Cultivate Your Suppliers: Networking for the Print Buyer

In addition to writing about printing, I also broker printing, and I have a new client I want to impress at a meeting on Thursday. She is the marketing manager for a famous, well-circulated, local magazine, responsible for events (large-format), and marketing collateral. Her request, when we first spoke, was for sample invitations (postcards, rack and door hangers). Her magazine had produced numerous invitations in the past, mostly short-run digital work, but she wanted something different.

This is what I did to prepare for the meeting.

I approached a friend who is a sales representative for a high-end printer. She said her shop wouldn’t be competitive because most aspects of invitation printing (the foil stamping, faux textures, specialty coatings, die-cutting, embossing, etc.) would need to be jobbed out (subcontracted) to other vendors. Hence, her shop would have to mark up the job and either make no profit or decline to bid. She was honest. That was good.

Even better, she gave me the name of an embosser/diecutter (a person high up the food chain at the company). When I called, not only did he offer to send me samples, but he gave me a contact high up the food chain at a letterpress shop. When I called the letterpress shop, my contact also offered to send me samples.

I thought hard, and I remembered another high-end printer, a local shop. When I called my contact, he said this job was perfect for his company, and he offered to send samples.

I also called a paper rep that serviced the printers in question. I knew he would want me to send work to his printers and specify paper from his sources. I knew he would personally benefit from this job. So he stepped up and sent me samples. He was very interested in the potential work.

After four packages arrived at the door, I had eighty samples, including an invitation that felt like suede, another invitation that had the texture of a football, intricate die-cuts that could only have been done with a laser, folds that reminded me of Japanese paper-folding art, coatings of all types, shapes of all types—enough ideas to give birth to a hundred more invitations.

And I now have reliable contacts at a letterpress, paper merchant, diecutter/embosser, and high-end printer whom I hadn’t met prior to this effort. All of them are enthusiastic about potentially working together, on invitations for this magazine and successive jobs as well.

I think I’m ready for the meeting.

So how does this relate to you? If you’re a designer or print buyer, consider the following:

1. Network: Make friends in many industries related to printing, not just offset printers. You can get a wealth of knowledge from a paper merchant, a diecutter/embosser, a high-end printer (catalogs, magazines, brochures), and a letterpress. Consider finding a reputable large-format printer (large-format) as well, and/or maybe a digital printer (digital printing, VDP) with an HP Indigo, or some other such high-end digital press. You may even find ways to mix and match their services, and they can teach you how to produce dramatic work in a cost-effective manner. Better yet, they can give you samples, so you can see for yourself. Get to know people who are high up enough in the various companies to have experience, contacts, and authority.
2. Develop a swipe file of all the printed samples that you like. Update it periodically (add and subtract). Make notes about the paper stock used, the printing and finishing techniques employed, and perhaps even the cost. Consider the audience and goal of each printed piece and how each achieves that goal: that is, how the design, type treatment, color, paper stock, and finishing all work together to achieve the goal and astound the target audience.