Traditional Offset to Digital Sales

[JaimeZ]

An interesting comment was made in another thread on the ration of offset printing to digital printing sales. It led me to think of the shops that have both traditional offset and digital, how are your sales distributed?

Let's keep it simple and not worry about prepress and bindery sales for this post--after all this is not a industry survey as much as the post is for friendly discussion. So just parse out your printing sales done in house for the above question. If helpful, the shops with Riso type duplicators may want to add a third break up.

Now for the shops that are only offset or only digital:

If you are all offset, how much digital do you farm out?

Likewise, if you're an all digital shop, how much offset do you farm out?

We're at the 90% offset and 10% digital at the moment. Of the digital we farm out about 3%.

 

[smatros]

If we speak about income we are 30% offset, 60% digital, 10% other. We farm out all offset and some finishing of digital (die cut) and 5% of other. On other hand we do VDP on preprinted offset for offset printers as well.

 

[Steve_S]

Digital / Offset

Digital / Offset

We vary in the 60 - 65% digital to 35 - 40% offset as far as print sales, leaving out bindery, promo products, and other auxiliary products. That has jumped toward digital more each year for the past 4 years.

 

[Creative311]

We are a small digital shop and outsource offset, with digital at about 65% of print sales and offset at about 25%.

We are trending toward a higher % of digital work, trying to find higher margin jobs with personalization and variable data. The hunt continues

I just read that:
"The Printing Industries of America predicts that in 2009, printshops will see an increase of 7.9% in digital/toner printing, as compared with a 0.7% drop in offset printing press output."

 

[Bretman]

Digital & offset yea buddy

Digital & offset yea buddy

Our shop does digital as well as offset. We just got our digi last year. We are transitioning as much as effectively possible to digi and find we can do about 70% of our existing offset on the digi with an equal or better profit margin.
We now do about 80% digi and 20% offset in house. My boss does a lot of buyout too though.

 

[sweatyclimber]

It would apear that this thread has died some which is too bad since I was interested to see what people said relative to it. Being on the sales side of the industry I have an additional question which I hope will also reinvigorate the thread. In my town, I can think of for printers in particular. Generalizing, some of there thoughts are:

1. There is no money in digital or color so I only do long run offset b/w
2. There is no money in digital or b/w so I do long run offset color
3. The only money is in digital so I don't work with offset whenever possible.
4. There's no money in standard printing so I do custom, high end, specialized printing

The ironic thing is these folk's are all in the same town yet they see no market in the area's that someone else thinks is the only market.

So here's my question... Where do you see the profit? What area's are you most focused on. What customer types or jobs are driving your sales distribution? I ask also in part because in general I hear that the "new profit area's" that manufactures push really aren't "getting it done". My guess is that it is more mindset. As a vendor, it is my goal to be the most useful resource I can and so why not ask the source!

 

[Bretman]

Whoa lets get complicated huh?

Whoa lets get complicated huh?

Ok there sweatyclimber check it out.
Just my humble opinion of course but...
In our shop we try to provide FULL service for our customers (small community).
If we don't "do it" here we will attempt to provide it through buyout as best we can.
I beleive there can be profit in most any area of printing if it is done right!!.
Done right is a frame of mind, and also an ART of experience and skill. As is the "art" of printing in general. Offset, Sheetfed, Digital, Web and even the lost art of letterpress can be profitable if it is done correctly and marketed appropriately. As you have stated, simply be a good resource for your customers, listen to their needs, and provide what you have the resources to provide that you can do well, efficiantly, and effectively.

This from yo crazy buddy printer (30 years and going),

Bretman

 

[JaimeZ]

sweatyclimber has unveiled the reality of our industry: each shop has niches it does well. Switching over how those niches are produced from one type of equipment to different equipment can be hard for some to do.

For example, take jobs we do in our shop often like a simple form printed on Black ink on 20# bond, we've been printing forms like this for decades using some kind of offset plate (poly or metal) and a traditional duplicator like our ABDick 360; it did not matter if it's 100 sheets or 10,000 sheets, it's the way we've done for decades. Recently we purchased a Xante Ilumina and I have found we can print black toner only 500 sheets or less within minutes (about 5) from the digital original. In the past we would had produced a poly plate slapped in the ABDick 360 to produce such a job; these steps take about 5 minutes to produce the plate and about ten to fifteen minutes to print them. Well as we found the time and labor savings are dramatic. The prepress person can print the 500 on the digital press in the same time it takes to produce the plate for offset and we've eliminated ten to fifteen minutes on press and thus the pressman's time altogether.

Now for many years the copier (digital press) sales people have been telling us this, but did we listen? NO! Eventually, though, the reality set in and we saw we needed to move into digital equipment, thus the purchase of the Ilumina, and our eyes were opened. We are now in the process of buying out a digital shop hit hard by the recession (too much overhead and dwindling sales) so we can compliment our traditional offset shop with some digital equipment different from the Ilumina. Like Bretman states we can be profitable and more efficient with our equipment mix in the not too distance future.

But alas there will be those older shops that will never go digital and eventually most will dwindle away and there are those newer all digital shops that will not be able to print 10,000 forms as economically as an ABDick 360 can. Compare the extra $35 click charge on a digital black toner press running 11x17 for 10,000 8.5x11 sheets to a pound of black ink that costs less than $5. Having both types of equipment (offset and digital) can greatly improve the bottom line--it only took us twenty years to realize it.