Commercial Printers Voice 'Surprising' Role for Digital

Adoption of digital presses may be moving along nicely among digital services providers, corporate in-plants and data centers, but mainstream general commercial printers have been slower to buy toner-based color production equipment.

This situation is apparently changing, if comments of some panelists and audience members attending the Sheetfed Pressroom Conference in Chicago last month are accurate. But while more general commercial printers are buying (or thinking of buying) digital presses today, their reasons differ from those expressed by earlier users. How so? Well, these buyers don't necessarily plan to serve a specific need for variable-data printing or true one-to-one marketing. Rather, they intend to use short-run, quick-turn digital output as a door-opener.

Evidently they plan—or hope—that new digital capabilities will enable them to approach new clients and prospects with short-run, quick-output services, eventually leading to longer runs produced on their conventional sheetfed presses. This makes sense, since we keep hearing that few commercial printers can even locate the customers willing to invest in the databases so necessary to succeeding in variable digital direct mail work.

In response to a question from the moderator of the “hybrid” digital-and-offset session, in a pretty large room filled with upper-level executives and middle managers of commercial printing companies, about a dozen indicated that their companies are installing NexPress systems. When quizzed, one audience member reported that access to customers' larger orders is a major motivation. In a later, private conversation, the manufacturing vice president of a well-known mid-sized commercial operation in Wisconsin echoed the response, telling me he hoped the new equipment would open the door to sheetfed work.

A general conclusion we can draw is that mainstream commercial printers today, seeing their primary businesses continue to languish, are a) noting the need and demand for short-run, quick-turnaround capabilities among their customers and b) feeling the competitive effects of digital presses.

These printers might be termed “late adopters.” Compared to the earlier, more adventurous buyers who explored complex variable-data imaging, vendors are confident that for latter-day users, digital presses will find a successful role in commercial runs. For example, several said, a print customer ordering 20,000 pieces may well be happy to receive 1,000 or 2,000 copies in a few days—with the remainder (printed offset) delivered next week. Also, the vendors add, imaging preprinted “shells” with new information is now a common practice.

For commercial printers, one point of hesitation in this matter is literally how to set up offset and digital printing operations for successful coexistence under one roof. While most shops now utilize computer-to-plate imaging and some kind of digital workflow, differences still exist between toner imaging and ink-on-paper printing. Aside from equipment in use, those differences extend to color balance and workflow details, client-supplied material, job turnaround times, run lengths, frequency of jobs, makeup of the clientele and even profit margins, along with operator skills, supplies and equipment maintenance.

One audience member cautioned that even the bindery might need to be set up separately for traditional offset and digital printing because of the immediacy of on-demand work. On this topic, another pointed out that newer bindery systems are designed to switch more easily between types of products. And, noted a third, while the runs tend to be much shorter, exact sheet or product counts are essential, with no waste factor allowed at all for many variable digital runs.

rynostroza@reedbusiness.com