"An Ode to Digital Printing," By: an offset printing rep

For anyone who has any general concern in the printing industry, the latest craze has been digital color. I won’t deny digital color has made long strides to reach near-offset quality. And certainly I won’t deny that 1 to 1 personalization has proven incredible responses on direct marketing campaigns.

But, it has its faults (e.g. small sheet sizes, no true color matching, no metallic inks, varnishes, and coatings, etc.), but frankly, I’ll be the bigger man and admit it…variable color is still pretty neat.

But just like anything in the printing industry, it has its place. For example, the maximum run volume is typically 5,000 impressions before the cost of offset becomes more viable. This is because the main costs associated to digital printing are variable, and correlated to the volume of a job. Typical costs of digital printing are: 1. Pre-press (which are normally fairly fixed as most digital print jobs don’t incur that much pre-press), 2. A flat set-up cost (fixed), 3. A per-click-charge or per-page-charge (which is variable to the job’s volume and can range between 7 to 12 cents), 4. Paper (variable), 5. And any additional finishing charges (which contain both fixed and variable costs).

The biggest costs here are the per-click-charge and the paper charges. Remember when deciding upon a job that requires variable color (or changing copy/graphics), to see if it can be gang-ran with on an offset press. At Acme we DON’T run digital presses, but we DO run significantly larger sheet-fed offset presses in which we produce semi-variable pieces.

For example, you’re a retailer printing a 10,000 piece direct-mailer in which there are 4 lots with different retail location maps on them. This may be a better fit for a gang-run on an offset press. It never hurts to test the waters both ways.

And that's my two cents...

What do you mean "you already have a print vendor"?

I heard a great comment the other day from a non-Massachusetts-based customer. "There are so many print reps in Massachusetts. In fact, I have three reps from the same company calling on me, and they have no idea."

It’s true; there are a lot of us. In fact printing makes up a whopping 18% of the Massachusetts state economy.

In such an ultra-competitive industry, it is amazing that I still here horror stories like (laughable, but true!):
-"The printer stitched the pockets collated in the wrong order" (somebody would have to TRY to make this mistake).
-"The owner of the printing company gave us a tour of the plant with his button-up shirt, unbuttoned. He was bare-chested and sweating profusely" (so much for business-etiquette).
-"Every issue of [the publication], they print the run twice. The first run always contains quality issues" (what if every time you went grocery shopping, you're food was bad? There are a lot of supermarkets in town, right?).
-Not to mention the QA issues that I see that the customer misses like: pockets that are so misaligned that the pages can't be opened (the pocket hasn't been trimmed on one side) or color issues on two-page spreads.