The Secret of Selling Postpress

There's A dirty little secret among some of the country's largest printers. It's not something they all want their competitors to know. And it has to do with the most overlooked part of the print stream.

Their secret? The bindery can sell print jobs.

Traditionally, the bindery was seen only as a necessary evil, the unpopular room tucked in a corner of the plant, where the product was finished once all the "real work" of designing and printing was done. Print buyers would look for companies with the most advanced prepress areas and pressrooms, and then expect that the product would be cut, folded and bound as a matter of course.

Now, many savvy print buyers and brokers are starting to ask for tours of the bindery and are learning what the various machines do. They're looking for shops with advanced postpress systems that not only do the job, but do it quickly and efficiently.

"The prepress equipment is a technical wonder, and the pressroom is easy to understand. Everyone knows what it means to put ink on paper," says Tom Green, vice president of manufacturing at L.P. Thebault Co., a Parsippany, NJ-based printer. "But talk about making a signature into a book, or making a gate fold, or how to diecut a piece—and the print buyers haven't a clue."

L.P. Thebault Co. is now offering its Fortune 500 clients seminars on the bindery, explaining what is going on and what value postpress can add to a job. Part of what has changed the attitude about the bindery are the technical advancements that have sped up the workflow.

L.P. Thebault recently installed a pair of Heidelberg Pacesetter 705 stitchers. The stitchers allow for greater flexibility by allowing the firm to keep more work in-house. Production has also increased by as much as 35 percent.

More Value, Less Cost
According to Green, the advancements in speed—combined with the relatively inexpensive equipment, supplies and workforce—add up to a greater amount of value-added to a product at a lower cost. The customer must absorb the costs of ink, paper and chemicals used in the pressroom, as well as the cost of film or plates in the prepress shop, but in the bindery, most of the cost is in the labor.

"A salesperson who goes out and competes against a printer that doesn't have a bindery is more likely to win the job," contends Green, who notes that once a job comes in to L.P. Thebault, it doesn't go out until it's done.

While some firms outsource the bindery, L.P. Thebault maintains complete control. Not only does that reduce customer costs, it also means it is not the type of work that could be absorbed by the customer.

Not so in other areas. As the prepress department becomes more computerized, it also becomes easier for customers to do more work on their end. Already, many clients walk into shops carrying a disk with a digital file that is ready to become a plate.

"The customer is involving himself to a much greater degree in the front-end, prepress processes. In fact, more and more of the prepress work is being executed by the customer and presented to the printer for output," says Mike Thornton, vice president of Progress Printing in Lynchburg, VA. (Thornton explained this to a group of printing and finishing executives at the

Heidelberg Postpress Inforum held in June.) "It simply means that we are becoming an output device for our customers."

The answer, Thornton reveals, is to offer more services on the back end after the paper is printed.

"We are no longer simply binding paper, but handling it," agrees Larry Tanowitz, Heidelberg USA's vice president of postpress. "As part of this change, bindery managers must stop looking at their department in terms of individual pieces and, instead, see it as a seamless system."

That seamless system is one that is heavy in automation.

"Do not let 'sticker shock' deter you from building automation into your bindery," advises Thornton. "This equipment is not cheap, but you only buy it once, and I guarantee it works. And I assure you, this equipment is the 'gift that keeps on giving.' This technology will return the initial investment many times over for you."

One of the key technological investments is the digital Cooperation for Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress initiative, or CIP3. This system is being used extensively in the prepress and press areas to do such things as preset ink keys and monitor color. But this is just the beginning; CIP3 will soon extend through the whole postpress workflow.

Some advancements are not digital, but mechanical, such as those found on Stahl folders. Advancements, such as faster run speeds and zero-makeready buckle plates, help reduce makeready times while also reducing the number of workers needed for a changeover. With traditional folding plates, two workers were needed to change the fold.

Bindery Adds Value
Like L.P. Thebault, Cleveland-based Watt Printers is trying to educate its customers with seminars designed to teach them how the bindery can add value to any number of jobs. Watt has found that offering an advanced bindery helps its corporate clients avoid expensive product warehousing.

"It's a total package picture. We can fold, pack and get the whole package out to 1,200 or 1,500 locations," says Craig Kellem, Watt's co-owner. "The big corporations don't have warehouses to do that anymore."

That shift in the clients' needs goes hand in hand with the demand for shorter runs with faster turnaround. To meet those demands, Watt Printers needed a bindery capable of finishing the work coming off the press without creating a bottleneck.

"We've always been a bindery company. But it's the enhancements, such as the ability to fold faster and machines that stack and jog, that make the bindery worker's job easier and faster," says Kellem.

Watt installed a number of new pieces of postpress equipment in the last few years, including a pair of Stahl B-26 folders with VSA stackers and a Polar System 2 cutter. The firm also has a six-pocket Stahl 562 stitcher with cover feeder. The new equipment increased the bindery's speed and efficiency significantly.

At Superior Printing in Warren, OH, the bindery has long been a key department. The speed of the workflow helps Superior deliver what its customers demand.

"In today's climate—that is, everybody wants everything yesterday—we're able to deliver much quicker because the equipment is much faster and more efficient," says President Alan McBane. "When you take a customer past our Polar automated cutting system, the advantages of the automation becomes obvious to them."

A new Heidelberg 705 saddlestitcher with six pockets, cover feeder and in-line shrink wrapping tunnels also make for efficient production and fast turnaround. Superior Printing runs five Stahl folders, as well, each equipped with stacking and pressing units to help make workers more efficient and less wasteful.

As runs get shorter and faster turnarounds become more necessary, waste becomes a larger and larger issue. The key to success is getting rid of the waste to create a seamless workflow. And the payoff could be substantial.

"If we're going to survive and to thrive, we will need to engineer greater levels of throughput and velocity into our postpress operations. It is one of the few remaining value-added generators," Thornton told the Postpress Inforum. "It can be a cash register for us."