Creating a niche in the digital print market

For a business to last, it has to adapt to its customers’ needs. But for a business to truly succeed, it has to anticipate them and do so consistently.

This has been Graphic Partners’ formula for more than 100 years, showing customers how to propel their businesses with new ideas and technology to fit the ever-changing landscape. The Illinois-based printer’s innovative culture has sustained loyalty among customers, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Graphic Partners consistently stays on the cutting edge of industry trends, as they did recently when they embraced long-sheet technology to provide a new type of collateral.

Seeing and seizing an opportunity

When Graphic Partners discovered that no one else was using long-sheet technology to produce six pages of two-sided, variable data sheets and postcards for unique direct mail applications, the company decided that they would be the first.

Kirk Larsen, Partner, began searching for an affordable system that could handle variable data and exact color matching. The hunt didn’t take long. To his delight, he found the ideal heavy production digital press that could print large-size, personalized posters, six-page newsletters with variable data, and two-up postcards with a trifold brochure on the same sheet. Equipped with the technology that would bring his vision to life, Larsen sent his sales team out to do what they do best: convince their customers that Graphic Partners was the only company that could provide these new eye-catching campaigns.

Innovation paid off

Larsen enjoys telling Graphic Partners' customers about the robust features underlying their printing technology, which can:

• Print up to 13” x 27.5” sheets with auto duplex functionality, while maintaining a top speed of 110 pages per minute (ppm) — on virtually any type of media, in simplex or duplex operation.

• Enable variable data printing on uncoated, textured and coated stocks — along with specialty media, such as super-gloss, magnetic, metallic, transparent and synthetic.

• Produce near-offset color, achieved by uniform toner particles that deliver sharper images and better fills.

• Achieve consistent image quality through advanced image stabilization, single-direction development and mechanical paper registration.

• Move jobs seamlessly from digital or offset presses by using the same personalizing data.

Sophisticated and affordable

Graphic Partners’ customers are quick to grasp the scope of what they’re seeing and the impact the new sizing can make on their mail pieces. Not only that, but the additional real estate on the sheet — front and back — has potential to save them money.

Differentiating yourself in the commercial print business is all about providing true value to your clients. Graphic Partners’ innovative use of long-sheet technology is deepening customer trust. At the same time, this vision has cemented the company’s reputation as an innovator, and driven profit in a niche market that they pioneered.