Example of a content marketing story profiling a family business.
Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the <client> family’s entry into the printing business. Based in the <location> area, this family business involves the <client> brothers, who learned printing and graphic arts from their father.
Over its first few decades, the business went from a traditional corner print shop to a large-scale printing manufacturer. Then, in the 21st century, it transformed itself again into a modern marketing and data services provider. <client>’s growth has been the result of organic business development as well as three significant acquisitions.
<client> employs 120 full-time staff and as many as 45 temporary employees. The corporate headquarters and primary production plant reside in <location>.
Partners’ Press, based in nearby <location>, is a <client> company focused on conventional commercial printing. To meet the needs of the many businesses of every size operating in downtown <location>, <client> group maintains Downtown Graphics, a convenient print-for-pay retail operation.
Family Traditions
The <client> family is proud of its <ethnicity> heritage. Their father instilled traditional cultural values such as efficiency, a strong work ethic, and being down to earth in all of the <client> brothers. Forty years on, the <client> is a sophisticated corporation, and the brothers have become seasoned business leaders.
Even so, as CEO <client> put it, “I’m one of the owners and CEO of the company. It doesn’t mean I get excused from having to do whatever is necessary, personally, to make sure we have success. We do what we need to do to deliver that success for our strategies, for our customers, for our team.” None of the <client> brothers have any qualms about pitching in on the shop floor to make things happen.
State of the Art
The <client> brothers value their traditions, but they don’t live in the past. The <client> has a track record of being early adopters of leading-edge technologies. The company’s tagline is <trademark>. <client> makes it clear that the operative word in that slogan is “<trademark>.”
Customers choose <client> because of its state-of-the-art people, equipment and facilities. As a technology-based company, <client>’s team in the plant is as likely to be working on data processing or database design as on printing, folding or binding.
Over his four decades with the business, <client> has seen his share of technological change. He characterizes some changes as purely evolutionary, such as nimbler functionality within Computer to Plate (CTP) systems. These are incremental improvements that make a difference but don’t disrupt the industry.
On the other hand, <client> has also seen profound changes that he considers revolutionary. Digital publishing enabled by PostScript was one such change. Another was the replacement of film-based photo-offset printing with CTP. These are paradigm shifts that change the fundamentals of the marketplace. He sees inkjet technology, as represented by <printing press model> as the latest revolution in the industry.
He put it this way, “Inkjet, I think, transcends to a revolutionary state where you’re seeing, for the first time, the traditional offset business model being significantly disrupted by this technology.”
Customer Needs
This emphasis on serving customers with state-of-the-art technology, people and processes have won <client> customers far beyond their backyard in <location>. The <client> delivers solutions to businesses in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta, among other major cities. They even have some international customers in <location>.
As <client> puts it, “We have customers who are asking us to do work that far, far transcends the print and ink on paper or image on paper type concepts.” This work often includes various data management strategies. For example, <client> can build and maintain a master database of every market and audience contact ever made by a customer and store it in the cloud for them.
This leading-edge, data-driven approach to their business empowers customers to take advantage of state-of-the-art variable data printing. Contemporary direct to consumer marketing calls for a more subtle approach than merely filling in a few blanks.
<client> explains, “Sometimes more discrete personalization in a product is, in my estimation, often the most powerful type because it’s personalized and people don’t even know it. It’s not just print for everybody. It’s print for specific people and sending specific messages.”
Internal Process Improvements
The revolutionary inkjet technology embodied in <printing press model>also has benefits that the customer doesn’t experience directly. The <client> is determined not to be left behind by technology or to find itself playing catch up with its competitors.
“Our philosophy has always been if we’re going to be impacted by technology like this that’s going to affect our operations in place, it better be done at our hand, not at our competitor’s hand,” reiterated <client>.
He went on to say, “This press, in my opinion, has a bigger impact on the inwardly facing process here. How we do the stuff we do. It’s just as much a change opportunity for existing process and business as it is an opportunity for new business. And not all devices have that impact.”
Product Features
<client> took part in a research project to reimagine the ideal printing press of the future. When <manufacturer> released the <printing press model>, he realized that they had brought this prototype to life. “All these things that are part of the <printing press model>, they were all on that list of the dream press,” he observed.
The <client> recently installed <printing press model>in their primary plant. The <client> brothers were not pushovers in the process of arriving at this strategic decision. <client> admitted, “I’ll be honest with you. I certainly had my reservations about <manufacturer>’s presence in industrial print.”
Further investigation into the <manufacturer> team swayed the <client> Group. <client> <client> explained, “<manufacturer> has built an organization around this machine that is well-tuned to the expectations of the industrial and commercial print marketplace. And that’s not an easy task. That’s as much work, and effort, and thought, and engineering as it was to make the machine itself.”
“Impressive”
Choosing <printing press model> was not a leap of faith for the <client>. The <client> brothers are much too astute as a team to let that happen.
<client> <client> explains, “We’ve seen and run this machine through its paces. The <manufacturer> team has been great in running a number of test jobs for us. We have great confidence in the machine itself. It will deliver high quality, it will deliver the versatility that we need in the device.”
Asked to choose one word to describe the relationship between the <client> and <manufacturer>, <client> replied, “Impressive.”
David Morton Rintoul Freelance Writer 