Kingston-based printer Printstore has purchased a Duplo DC-618 and integrated it into their Fiery to speed up their finishing whilst they’ve shuffled their litho equipment to their sister site, Affinity Packaging up in Preston.
“We decided to play to our strengths and give this site a digital-only presence here in Kingston.” Says Ben Pickard, General Manager of the Printstore. Our main customer base over the years has been multi-site restaurant chains, some of the best in the UK trust us to deliver either full printed marketing campaigns, seasonal offers or even rebrands. Ranging from customers with 5 sites to over 180, we have set up our business around this model. This led to setting up a website whereby the individual franchise owners can tailor their offers and order whatever they want. This is the main reason we went for the Duplo multi-finisher. It’s completely changed the game for us. Instead of spending hours in front of the guillotine, I can have one person printing, finishing, and boxing multiple orders a day. Since we’ve had to move a lot of our heavy equipment up north, including the bigger guillotines, we’ve had to lend Affinity some of the staff as well, meaning we are running a skeleton crew, but we’re producing more than ever, thanks to the DC-618. It complements our previously bought DBM-350 Digital booklet-maker perfectly, the other day we did a lovely little job where we cut and creased the covers on the DC-618 and finished the booklets on the DBM-350, hugely profitable for a few hours' worth of work!
“The timing of the purchase, installation and training couldn’t have been better, continues Ben. “Our old creaser was on its last legs and ready to be pushed out to pasture. Before installing the DC-618 we had to farm out the quirky jobs or ultra-short runs from our clients, now everything is kept in-house, automated, hassle-free and opens us up to more revenue. We are 100% in control of our costs and timeframes and can keep deadlines with our customers. They have trusted us for years and this investment will show that the trust is not misplaced. The little Duplo multi-finisher has proven itself because in terms of sales against profit, with a reduced team and less equipment and overheads, we’re doing really well. Letting us do all the small bits and quirky finishing means that the profit margins are much higher and we’re able to fulfil literally anything the customers can throw at us, it keeps the big brands and restaurants on board. With some customers, if you have to say no to them for one thing, you’ve lost your chance to work with them for everything else, so being able to do the smaller things means we get the larger orders. For example, one of our customers worth over £20,000 in contracted work wants £25 worth of business cards and another £100 worth of menus. They also want a no smoking sign and something else, it snowballs, but because of the DC-618, DBM-350, The PFI Blade B2 and all the automation, we can knock all of that out in an afternoon and look like superheroes!”
“The only thing missing is a robot packing the boxes, but after Drupa, it looks like Duplo might be selling one of them too! Reliability is key for us, we try to make sure we over-deliver on our promises to our customers so we went for Duplo as the DBM-350 and the Blade have been consistent. Plus we’ve known Adam for years and he’s never steered us wrong.”
“Integrating the Fiery to the DC-618 was key for this installation.” Explains Adam Drummond, Regional Sales Manager for Duplo UK. “It just allows Martin, the Operations Manager to process multiple jobs at once straight from the website and select the finished products to add the bar codes and registration marks – this allows him to simply get on with other jobs around the shop floor whilst the orders stack up on the multi-finisher. The perfing module is also really handy for them as they didn’t have that on their previous device.”
“Now that we have this automation and we’ve gotten used to the change in the workload, we’ve started to look into diversifying the business to provide even more services to our customers.” Concludes Ben. “Starting with food packaging, disposable cups etc, it's not exactly untapped but there is a lot of room for innovation with the right equipment. It’s really interesting because whilst the big companies are doing all the bulk jobs, there is a lot of room for a company like ours to service our customers with packaging, that is both sustainable and profitable.”
Photo Credit L-R: Ben Pickard, Adam Drummond and Martin Cook
