This is part two in a four-part series discussing the advantages of working with a mid-sized catalog printer. This content is the product of an interview with Steve Sanfelippo, our Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Arandell.

In part two, Steve shares what you get and what you sacrifice when you work with big printers. As you’ll read, there are a number of positives and negatives, but what’s most important is choosing a partner that best fits your needs.

 

What You Get with Big Printers:

1) Scale

Larger companies provide certain scale and solutions that a smaller printer might have to be more innovative in creating. They also typically have more resources readily available to

2) A Broad Platform of Solutions, Ideas and Products

Whether it’s inline direct mail, in-store graphics, circulars for newspapers, or catalogs, a bigger printer can sit at the table with a customer of any size and be able to provide it all.

3) A Turnkey Solution

The true value proposition of large suppliers is the set of pre-existing, ready-to-use solutions they offer. This really resonates with some people.

 

What You Lose with Big Printers:

1) Customer Service

Bigger printers tend not to place the same value on relationships with the customer. In many cases, they look at customer service as a position in to which they bring young people and after a period of time they move them on to other positions within the company.

2) Access to Senior Leadership

When I worked at a bigger printer, if you did less than 10 million books a year and called us with your needs or challenges, it was hard to get senior management’s support to do what I would call the “right thing,” and to understand the impact on the customer’s business. They preferred to focus their attention and resources on the larger catalogers around the country.

They don’t have a lot of what I would look at as being “sales support,” so in essence the larger companies tend not to have the advocacy and resources available to customers in the same way that a medium sized printer does.

 

Stay tuned for part three of the Advantages of Working with a Mid-Sized Printer, which will be published on our website and shared across our social media accounts in the coming weeks. Until then, continue to check out our News & Events page for all the latest on Arandell!