JakPrints, Inc. prides itself on being a quality-driven, ecologically-friendly printer. They create products such as postcards, stickers, t-shirts, banners and more, through a variety of techniques which include offset printing and screen printing, as well as digital and wide format printing.

Following is a short interview with Tim Shoda, Pre-press Manager of Jakprints, discussing how DesignMerge has helped meet their unique challenges with a solution that has resulted in increased profits and expanding business opportunities.

- What business challenges have you faced in the VDP market?
We noticed an increase in requests for same-day variable data and digital printing jobs, which we were not able to handle with our offset presses. Instead of outsourcing these jobs, we decided to handle them in-house. This would allow us to have greater flexibility and control over our business, specifically with variable data, numbering, and addressing jobs. Our goals were to offer our customers faster turn-around on smaller quantity runs, improve our efficiency, increase flexibility, and increase cost-effectiveness.

- Why did you choose DesignMerge for your VDP implementation?
To help meet our challenges and attain the goals that we had set, we chose to run DesignMerge on a Xerox 5000 press. We looked into a variety of options, but one of the key factors in our decision was the level of support offered through DesignMerge. Add to that its functionality, ease of use, and seamless integration, and it was a no brainer. DesignMerge is working very well for us as we continue to promote variable data printing to our customers and offer a web-to-print option. In addition, we're promoting our company and services through custom mailing & newsletters, through which we keep in touch with our customers, while highlighting our capabilities. We want to drive home the idea that we can fulfill any idea and marketing campaign, because we have the capabilities to handle any job.

- What were the results of your DesignMerge implementation?
We have seen an increased interest in personalized marketing campaigns, as well as an increase in individual bar-coding for tickets and coupons. The key is that we no longer have to turn away work because of a small quantity or same day turn-around. Variable data and digital printing have proven to be the perfect complement to our offset printing department. We see our variable data business continuing to grow, and we are confident that DesignMerge will continue to meet our needs.