For many, Print is going through tough times. A declining market, poor margins plus intense competition from both other Printers and New Media.

No wonder Dr Joe Webb was called Dr Doom a couple years back after analyzing the industry and then showing printers what was around the corner!

But there are some efficient, profitable printers out there too.

But what about smaller providers? Working a market where the clients print spend is around $5,000 pa, not $50,000 or $500,000.

The secret to success here is not going to be what sort of production technology you own. Sales skills and customer service will be vital for sales. But one of the biggest factors affecting your bottom line is simply your ability to control your support expenses and overheads.

The trend worldwide is to shorter runs, more frequent orders. To efficiently manage dozens or hundreds of low-value orders each day needs much more than a modern digital press.

Selling and admin infrastructures must be equally up to date, otherwise jobs aren't profitable. The few high value orders end up subsidising the smaller ones. 

Accountants tell us that every job will have a fixed overhead. An $80 overhead on a $2,000 print order is nothing. Even if a personal sales visit is needed and the overhead figure skyrockets past $200, it's often taken as an acceptable cost of sale today. But these big overheads on the growing numbers of $200 and $500 print orders spells financial disaster. Big value orders end up cross-subsidising all the small, unprofitable ones.

These nasty support expenses need constant monitoring. They make up approx 26% of a typical offset printers annual outgoings. For digital operations the figure is often over 30%.

The answer is less labour, more automation in sales, management, file prep and administration. 

This diagram (left) shows what could be taken out of the  workflow equation for many common jobs..

We can selectively modify the workflow to have the Customers, or the Printshop's computers do a number of these tasks, automatically, slashing overhead costs for both printer AND client. 

Did I say Tomorrow?

To prove it's not a distant, theoretical dream, many online printshops in the US are doing it this way today, some, coming up ten years now. (See our printshop link)

Vistaprint for example proudly boast the fact that only 60 seconds human involvement is allocated per order, not the 60-90 minutes common elsewhere. All that time and money we spend quoting, on sales calls, paperwork, sales management, file preparation, production management and billing has, for a growing number of jobs, been eliminated from the workflow. 

For more commentary, watch our Dr Joe Webb videos. 

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