Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 35)

Harold’s customers use in-store kiosks or the ﬁrm’s website to submit digital ﬁles and order a range of photo products. All-occasion greeting cards are the most popular. Calendars, once outsourced, are now printed more proﬁtably in house. And books are the next—and current—big growth item, he notes. Film processing is so lucrative that digital printing alone isn’t replacing the revenue lost from ﬁlm processing. But growth in portraits and merchandise sales coupled with the upside of new photo specialty products are keeping the chain competitive, Hanson says. Bridging Two Markets Filmet of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, long-ago morphed from ﬁlm processor to printer. Formed in 1910 as a commercial photo lab, today, the ﬁrm’s display printing division has 20 presses and accounts for about 75 percent of the company’s business. On the photo side, Filmet processes images for about 1,000 professional photographers and provides specialty services that include greeting cards, acrylic ornaments, and framing. To improve those offerings, Filmet acquired its ﬁrst digital press for imaging services in May, a Xerox iGen3 110 Digital Production Press. “A lot of people today, especially young kids, look for more of a magazine-like print quality in their photos,” says Michael Hoffay, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Filmet. “They want a baseball card that looks like the real thing, not something shiny. High school seniors want memory books with all of their senior photos, not just an 8” x 10”. Even wedding albums are moving to more of a contemporary look that ties to the whole scrap-booking trend.” That’s where digital printing plays. “The iGen3 image quality has more of that offset-print look that our customers want,” Hoffay says. It also has strengths that are critical in the display business, including its capability to handle a wide range of plastics, vinyl, and thick card stocks, and a large, 14.3” x 22.5” sheet size, for point-of-purchase displays. But most of the digital press’s volume will be dedicated to the photo business, Hoffay comments. Existing applications like proof books and sports posters are being transitioned to digital printing, lowering costs, and new applications, such as photo books, should be on-stream when the ﬁrm acquires binding equipment later in the year, he says. Anticipating higher volumes, Filmet’s plant already has added a second shift. Portrait Maker to Service Provider A new path to success at Barksdale School Portraits, Aston, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, is to provide not only photos, but also photo-based services, such as ID cards and yearbook printing. Barksdale School Portraits, which began operation in 1922 as what is believed to be the oldest school portrait company in service, today counts about 600 elementary and middle schools as customers. “A few years ago, we began outsourced printing of school yearbooks, not so much as a money-maker, but to keep the competition out of our accounts,” says Wayne Barksdale, Director of Marketing and fourth-generation member of the company’s founding family. “We recognized pretty quickly that mistakes put our whole business at risk. We needed more control of our destiny.” So Barksdale acquired a Xerox iGen3 press in August 2006. Yearbook production quickly grew from 55 outsourced projects in 20052006 to 97 in-house jobs this year. Barksdale expects to produce 200 yearbooks next year, and 500 the following year. These three yearbook covers and the inside page on the upper right were printed by Barksdale School Portraits on its Xerox iGen3 110 Digital Production Press. In-house production gives Barksdale more control, enabling the business to grow. A new twist is that the company has developed additional iGen3 applications, which are the basis for its new, services approach. A personalized mailer delivers photo proofs to students more elegantly and at considerable savings over the previous windowed-envelop package. Desk-blotter-style calendars and digitally printed photo ID cards add to the menu of services Barksdale offers. “We want to be providing four or ﬁve items to our customers, so we become more valuable as a partner,” Barksdale said. So far, the strategy is paying off with a strong customer retention record and growth of about 30 percent last year, which “is practically unheard of in this industry,” Barksdale says. True, but in the emerging market space for digitally printed photo specialty products in which Barksdale, Filmet, and Harold’s now play, such growth rates are closer to the norm. Brian Segnit is Manager, Digital Photo and Book Printing Marketing of the Worldwide Graphic Communications Industry, Xerox Corporation. Email brian.segnit@xerox.com. Innovate Spring 08 35

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

Innovate - Spring 2008 Table of Contents 10 Tips for Successful Open Houses The TransPromo Path Escape the Complexity Putting a Price on Value A Welcome Boost to Hospitality Team Approach Earns Accolades Bound Together New Highs in Image Quality Transforming the Business of Processing Photos Predictive Maintenance Making the Right Choice Diving into Digital Book Production Doing More With Less Distributed Document Creation

Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

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