Offset Printing
SCREEN TRUEPRESS 344 HELPS B3 PRINTER SUCCEED IN NICHE MARKET
Thursday 13. August 2009 - Established Billericay printer Grayam Press has made the most of its experience by spotting a specific business opportunity and has installed a Screen Truepress 344 to bring it to fruition.
The company has defined a niche market in short run leaflets and targets it efficiently and effectively with a dedicated website, www.printflyers.co.uk. A full range of print products is also offered, from stationery to brochures, and longer runs are produced on its four-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 52.
However, it is the specialist area of leaflets with runs from 300 to 5,000 that is keeping the Truepress 344 busy. The business model keeps it simple and has increased business by at least 30%. The customer is presented with a choice of quantities and a choice of paper weights, 130gsm or 300gsm, and is given a price for each combination. That price includes a choice of gloss or silk finish, and recycled or virgin stock, and is fully inclusive apart from VAT. The customer pays for the job before work begins, safe in the knowledge that there will not be any unexpected charges such as delivery.
Leaflets are batched together to increase productivity. Grayam Press chooses to use the Truepress 344 for run lengths of up to 5,000, and moves longer runs to the Speedmaster which is a faster running press. “Our leaflets are pretty much the ideal job for the Truepress 344,” says managing director Keith Young, who runs the family firm with the help of his son Adam, who is sales and marketing manager. “There have been other DI machines around that haven’t been as successful or as good as this one. If you have the right application of work, the right mix, then it fits.” The company has been monitoring the Truepress 344 in order to get a feel for its performance and capabilities. “Over the years we have gone from letterpress to litho and the Truepress is another learning curve for us to tackle,” says Keith. “We are confident that once we have gauged its productivity and capability, we will get the best out of it.”
Bui Burke, sales manager at Screen UK, says: “Grayam Press is testament to the fact that the Truepress 344 can sit comfortably in any commercial environment. The company’s USP is its website and its formula sell. It is like a fast food outlet as opposed to a café, where instead of a choice of 14 different sandwiches, the customer knows that he can have a burger, cheeseburger or a quarterpounder and he knows exactly what it is going to cost. Restricting choice is a sound business formula for efficiency, especially in the current climate, and the Truepress 344 is an extremely capable and flexible machine to support that philosophy.”
Grayam Press was bought in 1957 by Keith’s father and moved from letterpress to a variety of Heidelberg GTOs, which were all replaced by the current Speedmaster. Last year it was becoming clear that it could not cope with the increasing volumes of work. Keith and Adam were first introduced to the Truepress 344 by Jim Fox at Mayday Graphics. “We weren’t familiar with it so Jim took us to see it on the Screen stand at Drupa,” says Keith. “We were sold on the quick makeready times and the quality of the work it was producing, which is definitely comparable to the Speedmaster.”
Another advantage of the Truepress 344 is that it uses the same press chemistry as the Speedmaster. If a customer came back with a leaflet that was printed on the Truepress 344 and wanted a much longer reprint, it could be run on the Speedmaster and the end product would be exactly the same as the first batch. It has the flexibility to run jobs on either machine with the same result.
The future may bring an upgrade to a five-colour Speedmaster 74, as the company has also bought a Screen PlateRite 4300S to futureproof itself for a larger press, but for the time being Grayam Press is focusing its attention on where the money is at the moment. As the internet business is such a success, the company employs an ‘e-salesperson’ whose job it is to make sure that the website is right up there in search results and to send out e-shots.
“When we invest in technology, the customer benefits because the costs come down,” says Keith. “With the Truepress 344, as makereadies are so much faster, we can reduce the cost to the customer and make some money ourselves. The customer doesn’t care how it’s printed. It’s all about sheets on the floor and getting them out the door.”