St. Petersburg, Florida — Fidelity Printing recently conducted a party with a purpose, hosting a working open house for about 200 of its best clients and most promising prospects. The objectives: to celebrate the successful implementation of the company’s new five-color ROLAND 300, to educate Gulf Coast Florida print buyers about the advantages of the company’s Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) workflow, and to generate new business. "Some of our guests had never seen a press in action," says Rob Hasson, Fidelity’s owner and president. To close that educational gap, the company ran both its new ROLAND 300 and its 41-inch Roland 700, a six-color machine in up-close demonstrations at the October 23 event. "Most Open Houses typically consist of people eating and drinking, standing around the presses," Hasson adds. "We wanted more. In these volatile economic times, we saw an opportunity to pull in new business and educate our existing clientele. It was also an opportunity to mix business with pleasure and use relational building blocks to create sales." One of the featured technical building blocks was the company’s five-color ROLAND 300, which was installed in the beginning of the year. The press’ 29-inch format equips it to print six-up sheets, giving Fidelity a 50% productivity boost over conventional half-size printers. "Installation of the ROLAND 300 was part of our marketing plan," says Hasson. "Two years ago, we invested a lot of money in CTP. We knew that with direct-to-plate and a half-size press we could address what we call the variable information market." With the 300 in its pressroom, Fidelity went after corporate communicators who need to target their markets with messages that fit different segments of their audience. The result: projects that used to be one long run are now broken up into a variety of shorter ones, requiring rapid-fire turnarounds. "The ROLAND 300 makes us extremely competitive in that area," Hasson declares "It’s a high-speed press that delivers quick makereadies. When coupled with our CTP capabilities, it’s extremely efficient in completing variable information jobs." Fidelity’s direct-to-plate prowess was also a popular feature of the open house: "Our guests interacted with Fidelity and our partnering vendors to gain a better understanding of our CTP capabilities. Each of our department heads hosted mini-tours and clients were able to ask questions and interact. Our partnering vendors were also available for Q&As, which reinforced that Fidelity does not hold the ‘gospel.’ " Fidelity networks its pressroom with MAN Roland’s PECOM operating and automation system to take advantage of the efficiencies of Computer Integrated Manufacturing. "PECOM not only lets us complete work faster, but gives us the capacity to do more jobs every day," Hasson declares. "PECOM’s JobPilot automatically presets ink profiles on our two Rolands directly from CIP3 data. Plus we can set all job parameters while the press continues to print. At this point, PECOM and the other automated systems on our MAN Rolands are cutting our makereadies in half. And we’re still improving." In the meantime, Fidelity has also become a believer in the educational and promotional power of open houses: "We have picked up new business and hopefully there will be more. We plan to follow-up with a press release and subsequent 'teaser' direct mail campaigns, and yes, we do plan to host another open house next year."