VESTCOM INTERNATIONAL — SETTING RETAIL STANDARDS
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Founded in Little Rock, AR, in 1985 as Electronic Imaging Services, the company now known as Vestcom International specializes in digital printing for the nation’s leading retailers.
“Today, Vestcom serves more than 60 percent of the nation’s grocery, drug and mass merchandise retailers from its 10 production facilities located throughout the United States,” explains Bardwell, Vestcom president and CEO.
Vestcom is a leading provider of data-driven, shelf-edge communications for retailers. The company’s client list includes eight of the nation’s top 10 supermarket chains, eight of the top 10 grocery wholesalers, four of the top five drug store chains, as well as the second largest mass merchandiser in the country.
“As a leading provider of communications for retailers, Vestcom helps its retail customers communicate their message at the shelf edge,” contends Tim McKenzie, executive vice president of sales and marketing. “With more than 65 percent market share in the U.S., Vestcom has partnered with the giants in the retail industry.”
Unlike other in-store communications companies, Vestcom does not provide cookie-cutter “products,” McKenzie says. Rather it creates solutions to a particular retailer’s in-store communications challenges, including center store revitalization, and time/labor savings opportunities.
To help keep the company on the leading edge of technology, it recently purchased five Xeikon 5000 digital color presses in combination with the X-800 digital front end. The webfed machines were installed at Vestcom’s Little Rock facility, which specializes in data-intensive, point-of-purchase solutions.
According to Steve Ulmschneider, Vestcom’s senior vice president of operations, the decision to purchase the Xeikon 5000 web presses was based on their high-volume digital printing capabilities.
Turning Up the Volume
“It can easily handle monthly volumes of up to 3 million letter-size pages,” Ulmschneider asserts. He adds that Vestcom is expanding its cut-sheet color printing capability in 2006 with the installation of a Xerox iGen3 digital press. Vestcom will further expand capabilities across the entire network in 2007, he reveals.
A team of more than 500 Vestcom professionals, plus 350,000 square feet of production and stock inventory space, ensure the same or next day service for scheduled production of high-volume, multiple-store retail communications. Vestcom regularly creates in-store projects for its retail clients according to local, regional or competitive demands.
Vestcom developed one of its unique “In-Store Solutions” (as Vestcom calls its product offerings), the full-color, four-foot Shelf Strip, while working closely with mass-merchandiser Target.
Target needed an error-free and time-saving approach to setting shelves according to planograms. Vestcom’s Shelf Strips display product information at precise, preset intervals along the printed strip, indicating where products should be stocked on each shelf. This is a precision placement application that the company’s Xeikon presses can achieve and repeat.
“Our Shelf Strip registration requirements, on both sides of the strip, are extremely tight and they’re different for each individual retailer,” McKenzie notes. “Retailers send data showing the exact spacing for each product along an aisle, according to a planogram. Vestcom then produces a full-color Shelf Strip, which slides into the molded plastic fastener that runs the length of the shelf, displaying all the product information the retailer wants.”
Historically, in the mass market environment, product pricing was consistent across thousands of stores nationwide. All stores had the same prices and messages, so the printing of retail pricing strips was produced on offset equipment. In contemporary markets, however, zone pricing—store-to-store pricing higher or lower, based on location and/or competitive factors—has become the norm.
“Our ongoing task is to recognize the specific needs of each of our customers and use proven technologies or customized solutions to build new efficiencies,” McKenzie remarks. “With the Xeikon 5000s, we can efficiently manage and format data from multiple databases and then transform that information into custom communications.
“Every message, every price can be unique from store to store, shelf to shelf, right down to the SKU level,” he continues. “We can now help stores reduce their setup and restocking costs by as much as 60 percent. The results have been dramatic for our customers.”
The company processes more than 100 million price/promotion updates per week for more than 47,000 retail stores. Vestcom’s services benefit retail clients by reducing store operating expenses, increasing retail sales and reinforcing the retailer’s brand.
“Our core value proposition is our ability to manage and manipulate disparate data elements for customers,” Bardwell adds.
The Digital Difference
Continuous digital color is a new market trend for in-store promotional displays, requiring high-end digital color printing.
“In the past six years, digital color has grown from nothing to 17 percent of Vestcom’s total revenues,” McKenzie points out. “Our revenues have grown proportionately over the past six years, as well, which means that the comparative revenue gains compared to the overall increase of Vestcom’s digital color business is a very strong indicator that digital color applications are solidly moving upward.”
Recently, Vestcom was hired by a large retailer to print all of its in-store signage, including large and small banners and various poster promotions. The use of digital color is consistent with the trend that retail marketing will increase targeted messages to shoppers.
“Vestcom will continue to place more emphasis on stores differentiating value to their customers; more interest in in-store advertising; and more interest in digital color and in-store video technologies,” McKenzie concludes.zz
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- XEIKON-A Punch Graphix Brand
