Yet the potential of the finishing department to offer clients the chance to differentiate their product from rivals in an increasingly one-size-fits-all market seems to have been largely missed by the industry. Be it buying new kit to provide greater post-press options or adapting existing kit to do new things, few printers seem to be ready to take a chance on specialist finishes, despite the fact that companies that have taken this route are reporting great success.

Some printers may worry that clients will not be willing to pay the higher rates that come with specialist finishes, others may be concerned about how long it would take to recoup the cost of the investment. The argument from those using post-press successfully for product differentiation is that the problem is simply that both printer and client are unaware of the potential finishing has to make a product stand out.

"It really isn’t recognised enough in the printing industry how much potential there is in post-press to sell to clients how they can differentiate their products," explains Steve Hutchinson, product development manager at Howitt.

However, this wasn’t always the case. The finishing department used to be where the magic happened. Imaginative use of foiling, embossing, folding, tip-ons, gluing, lamination, you name it, were once standard practice. Then digital print shifted the focus of differentiation to personalisation and the recession hit, hammering budgets.

While the realisation that digital’s ability to personalise can only make a product stand out so far has begun to be acknowledged – variable images and copy do not change the physical appearance of the product – the economic situation remains troublesome and it is here where the real issue with the lack of added-value post-press take-up rests. Adding value at the finishing stage is not cheap and in the markets where it has the most effect – DM and packaging – prices are extremely low.

"The challenge is that the base cost for doing something simple has become so cheap," explains Alistair Ezzy, business development director at GI Direct. "When you do invest in technology to do something special, new or exciting at the post-press stage, the price seems that much more expensive and people do baulk at it. It’s the gulf between the two prices that puts people off."

Be bold
But using this as a reason not to get involved is a coward’s way out, according to those offering the service at least. Getting over the price hurdle is all about education, they say. Rather than looking at price, Ezzy says the conversation has to be turned to ROI, effectiveness and impact. For example, investing in the print product with digital personalisation and data cleansing may improve response rates for a DM shot, but it does little to make the recipient pick up the mailer in the first place. Through an innovative post-press solution, that striking feature that ensures a mailer is picked up can be engineered.

"We’re finding that people are now starting to get this," says Ezzy. "It’s taken us nearly three years of hard selling, but people are now finally starting to not just think about the cost, they are looking at how adding specialist finishing can up ROI and really deliver an improved product."

Howitt is another company that has been pushing the post-press message and it too has seen a recent upturn in realisation from customers. Hutchinson explains that not only are clients starting to understand the benefits of added-value post-press, they are beginning to be very astute in choosing when to use it.

"If the campaign is relatively untargeted, they will not want to spend as much and so they won’t look to add value at the post-press stage," he reveals. "However, if the mailing is to a targeted audience, the client is willing to spend more on the mailer as they can have more confidence in the ROI."

Concerns about client price sensitivity, then, are perhaps unfounded, but another problem is product knowledge. Hutchinson concedes that clients mostly have no idea about the options and so says it is down to the printer to highlight them. Howitt regularly assesses the finishing options available on the market so it can bring that knowledge to bear on the design process of any mailer or packaging. Ezzy adds that trade shows are a great place to get acquainted with what is possible. Richard Owers, business development director at Pureprint Group, agrees.

"The trade fairs like Ipex and Drupa are particularly useful," he explains. "It’s definitely our job to go out and make clients aware of what is possible. We need to show designers how the production process can be creative at the post-press stage."

Improving a product comes in a number of guises. For some it is all about impact, so adding foiling or embossing, different types of lamination or doing something the recipient hasn’t seen before. One example of the latter was a project carried out by GI Solutions in which it attached a Post-It-style sticky note to a mailer with a "handwritten" message encouraging the recipient to call the company. At other times the improvement is more one of practicality, such as dynamic perfing.

Ezzy says his company’s investment in a Technau Dynamic Perforator, supplied by Friedheim, had a massive impact. GI Direct is now able to perf in 99 different configurations inline at speed.

"We’re using it for variable coupons," he explains. "The client will decide how many coupons their customers should have – be that two or four or six, etc – and we can print that inline and perf after. It’s not very glamorous, but it is massively effective and really important to the client."

The majority of the solutions that are needed or requested can be managed by available kit. However, investing in that kit on the strength of a single job can be a risky strategy and is an understandable barrier to added-value post-press services in a tight economic climate. However, Howitt’s Hutchinson says that taking a long-term view erases much of the risk.

"You have to be sure what you are buying is not going to be only used once," he explains. "Also, if you use it for the first time and that client does not get the results from that campaign they expect, it’s going to be difficult to get repeat work on that machine. So you have to be very sure that what you are doing is right for that client and right for the project and therefore worth the money to everyone involved."

By "everyone involved", Hutchinson is obviously referring to the fact that some of the cost of that machine is passed on to the client; for a large contract, it could be the case that the entire cost of that machine can be covered. Even then it is important to have a long-term view, he says. He gives the example of Howitt buying a tip-on kit to put plastic cards on mailers for a major company, a project with a run length in the millions. Despite covering the cost, that machine has subsequently been used for jobs ranging from adding low-viscosity sachets to paper receipts to mailers.

Alternative strategies
But buying up kit is not necessarily the only option. To save costs, or if there is no viable machine that does the job currently available, it is also possible to amend existing kit to fit the bill. This is something both Hutchinson and Ezzy have done and both say that, on the whole, they have found manufacturers willing to co-operate fully to help find a solution.

Howitt works very closely with Bobst to find bespoke solutions for clients. If a design comes in that existing kit cannot manage, Hutchinson gives Bobst a ring and they find a way of making that existing kit do the job. Ezzy says that it’s a similar story at GI Solutions.

"We try and innovate out of the existing finishing line we have," he explains. "We adapt the die-cutters and other functions to do slightly different things to fit the client’s needs."

Owers argues that you can actually have all the benefits of offering added-value post-press services without having to make any capital investment, or in-house amendments to kit, yourself. At Pureprint, a lot of the work is for customers looking for that extra edge and to fulfil this desire Pureprint often outsources the finishing work, rather than buying up the kit itself.

"You don’t have to buy the specialist kit straight away, you can test the water and outsource that work to specialist trade finishers," he explains. "Customers can then be educated in what that kit does and the demand for that product can be gauged and if you get to the point where demand is high enough, you can then look at purchasing the equipment in order to produce that work in-house."

The barriers to getting involved in added-value post-press are, then, all easily overcome. Printers just have to take the initiative and demonstrate their creativity and knowledge by advising clients on the options available and what those options can do for them. As Hutchinson says, it’s a massive opportunity: "Clients are looking for more and they are willing to pay for it, and the technology is there to meet that demand. If you can marry the two as the printer then you are on to a winner."