Compiled By Bob Hall

It sounds like a great idea, and it can be, if all the necessary elements are in place: Create a document in Des Moines and print a thousand copies each in Pittsburgh, Paris, and Peking. Or send a document from the main office to be output at 20 branch offices across the country. Distribute and print. Transfer information instead of transporting paper.

Well, the technology needed is certainly in place. First and foremost is the Web. Then there’s Adobe PDF and PDF Transit, Xerox DocuShare, and other software solutions. And last, but hardly least, are the variety of digital output devices ranging from copiers to CTP platemakers to digital presses.

So what’s missing? For most independent quick and small commercial printers, it’s someone both trustworthy and compatible at the output end or ends. Several years ago, a stab was made at solving this problem by creating a member network that was supposed to create a nationwide distribute and print system for independent printers. It failed for several reasons, among them pricing and profit concerns, lack of enforceable system-wide standards, technology limitations, and trust that the job was always going to get printed to the customer’s satisfaction. Additionally, there just was not enough demand among the participants’ customers for the service.

The lesson learned was that successful distribute and print is highly dependent on having a real organization in place that can better control the process. That means a large and solid franchise system such as Sir Speedy, AlphaGraphics, Allegra, ICED, or PIP, a chain such as Kinko’s, or a corporate entity with lots of branches or business units.

For our purposes, we’ll skip the corporate model except to say that it runs on the same technology and handles many of the same kinds of output—brochures, manuals, business cards, presentations, etc. It also can be a tempting target for those larger print-for-pay operations that are looking to build their outsourcing business.

Tools
Today, a majority of franchise quick printers and a significant number of independents have the ability to move print jobs over the Internet. With PDF, file transfer has become much easier and more efficient—provided the files are prepared correctly. Kinko’s was one of the first companies to offer file transfer that automatically made a PDF from the customer’s file and sent it to a Kinko’s store for output. Franchises such as Sir Speedy, which launched Instant Documents.com on-the-fly PDF conversion in 1999, soon followed. Now that capability is available to independents through sources such as PagePath, Datalogic, Prismatek, and others. They can also offer online ordering and proofing just like the big boys by using website companies such as PrinterPresence.com.

The point is that actual file transfer is no longer a major limitation of distribute and print. And with today’s digital output devices, output quality concerns are becoming less of a factor. The real problem holding back distribute and print in our industry segment is the lack of enough appropriate customers. Sure, lots of people need something produced remotely from time to time, but these one-off situations are not enough to fuel a major profit center. That means to succeed, you have to find appropriate customers.

Prospects
Where distribute and print really is clicking is with very large operations. TV Guide remotely prints 30 million copies in 200 editions at seven US printers nationwide. Major corporations are using distribute and print internally or turning to organizations such as the International Printers Network (IPN), which has 45 member companies in 35 countries. Members have at least $2 million and as much as $100 million in sales, making IPN the largest independent printer network in the world. Obviously, these guys are pretty much out of our league, so we need to look elsewhere.