Kennesaw, Ga. – YEBO!, a successful online packaging broker located in Tustin, California, decided to bring its production in-house by purchasing a printing company in September 2019. Rather than acquiring the former company’s digital print engines, YEBO! invested in a Versafire EP from Heidelberg in an effort to save money and also expand its digital substrate range. After reaching 1,000,000+ impressions per month on its original Versafire EP, YEBO! needed additional capacity and installed a second Versafire EP in May 2020. Both machines are seamlessly integrated with the company’s Speedmaster XL 106 through Heidelberg’s Prinect Production Manager workflow and Digital Front End (DFE).

From Commercial to Packaging, Digital to Offset

Printing anything from hundreds of instructional manuals on 50 lb. text to one-off packaging prototypes on board stock, YEBO! needed a digital print engine that was versatile enough to print on a wide range of substrates. The Versafire EP, capable of printing materials from 35 lb. text to 24 pt. board and on sheets up to 13” x 27.5”, provides the flexibility YEBO! needs for printing both its commercial and packaging work while also accelerating its speed-to-market.

“Customers can submit a file online to us today, and we can deliver a prototype of their package printed on the Versafire the following day. Once the customer approves the prototype, we are confident the color will match when we do a full production run on the Speedmaster because of the Prinect integration. On the commercial side, we can run 1000 booklets on our Speedmaster and print an additional 50 of them the next day with the same quality on the Versafire. It’s amazing how well everything works together and how fast we can turn things around for the customer,” said Andrew Tosh, Owner of YEBO!

To process its jobs, YEBO! uses the Prinect DFE, which integrates directly with its full workflow, Prinect Production Manager. Utilizing Heidelberg’s color management and renderers (both tried and tested in offset printing), the Prinect DFE enables print production to be automated and standardized for excellent efficiency. Tosh is pleased with the ease of job flow between his Versafires and XL 106 and is especially impressed with the color consistency between the different technologies, especially on his coated stocks.

The Versafire EP, which prints at 4,800 x 2,400 dpi and 135 letter pages per minute, also impresses YEBO! with its exceptional registration. The digital press’s advanced technologies include automatic high-precision inline registration, which actively controls every sheet so that it is steered and adjusted automatically. According to Tosh, “Regardless of the stock we are running, the registration stays really tight. We can die cut hang tags and boxes that are multiple up on a sheet, and the registration is great on the Versafire – even on front to back printing.”

Solutions to Be More Efficient

When transitioning from a brokerage to full in-house production, YEBO! could have selected from a variety of manufacturers to begin its new endeavor. According to Tosh, however, the decision was easy – “Heidelberg simply has the best print quality out there.”

In addition to the print quality, Tosh cites Heidelberg’s unique ability to tie the entire production process together – from prepress to press to finishing. “If I go to Heidelberg’s competitors, they only make printing presses or they only make finishing equipment. Heidelberg has everything, and the ability for Prinect to set-up and control everything – from the cutting scheme on my POLAR cutter to how a job should flow through my shop – is really where Heidelberg outshines its competitors,” said Tosh.

Tosh also says Heidelberg is the only company in the industry that is actively working on solutions that make its customer more efficient, and “in today’s world, if you’re not efficient, you’re really losing.” To aid in this efficiency, YEBO! recently purchased a Flexible Service plan from Heidelberg and uses Saphira Consumables on its Speedmaster because by choosing Heidelberg, “you know it all works together seamlessly.”

Lleft to right: Andrew Tosh, Owner of YEBO!, with Travis Melin, Versafire Operator at YEBO!, with the company’s Versafire EP.