Case Study: Pacful

See how Pacful achieved a rare, successful transition from print services to a marketing services provider

About Pacful Inc.

Pacful Inc., headquartered in Rancho Cordova, Calif., started out as one of many print service providers in a crowded industry. Unlike many other companies, they made the successful transition into a true marketing services provider.

"When clients work in our web storefronts, they often don’t even realize they’ve left their own intranets. That’s because our print management infrastructure is so well integrated into their normal intranet experience. It’s seamless, and with Ricoh’s support, we’ve effectively become an extension of their marketing team."
Jennifer Hudek
President
Pacful

Challenge

With a large investment in expensive technology and a crowded market, Rancho Cordova, California-based Pacful saw the growth limitations of solely being a commercial printer. One way they looked to expand was through a print-on-demand “click, print, ship” solution they created for a customer. Whenever an employee at the client’s company needed stationary or larger projects printed, the job went straight to Pacful for fast, high-end output.

By building on that concept, Pacful could evolve from being a printer to a true marketing services provider. Mindful of the challenges of such a transition, the company’s leadership knew they needed the right technology partner to deliver the cost-effective software and hardware needed to do things right.

The first step was deciding to shift away from offset printing and move to digital. They chose to work with Ricoh due to our joint venture with Heidelberg for digital technology — a relationship that impressed them.

Solution

At the heart of Pacful’s vision was creating custom web storefronts for clients — and PTI MarcomCentral® was the tool perfect for the job. With this solution, they could develop customizable storefronts, design templates and also enable:

Variable data printing (VDP).
Campaign management.
Mailing list purchasing.
Digital asset management.

With this solution in place, we also added the Pro C901s Graphic Arts+ color production printer, which we felt was the perfect device for handling the increased workload. Built in partnership with Heidelberg, the quality rivals offset printers, but at a fraction of the cost.

To ensure issues didn’t slow down Pacful’s positive momentum, we provided a service contract stipulating a two-hour window for support visits.

Result

stack of booklets with blue wire-o binding on a table

While many other companies may have failed at making the transition from printer to marketing services provider, we’re proud to say that Pacful is not one of them.

About 50 of their clients use PTI MarcomCentral-developed web storefronts to print everything from business cards to mailings on demand.
Some of their customers are moving from offset to digital due to the improved color quality, VDP and lower cost of printing.
There are now five Ricoh Pro C901s Graphic Arts+ printers installed, which print an average of 500 jobs per day and 500 copies per job.

Despite the heavy workload, all of the machines are holding up well. And with our proactive once-a-month visits, we aim to make sure things stay that way.

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