A roundtable event held in November with Ricoh aimed to develop a strategy for printers to avoid the commoditisation trap by adding value. Michael Walker was in the chair.
It’s widely accepted that selling on price alone quickly becomes a destructive race to the bottom. Although most printers attempt to bring quality and service into the equation, their claims about those parameters aren’t really verifiable before the order is placed, while the price is, so that usually clinches the deal – especially online – even if the subsequent experience for the customer is a disappointment. With some exceptions, this applies equally to digital print as it does to offset. It’s no surprise then that competitor pricing remains a persistent concern in the BPIF’s quarterly Printing Outlook reports (see page 4 for the latest).
So what to do about it?
Digital Printer and Ricoh UK convened a panel of UK printers to share experiences and discuss ways that printers can change their behaviour to become a value-based industry rather than a commodity-based one. With a brief to demonstrate the value and strength of print by better educating customers and increasing the range of applications that are supported, the aim of the day was to agree a statement that can act as a touchstone to guide all printers’ business development.
The starting point for the conversation was to assess the extent to which the panel felt these pressures and how they avoided or resisted them. Company size clearly gives some protection, as attested by Alan Rigglesford of Kingswood iOptus, which was bought out of administration by Paragon in May. Aron Priest, co-founder of Solopress, which was bought by German e-commerce group Onlineprinters in April 2017, agreed, saying, ‘Being part of a group gives you time to take decisions on capex in a more structured way,’ though he also admitted that prior to the acquisition Solopress had been able to respond faster to changes in the e-commerce environment.
Paul Manning of digital production house Rapidity (and a Solopress customer for some work) said, ‘We trade on quick turnaround and location and haven’t seen productisation; the litho act coming together [in terms of faster makeready and UV drying] has impacted us more.’ Not only did he feel immune from the wider trend, in some ways it had helped Rapidity’s business: ‘The perceived value in value-added work has gone up , commoditisation has done us a favour.’
Nick Murray of family owned business Wellington Press averred that the only value in litho work is now in two-colour and for everything else, ‘Finishing is now the battle; it doesn’t matter what’s inside, it’s the first impression that counts – bad finishing kills anything.’
This was enthusiastically agreed by Maz Keogh of Clifton Print Finishers, who being further down the chain from the print customer argued, ‘We need more printers to “back sell” so we can show what we can do. People love to see the examples.’
The panel agreed that service is key when things go wrong. Mr Priest commented, ‘If you give that service, you’ve got the customer for life’, and explained that online reviews are crucial and not just an online complaints magnet: ‘We do get five-star reviews, people realise that it matters,’ he said. The approaches to handling complaints vary widely – Solopress will only review a job over a certain value, otherwise it’s just reprinted without challenge; Mr Murray prefers to visit the customer in person and suggested that asking if the client had seen the job is an effective way of dealing with frivolous complaints.
(L-R) Adrian Stark, Ricoh UK, Paul Manning of Rapidity, Solopress’s Aron Priest and Alan Rigglesford, Kingswood iOptus
Wider still and wider
Expanding the range of products or applications is another strategy to keep ahead of the crowd, though one obvious way to do it is to keep an eye on what your competitors are offering. ‘Keep your ear to the ground. If they’re selling roller banners, why not you too?’, said Mr Priest, suggesting that partnerships are a good way to test a new market before making an investment in new equipment.
Mr Murray added that there was job satisfaction to be had for the printer too: ‘We enjoy taking new stuff on, it’s fun to do,’ he said, but he also had a cautionary tale involving inserting video screens into flyers printed for a major automotive brand. ‘Someone folded one, not realising the screen was in there and binned it. It caught fire! We’d sent hundreds of them to the Far East but it turned out that it was down to mistreatment.’
Other avenues of opportunity can open because of wider public trends. In response to the anti-plastics backlash, Clifton had just installed equipment to produce paper straws which can be personalised and was seeking a partner to move into production of folded cartons as well. For Mr Rigglesford, expansion into new areas meant that ‘Paragon will acquire a company’ rather than a change of practice at Kingswood.
Turning to the question of letting customers know about the printer’s capabilities, it seems that the personal touch is still preferred where possible. Because of the nature of her company’s relationship to the end customer, Ms Keogh said that Clifton can’t send samples – a problem shared by Mr Murray who observed that a lot of expensive pitch work also couldn’t be shared – but that ‘people do love to look around – they think you just press a button’. She also reported that Clifton had won work via an Instagram post of a job.
Attitudes to the value of social media varied considerably around the table, with Mr Priest saying Solopress works on its SEO rankings and analytics continuously and uses as many platforms ‘as can be done’, plus carefully timed e-mail shots; Mr Rigglesford reported that regularly putting case studies on LinkedIn and Twitter had in one case led to winning a £10,000-a-year client, though the deal was closed in person via sales follow-up. Mr Murray by comparison didn’t use social media at all and advocated ‘getting in front of the customer’ with samples to build trust. Mr Manning agreed that testimonials are effective but had found that production of samples for sales use just got held up in the factory in favour of paid work, adding, ‘Customers don’t care if we actually print their work’.
Whichever channels are used to win clients, to take orders or deal with complaints, it is clear that building and maintaining trust at each step is key to winning and retaining business; from this trust comes the perception of value that makes a print service provider stand out from the rest. To encapsulate this idea in a short memorable form the panel agreed that ‘when considering any new job, customer or investment, printers should ask themselves ‘where is the value – for me, for my client, for their customer?’
