Feedback from recent Quick Printing Magazine article
Feedback from recent Quick Printing Magazine article
Dear John,
Here are a few cut and paste comments from a recent Quick Printing story on CTP.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Scott T. Reese
Senior Vice President
Xante (251) 473-6502
"The impact was immediate," states Victor Kishter, owner of Corridor Printing, Columbia, MD, of his Xanté Speedsetter. "It saved us hours a day in our prepress. So getting a job from file to press was cut more than half. It went from a half day process to minutes."
Kishter bought his equipment, which was originally sold by RIPit, just as that company was being bought by Xanté. He initially had some concerns about the change of hands, but says there was no reason to worry. Across the board, every printer interviewed for this article was quick to point out that they have received outstanding service and support from their respective equipment manufacturers.
"Our ROI was immediate from the day it was installed," observes Victor Kishter. "There are not many pieces of equipment you can say that about, but for our company, it was one of the best investments we've made. It had a great impact, economically and time-wise."
"When we went to computer-to-plate, we really had to get our pressmen involved in that process. We didn't want to have them dependent on our prepress people to put out the plates," he points out. "So we got all our pressmen involved in learning about creating templates; learning about how to output the plates for themselves. We saw a bottleneck there. If somebody's out or working on a big project, we don't have our pressmen waiting around for plates to get the job on the press. They have the skill to go in there and get what they need."
Another big benefit to Kishter's company was the small footprint of his CTP equipment. "We had a huge room with all our prepress equipment in it. When we brought that in, we were able to clear out all that prepress equipment. We did a complete conversion and we picked up a whole bunch of space," he relates. And what did he do with that space? Added mailing services in order to open up a whole new profit center.
Several of the interviewees had some words of advice for printers who are considering the move to CTP.
"A lot has to do with what you have in your budget to spend on the equipment. There are higher end devices that have a lot more whiz bang," says Jim Mitchell."There seems to be a lot on the market that gives you this ability these days, but you just have to shop carefully and know what you're looking for. Talk to other people who have used the equipment of the sort that you're thinking about buying. It's always a good idea to do that. Other than that, I'd just say make a decision as quick as you can and move in that direction as soon as you can because there are just so many benefits."
Victor Kishter concurs. He also spoke with others who were already using the equipment he chose. "We were able to take advantage of real world experience, rather than just going on faith in the salesperson. We knew what that piece of equipment was capable of doing and what kind of impact it could have when we bought it."
"I would tell them to definitely go for it because as soon as you set up the piece of equipment, you'll wish you had it 10 years ago" adds John Scott. "As soon as that first plate came off, by the second plate, I was thinking, 'If I'd had this five years ago, what could I have done?'"
