Small Offset Surviving?

[BigSi]

Is there anyone out there that is surviving on small/medium size offset alone?

My gut feeling is they must be getting rare.
5 years ago my work load was approx 50% offset 50% digital. Now approx 5% offset 95% digital. Even NCR seems to be going digital! but having said that! the evidence seems to be it only because the small/medium size operator has got rid of there offset (because of lack of use) and does not have any option to produce the occasional NCR/envelope job digital.

From experience I'm not a big fan of printing NCR digital.

Your thoughts?

 

[pippip]

We moved premises about 2yrs ago and used the move to finally get rid of our single colour GTO. So far the usual items like NCR, raffle tickets, envelopes and some older jobs we used to have saved plates for have all been ok on digital. To be honest alot of the jobs we should have moved previously to digital but never bothered.

The only jobs we have had to either outsource or stop altogether are some pantone matches, Orange 021 for example. Others have been, what I'd consider old fashioned, report covers. Usually very short runs, single colour but on heavy leathergrain, which the digital can't even get close to getting into the deep gapes in the texture. We used to do the occasional heat raised so I outsource that too now.

Previously offset was also required for anything 350gsm+ but with the latest machines managing those sort of weights digital again takes another bite.

I think the market has compromised also, I mean you just won't get a crisp grey small font on a digital press compared to offset but when you explain price difference clients generally accept such downgrades.

 

[wonderings]

I think we are transitioning away from offset, only a matter of time. With some recent press issues I have outsourced a few jobs to a trade printer and their cost was cheaper than my production cost. I make more money sending it out then doing it in-house. Of course I lose the control, but I am starting to wonder how important that is now. Few jobs are requiring anything fussy. I can see holding on to a QM for certain jobs that require pantones, but 4 colour offset I think will be done here in a year or 2 at most.

 

[Printech]

Here is my thought on small offsets. If you are a print for pay, you need to look at your customer's needs. Most every company, including print for pay and end users, have some type of copier. The print for pay customers would rather copy jobs on their own copier than to send it out for printing. The uniqueness of the small offset is that it can capture those jobs that your customer cannot do efficiently on your their copier or your competition cannot do cost effectively on their copiers. The challenge for a print for pay is to help your customer to realize their true cost of of doing their printing in house compared to farming it out. Then you can look at your equipment cost and show the customer a reason to buy from you. The small offset isn't dead, it just has a smaller but profitable print market . I would keep the small offset since the small offset is paid for, it does not have a click charge, it does not have to be replaced every 48 to 60 months, it has a very low maintenance cost and contrary to the word on the street, it is not harder to learn how to run a small offset than current copier/digital xerographic presses.
I have been in the printing industry since 1973. My company sells digital production printers, high end production ink jet systems, and mailing equipment. We still rebuild certain small offset presses to needs of our customers and lastly we manufacture our own patented feeders. We supply diverse product lines to the needs of our diverse customers.
Print for pay companies today, need to keep in sight what their customer's needs are and have every possible profitable revenue stream available to provide for those needs, not only to keep your current customers, but for future customer growth.
I have seen too many printers live and die by putting all of their efforts into digital copiers. Digital can be profitable, but why does your customer need you when they can buy their own equipment and do the printing in house? Keep diversified. Ask yourself, why do my customer's need me?

 

[pippip]

I have seen too many printers live and die by putting all of their efforts into digital copiers. Digital can be profitable, but why does your customer need you when they can buy their own equipment and do the printing in house? Keep diversified. Ask yourself, why do my customer's need me?

When digital machines first came on the scene this was what everyone was saying and every print shop feared. Now were over a decade, possibly two decades, on and that concept i feel that has been proven false. In fact it was initially the reason I was turning my back on the family business and looking to move on to another career. But when I saw this concept not developing I decided to stay and keep the company going.

I honestly wouldn't do many jobs, if any, that I'd feel threatened by my clients taking in house. It's like the numerous threads that appear on here of people who currently outsource all there printing and think they can just buy a printer and do it all themselves, they soon change their plans when you start listing the essential finishing equipment. They'd also want to be doing a fierce volume to justify purchasing a machine and running it.

