and industrial printing. Drawing from his vast array of print samples, he highlighted, as an example, “decals on an ATM machine done on a Roland.” Indeed, the print samples, said Grant, are the best sales tools a wide-format shop can have, as they demonstrate visually the wide variety of substrates and applications even a single machine can produce. “Your customers can’t imagine,” said Grant, “so you have to show them what you can do.”