GRACE PRINTING — BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

TITUS EAPEN second guesses himself when it comes to the decision to move completely toward a digital printing workflow.

The vice president of marketing at Chicago-based Grace Printing—who along with brother, Ajith (CEO and vice president), guide the future of the shop founded by their father in the basement of the family home—isn’t exactly kicking himself for making the transition from sheetfed offset printing. His lone regret may be that he waited too long to fully embrace the digital printing revolution.

“We got in on the tail end of digital,” Titus concedes. “It’s kind of Monday morning quarterbacking, but we should have gotten into this two or three years ago. There’s so much demand for digital output in the marketplace.

“We might have gotten in late, but we’re still happy that we got in. We see a bright future for digital, because none of our big corporate clients want to print thousands of pieces and maintain a big inventory. Everyone’s going toward short runs and customized pieces.”

In a city known for its printing heavyweights, Grace Printing is a relatively small player in the Chicagoland area. It boasts just 20 employees and a commission-based sales force. Its manufacturing space is 5,000 square feet, but another 10,000 square feet is slated to be added by year’s end.

Being a small fish in a big pond, Grace Printing needed to accentuate its customer service and turnaround time. When the company bowed in 1992, K.M. Eapen, of Indian descent, benefitted from his heritage with strong customer loyalty from the sizable Indian community in suburban Chicago. Titus notes that this patronage was pivotal to the company’s early sustainability.

Drawing in New Clients

But the patriarch of the Eapen clan wanted the company to grow and advance with technology. High-end corporate clients would follow as Grace Printing began to tap into the medical, real estate and financial markets. As a general commercial printer, the company provides a range of products from business cards, letterhead and envelopes, to brochures, annual reports, promotional printing and direct mail pieces.

“There’s a lot of huge printers and many tiny printers in Chicago,” Ajith says. “Over the years, we’ve benefitted from a high customer retention rate. We’ve been able to keep the clients we started with in the beginning. In the last few years, we were not really aggressive with our sales force. But we were still able to maintain our volume and income levels, if not higher. It’s all about service and making our customers happy.”

In an ongoing effort to attain that goal, the Eapens felt they needed to go beyond the work produced on their 29˝ Heidelberg Speedmaster. Not that they took issue with the quality of the four-color jobs produced on the Speedmaster. But with the offset press, they were married to longer print runs.

To migrate toward shorter and customized print runs, Grace Printing tabbed a pair of Kodak products—a NexPress 2100 color press and Digimaster 9110. According to Ajith, Grace Printing was among the first Chicago printers to boast the installation of a NexPress.

“With the new equipment, a customer can make his publishing decisions based on 10 books and then print more whenever it is needed,” Titus states. “With the NexPress, we can also do the variable data printing, the bar coding and the addressing. It goes from print right to the post office, avoiding the mail houses all together.”

The five-color NexPress, with UV coating capability, has added unimaginable value to the finished product, Ajith contends. The ability to create a full-color, laminated piece—completed within a 24-hour turnaround window—has helped earn Grace Printing a unique niche, the brothers believe.

Between the two presses, the adjacent facility addition (which will house the new digital gear) and new bindery equipment (including a C.P. Bourg perfect binder), the Eapens have invested $3 million. The last two-plus years alone have seen a concentrated effort to move from the offset platform to digital printing.

“What I noticed with clients is that everyone wants their products done yesterday,” Titus says. “That was very tough to accomplish by going the offset route. Now we are able to do most jobs on the day they are brought in. The turnaround time factor and short-run capability have been plus points. We are extremely happy with our NexPress—for the most part, customers can’t recognize the difference between offset and digital.”

The brothers expect the digital machinery to pay short-term dividends, including an additional $2 million in sales over the next 12-month period. Their capabilities are such that some noteworthy printers in town turn to them to provide help with overflow jobs.

Money Well Spent

More capital investments are planned over the next year, as well. After the facility addition is completed, the Eapens are eyeing another NexPress acquisition for either the end of 2006 or early in 2007.

One area where significant growth is forecasted lies with Grace Printing’s new Website, 4print.com, which is geared toward print brokers. A venture separate from the printer’s regular Website, 4print.com serves as an Internet interface for brokers who want to order products ranging from stationery to variable data digital printing. One attractive selling point is a 24-hour turnaround service. The site is still undergoing adjustments but has great potential.

In addition to being a subcontractor for other printers, the Eapens hope to leverage their digital firepower to take a bigger bite out of the corporate client realm and tackle some of the major advertising firms. But don’t weep for the 29˝ Speedmaster and other offset presses. The Eapens still use them for longer runs and printing envelopes. And some jobs are still better suited for offset production.

Make no mistake about it, however. Digital printing is Grace’s bread and butter.

“Our niche is to provide a full-color, UV-printed job in just 24 hours,” Ajith remarks. “A lot of people can offer a four-color piece, but they end up taking it to a UV coating or laminating shop. If a customer places the file on our FTP site, we can digitally print, UV coat and ship the job within 24 hours. And if someone wants it even sooner than that, we can do that, too.”

Not surprisingly, the smaller fish are also the quickest.