In Ireland I think we have an interesting print industry as nearly all small / medium print houses have gotten rid of their offset or only run it a few days a week/month. We have a handful of Trade houses that everyone outsources to, given Ireland is so small the competition with these big trade houses is fierce. More often than not they can do larger jobs for less than it would cost me in materials and click, let alone labour. Now where it's got interesting is that this shift to trade houses has only occurred in the last 5-10 years so these houses have all expanded big recently, with some very nice presses being installed, and were really doing well. Now with covid I believe they are looking at serious trouble, HUGE overheads and loans. I'd always considered the jobs I send them as being tiny for them, too big for me but small fish for them but I've actually had them call me wondering were certain jobs I'd given them this time last year coming around again. I couldn't believe I'd even register on their radar.

I haven't spoken with my reps lately but I'll be interested to hear what's been happening in the trade.

 

[smalloffsetpressexperts]

The successful printers I deal with have an offset press, AB Dick or Ryobi Also the huge copiers they call a press.

 

[[email protected]]

A few GTO 52 single & 2 colour presses are around in the UK.
Letterheads are ideal for offset. They sell them on the basis that the client can reduce costs by putting them through their mono-copiers while still having there logo in colour (assuming their logo is only one or two Pantone colours). Invoices are the biggest sellers, along with letterheads.
NCR is used heavily in the construction industry here in the UK as you have to have everything signed by a person. These are then scanned into digital records - so why not use a hand held device? They tried, but they did not last long, suffering from damage due to rough handling. We have something called Health & Safety Regulations here in the UK, which everyone complains about, but it has reduced construction industry deaths & accidents significantly.

 

[BigSi]

Funny thing about letterheads! everyone says they have to be printed offset (toner comes off when put threw a hot laser printer) yes this does happen occasional! but I have found in around 90% of cases this does NOT happen. I always provided x10 - x15 for the customer to trial threw there laser printer before I commit myself to the job. In the rear case there is a problem I go the offset path. Obviously anything over x 2000 run length I go offset anyway.
NCR not used much here, compared to 10 years ago. My 2col GTO averages about 3 hours a week and that is it. Should sell it but I would get nothing for it, really it would be just because I could use the room.

 

[jonf]

I think there will always be a case and use for small offset. I went all digital because my business model changed to where I couldn't make the business case to keep our offset presses for the one or two large letterhead jobs I got a year... So I just outsourced those.

 

[Craig]

Got rid of our last duplicator offset 10 years ago and never looked back. All digital including envelopes and NCR. We ran about 11 million clicks on 6 output devices. Riso 7330 has filled a big hole in envelopes, letterhead and NCR.
People who say the offset has no "click" charges are saying a half truth. It indeed does cost for every sheet to go through a press, whether you want to use a BHR, or cost per sheet, it's all the same.
Now with digital I have 6 printers being operated by 3 people, who are also cutting, folding and running a saddle stitcher at the same time. Good luck doing that with an AB Dick! Btw we had 2 AB Dick's, 3 Multi's and 3 letterpresses. At best I could operate 2 presses that were side by side, and that was a PITA unless the runs were long. That is not the norm now, most runs are 5000 and less.

 

[davarino]

Craig has an interesting point that you have to bear in mind. The market and expectations change.

When I started out 50 years ago, there was a true advantage in the quality of "great" letterpress jobs versus offset. The ink laid down thicker, there was a "heft" to the impression, and the typesetting was not reproduced from repro proofs.

But museum quality orders are of course rare.

The junk jobs were reasonably similar, in fact the letterpress junk jobs were often the junkier. (Xerography was still just for B/W with one copy costing at least 2% of the minimum wage.)

The difference in "quality" did not make letterpress disappear less quickly. "In the morning, it's all 'quality, quality, quality'. In the afternoon it's all about the price."

There were three reasons that I can see:

• Offset delivered better quality for some stuff (e.g., halftones and process color) than letterpress. (Just like toner digital can make some colors pop.)
• Offset made non-hot-metal typesetting's economies efficient to use.
• Offset was way cheaper than letterpress for almost anything that was not "straight typesetting".

A fourth factor developed naturally over time as more shops adopted offset and stopped training folks in letterpress:

• Offset was more available than letterpress.

In spite of all this... it is still a lower production cost to run a single line imprint of handset type in Reflex Blue on a precut business card or on a sheet of 7x10 newsprint on a Chandler and Price hand-fed platen press in a qty of 100 than to computer-typeset and run on either digital or offset and cut afterwards.

That does not mean that everyone is going to hold on to their C&Ps, and much less that everyone will buy one.

It means customers and printers alike will change their expectations of color, price, turnaround, stock, productivity, and anything else related to getting the message across in an effective and low-cost way.