VALHALLA, N.Y. (July 29, 2008) - When Jeb Ball purchased a sheetfed printing company three and a half years ago, he decided to grow the business by adding ancillary services, such as design, mailing, digital printing, web design, web-to-print applications and large-format printing. It worked and, as a result, Premere Color, based in Rockland, Mass., has quadrupled sales.

"When I purchased the company, we were a high-end 40-inch sheetfed shop--there's a lot of other players to compete with us," says Ball. "We brought in new sales people. The philosophy from the beginning was to empower our sales people. We said 'go out and see what customers are looking for, as long as it will include 40-inch sheetfed work.' We want to be able to execute what customers' marketing programs are as opposed to just bid and buy the work that fits our configuration. In the last few years, that's led us in a number of different directions."

The most recent direction was to implement a Fujifilm Acuity HD 2504 UV flatbed printer that prints on a wide range of flexible or rigid media up to 1.9 inches thick. By producing wide-format jobs in-house, the company gains new business, increases control over jobs and speeds job turnaround.

"We installed the Acuity in Spring 2008; it hit the floor, and it was busy immediately," says Ball. "We produce POPs (Point of Purchase displays), retail products and trade show displays, for example. We knew we had the business before we put the machine in and that made it a no brainer."

Expanding services
To help customers execute their marketing programs, Premere Color has developed expertise in many areas. Offering web-to-print solutions has made a significant impact on acquiring new work, including the wide-format jobs. The company began developing websites for its customers to order materials, such as their marketing collateral. Customers now customize templates, proof PDF pages and order printed materials. At the same time, they were looking to order products such as POP displays or lawn signs. To gain the ability to process these jobs, the company purchased two digital print devices a year and a half ago-the Xerox Nuvera and the Xerox DocuColor 5000 Digital Press-and the Acuity this spring. Premere Color purchased all of the equipment from Fujifilm because "we have a good relationship with Fujifilm, and they're our supplier of plates, platesetters, prepress systems, the Rampage workflow and digital equipment," says Ball.

Premere Color chose the Acuity because the flatbed device prints projects up to 4x8 feet directly onto rigid substrates including glass, metal and foam board. By eliminating any mounting and laminating steps, the Acuity saves the company valuable time. "We're seeing a big time savings because, if you think of a sign on foam board, a lot of those are printed and then laminated or mounted onto the foam board, which is a two-step process," explains Ball. "With the Acuity, we're printing right on the piece of foam board.

"We had more customers looking for customizable point-of-purchase displays, such as a 'Now Hiring' sign, a lawn sign or a poster for retail," he continues. "Once that business started coming in on a regular basis, moving to the Acuity was a no-brainer in terms of being able to produce it all in-house. The machine did exactly what we needed it to do. We're even producing 8.5" x 11" on rigid materials for counter displays."

Bringing wide-format services into the building also improved the company's ability to manage jobs. "If we control everything under one roof, then we can be dynamic in terms of getting things done for our customers," says Ball. "If we farm it out, we're relying on somebody else to figure out how to do things and we want to keep control."  

After adopting a service-oriented philosophy, Premere Color makes sure it implements technology that will benefit its customers' businesses. The strategy has been successful in growing its own operation as well.

"From a business standpoint, offering all these services, such as the large format, takes a lot of pressure off of our reliance on just our sheetfed operation to keep us busy," says Ball. "We have all these other avenues of revenue, high value-added revenue, that allow us to continuously grow as opposed to just fight for 40-inch sheetfed work. It makes us a much more stable company."