Sept. 11, 2006—When is a print company not just a print company? When it realizes that, while print is still an important part of its product mix, it is not the only service it can and should sell.

Signmasters, Passaic Park, N.J., is one such company. Founded in 1978, the firm serves the needs of retail, manufacturing, and financial markets. It began with letterpress, producing signs and posters, and has grown to a full-service shop with more than 60 employees.

The company has come a long way from letterpress. Today, it offers print from 40" to 80", using a six-color offset press, on a variety of stocks and finishes, as well as large-format silk screening. Other services include die-cut POS; POP displays on styrene, static cling, coroplast, foam-core, and sintra; marketing solutions; and a full-service distribution center shipping packages around the nation. In fact, while 65 percent of its revenue still comes from the offset and silk screen printing, the other 35 percent comes entirely from the rest of the product mix.

“Anyone can put ink on paper and call it a print job,” says Al Raimondi, manager. “Signmasters specializes in total fulfillment with multiplex advertising projects. Our market niche is providing full-service graphic arts productions, solutions, and full-service distribution. These attributes are the secret of our success.”

Quite a bit of that change has happened in the past five years, with an upgrade to CTP equipment and a PDF workflow, as well as upgraded and enhanced computer systems. In the works, Mr. Raimondi noted, is a system for Web-based order entry and image retrieval system, which will allow clients to order and retrieve signage from the company's archives and warehouse.

A New Perspective
Some of the changes at Signmasters can be attributed to Mr. Raimondi, who joined the firm after he sold his company in 2004. He began his career in his teens, helping his father, a plant manager at Sterling Roman Press on Varick Street in Manhattan, on weekends and evenings. After graduation from college, he served in a variety of positions for print shops in New York and New Jersey.

In fact, print is something of a family tradition for him. Marc Antonio Raimondi, who lived in the early 16th century in Italy, copied and made reproduction etchings of famous artists of the era, with many of his reproductions still in Italian museums.

At Signmasters, Mr. Raimondi fills a variety of roles, handling the organization of production; managing traffic; directing and coordinating screening, offset and ancillary services; and managing store events.

As part of promotions and marketing, he seeks to build good relationships with clients, taking the oft-cited adage of “become a partner to your clients” to heart.

The sales staff regularly attends industry events, following up on any leads. They focus marketing on the specific vertical markets they want to capture, and have found that a large percentage of clients are repeat customers, who also refer them to friends. In fact, Mr. Raimondi notes that quite a few clients are print buyers who changed jobs and advocate Signmasters at their new locations.

Changing Times
Both Signmasters and Mr. Raimondi have seen quite a bit of change in the industry. They chose to adapt and stay flexible, to be the market innovators instead of the followers, which paid off with a steadily growing business.

“Digitally produced graphics and printing has to be the single largest factor influencing the printing industry today,” Mr. Raimondi notes. “I equate this to the change offset had on the letterpress industry back in the 1950s. As digital technology improves, the size and the throughput increase, the impact to the conventional lithographic industry will increase. I’ve seen in my career a 180-degree change in the way ink is put on paper. What took us two weeks to prep and print in the past is done is a matter of hours today.”

While the evolution of digital technology has and continues to play an important role in how the company does business, it is not the only factor. The company realizes that print alone is not a selling point any more. Price and quality have arrived at a point where the playing field is even—high-quality print is now expected. Print buyers are looking beyond that to what else a graphic arts company can offer them, and Signmasters has hit on a combination that works.

As for the future, Mr. Raimondi has this advice to offer: “Get an education in computer hardware and software applications. A comprehensive knowledge of computers and their attributes and functionality is paramount in future success. Owning and/or operating a printing company is a combination of common sense, tenacity, and hard work.”