Identifying High Quality Print Companies

[FordingRiver]

Wanted to ask the community for their option: What characteristics define a high quality print company and what type of questions should one ask to determine whether or not they meet that criteria.

We worked with a “Award Winning” company on our last two projects and both projects were fumbled. 1st project they delivered the entire order on 50lb stock instead of 57lb (as quoted) and the 2nd project had a large stain on 60% of the prints, caused by “extra solvent on the blankets”. Now we’re in search of a new company to partner with and want to make sure we find a quality provider.

 

[Mike the Print Man]

In my opinion a plant tour is always the best way to determine a high quality shop. If you go there and see a messy place and old equipment that doesn't look taken care of, then that is a red flag to me. I want to work with a company that is well organized and uses newer equipment, or at least equipment that is well maintained and clean. Obviously a shop tour should also include samples of their work. Ultimately until you pull the trigger on a job and see the end results there is no way of being 100% sure of the quality of their work, but for me the status of the shop is the biggest indicator of how well their work will be.

 

[Ynot_UK]

Recommendations and real reviews, achieved over a period of years. Otherwise it's just noise. "Award Winning" on its own means nothing, unless the award is from a recognised and respected body, is substantiated, reasonably current and the business is still in the same ownership today as when it was commended.

An award earned many years ago is about as good as the 25 yards swimming certificate award I received in 1976. "Quality Printing" is meaningless search engine fodder that may win some business from non-industry buyers, i.e. "they must be good because they are quality printers" (whatever that means)...

 

[SheetSqueezer]

and the 2nd project had a large stain on 60% of the prints, caused by “extra solvent on the blankets”.

That’s not possible in offset printing - was your job produced digitally?

 

[TJPrinter]

That’s not possible in offset printing - was your job produced digitally?

I would expect any "solvent stain" or any ink left over from cleaning the blankets to be gone after a dozen or so sheets and those sheets would have been pulled. So a "solvent stain" sounds odd. But in any case, 60% of a job with a significant defect would warrant a reprint.

 

[trvds]

Правильный цвет как критерий выбора типографии

Новости полиграфии для директоров типографий

printdaily.ru

An article about the European press. The selection principles will be similar. Use Google Translate

 

[FordingRiver]

That’s not possible in offset printing - was your job produced digitally?

It was an offset print. I went through the entire order and counted each print (a painful way to spend ones weekend). The issue gradually faded out but it went through 2000+ prints before it resolved itself.

 

[FordingRiver]

Recommendations and real reviews, achieved over a period of years. Otherwise it's just noise. "Award Winning" on its own means nothing, unless the award is from a recognised and respected body, is substantiated, reasonably current and the business is still in the same ownership today as when it was commended.

An award earned many years ago is about as good as the 25 yards swimming certificate award I received in 1976. "Quality Printing" is meaningless search engine fodder that may win some business from non-industry buyers, i.e. "they must be good because they are quality printers" (whatever that means)...

It's tough for us on the publishing side to make those distinctions and b2b reviews are not as common as b2c. We found that asking for product samples was a good way to assess quality and surprisingly very few print companies have been willing to provide samples. We also started looking at employee reviews from sites like indeed. If there are a lot of disgruntled employees then we would stay way from that business.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

If there are a lot of disgruntled employees then we would stay way from that business.

If you hire the wrong people, you can end up with nasty employee reviews. It took me about ten years to figure out that a lot of the designers we have been hiring have been bottom of the barrel in terms of character and morals. It took me a long time on top of that to learn how to spot those types of people, and to realize that I was also causing some of these problems by not properly managing these people. There are only so many things you can learn while you are in your 20's, and you can only be exposed to good and bad people at a certain rate. And some people you hire, if they disagree with you politically, will actively target you for having those beliefs. Had a person that worked for us and he would intentionally change things after the proofs were approved, like death dates on obituaries, or changing the spelling of a name on a card before print, JUST to cause conflict between us and the customer. We obviously chased his ass out of our store, but he still left us a nasty review that was full of lies.

However I will admit that it was OUR fault that we let him change things post-proof. That is a problem with management, and it was fixed by removing him.

With that being said our employee reviews horrible (less than a handful in total), but I regularly dunk on my competitors and customers love the work we do. And I know that we set ourselves apart to a decent degree.

Keep in mind that since 2016 barely anything has made sense. Dismissing a printer due to bad employee reviews since 2016 is idiotic. Problems with the management WILL manifest themselves in the PRODUCT. Everything else is noise. If there are issues with the product, it might be worth just talking to the management! Sometimes they need the issues brought to their attention to understand where the issues are manifesting. And outside of that, you are only viewing the company in a single instance of time, they may change and improve over time, or they may not.

 

[tngcas]

There are only so many things you can learn while you are in your 20's, and you can only be exposed to good and bad people at a certain rate.

I appreciate this sentiment. I still look back at the people I hired when I first started out and feel badly about how I managed and worked with them. I'm only now starting realize that they just weren't the right people and I should have gotten rid of them much faster than I did. I used to assume that the problem was me (management) and not them. It truly is not worth having the wrong people on the "bus" so to speak because in the long run it just causes problems.

We found that asking for product samples was a good way to assess quality and surprisingly very few print companies have been willing to provide samples.

I'm surprised the product samples are an issue as that's an easy thing to do unless you're asking for a proof/sample of your actual job. That I wouldn't do for free because it's just as much work to produce a "free sample" as an actual job and we don't work for free. Sending samples of a similar product is easy though.

 

[FordingRiver]

Dismissing a printer due to bad employee reviews since 2016 is idiotic

There's nothing wrong with using employee reviews to judge a business. First, you don't take a single comment at face value but rather look for trends and reoccurring themes that give you a bit of insight into the inner workings of the business. Add in customer reviews, industry achievements, press in the news and that will start to paint a picture that you can keep in mind when talking to the company.

Large quantities, high cost and low assurance of quality sums up my experience with offset printing, hence the reason for this thread. If there are better ways to assess a printer then I'm all ears.