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Happy 30th Anniversary, Quick Printing magazine! It's hard to believe that three decades have passed since a group of people got together and identified the retail, quick turnaround, copying segment of the printing industry as "quick printing." Today's quick printing market is vastly different from the duplicator press and camera print centers of the 1960s.
Technology has always driven quick printing. New technology in the mid-1960s allowed printers to provide "while-you-wait" service in an industry where it had previously taken two to four weeks to get a simple print job completed. By going direct to an electrostatic plate, quick printers were able to provide short-run, black-and-white printing at reasonable prices. An entire market segment was born.
Then Xerox, Kodak, and others discovered the print-for-pay market. That made it possible for a person to walk down to the corner print shop and get one copy. Technology made the machines better and faster, and soon small businesses could share services usually reserved for corporate America. Printers invested in the new technology and divided the cost between a number of customers. Money and customers seemed to grow on trees in the early days.
Copy shops and quick printing companies put pressure on traditional offset print companies to improve turnaround times. Quick printers were becoming more competitive and adding services usually reserved for the big printers, such as typesetting and composition.
Apple's Macintosh computer and Laserwriter printer provided a low cost alternative to expensive typesetting machines. You could buy a Mac system for less than $20,000 and offer "almost typesetting" services that rivaled the $60,000 composition systems from Compugraphics and Varityper.
It didn't take long for the lines to blur between quick printers and commercial printers. They were selling similar services to the same customers. The only things that distinguished the two were run length and full-color capabilities.
As technology became cheaper it moved downstream to the customers. Need a copier? You could buy one for a couple hundred dollars. Have a computer in your office? You could design your own documents. It became harder for quick printers to keep going.
The paper original disappeared. Customers wanted to give digital files to the printer. While large commercial printers were dealing with Quark and Pagemaker files, the quick printer was dealing with Word and Publisher.
A New Day
In the early 1990s, QP articles started talking about Postscript and PDF files and how to eliminate customer file problems. Quick printing companies saw margins shrink as they transitioned to accepting files rather than paper originals. Customers and employees had to be trained. Print shops closed as they failed to adopt new technology and techniques.
The time had passed when you could buy a small press and camera and just open the doors to a shop and succeed. Quick printers had to evolve into business people to remain profitable. Rather than taking orders, they had to be proactive.
By the end of the 1990s, the quick printing industry had matured. The only question was: Were there still "quick printers," or had printing become one standard industry where the only differences were sales volume and the number of employees?
Then technology breathed new life into the quick printing segment. PDF files became the de facto standard for customer created files. Manufacturers developed equipment that was optimized for PDF workflows, and turnaround times became even faster. The quick printer and copy shop of today is a technological marvel. Entry level cost for new owners is high, but older shops are reaping the benefits of years of experience serving the short-run printing market.
The printing needs of today's business print buyer are perfect for the quick printer. Run lengths have dropped. Print buyers no longer want to inventory large stocks of printed material. Technology has given us color printers and digital technology that can produce a full-color piece that rivals offset quality. Variable data printing is making run lengths even shorter as businesses want to personalize their message and target their audiences.
Quick printers are the experts in short-run printing and in dealing with general office software applications from companies such as Microsoft. The quick printers have always brought their small business community the most modern technology at a competitive price. While big printers are trying to figure out the small business buyer, the quick printer already has them as customers.
Quick printing is seeing resurgence. Digital printers' quality continues to rise so that customers can't tell the difference between a digital print and offset. PDF is becoming a standard format for all applications. The Internet is expanding geographic marketing areas. From maintaining online libraries of static documents to posting templates of documents that customers can edit online, quick printers are using new technology tools to continue to carve a special niche where profits can be high.
Quick printing really hasn't changed. What has changed is the technology we use to receive and produce the work. Quick printers still provide "corporate America" print services to small business customers. They still focus on short-run, small-format work with personalized service not found in large commercial printing companies.
World of Tomorrow
What does the future hold for quick printers? While some printers who started as quick printers will evolve into small commercial printers, some will continue to concentrate on short-run services for small business customers. These printers will educate and train their customers to take advantage of the production efficiencies and cost savings of the new technology. It will be these printers who show small business the advantages of one-to-one marketing, personalization, and variable data printing. And it will be these printers who will continue to be in one of the most profitable segments of the printing industry: quick printing.
After three decades, today's quick printer will continue to be a working partner with small businesses. Quick printers will continue to help their customers grow and prosper using new print communication techniques. The average quick printer will continue to have annual sales of less that $1 million and fewer than 10 employees.
My column will continue to focus on the new technologies that average quick printers can afford and bring to their customers to make money. QP will also continue to focus on the business end of the quick printing industry.
There isn't a technological Holy Grail that will offer instant success to a quick printer. Success will come from hard work using time tested business practices and professional sales and marketing efforts. The quick printing market is still alive and thriving after 30 years. It should continue to be a profitable market for years to come.
Contributing editor John Giles is the owner of The Giles Group, a training and consulting firm specializing in digital file issues. Giles is conducts digital audits for quick printers to assure they can accept digital files easily. He also conducts training seminars for printing customers on how to prepare files properly. He is the author of a number of books and The DTP Pricelist on Disk. Giles also serves technology advisor for CPRINT. Contact him by voice or fax at 304/552-5363, by e-mail at john@johngiles.com, or visit www.johngiles.com.
author: by John Giles