Back in August, Printing Impressions Magazine wrote an article about the differences between small commercial printers versus franchise printers. Kopytek was interviewed for this article because of the unique perspective we have on this situation. You see, we started the business back in 1986 as a franchise of a well-known quick service printing and copy company. In 2001, we found ourselves as one of the largest franchisees, and made the decision to break from the mother ship to transform our business into a true commercial printer as opposed to a retail operation.
I was asked to describe the primary difference between a small commercial printer and a franichsed quick-copy type of operation. Having been on both sides of the table, we see the real overlap occuring only with short run digital print jobs, and for printing jobs that come from a home based business. Now that we’ve been a full service commercial printer for the last several years, we also see that the range of products and services we can offer now is much greater than what we could offer as a franchisee. We are able to invest in the equipment needed to expand into new areas. In addition, the retail focus of many quick-print shops limits what they can provide because of the high cost of equipment needed in relation to the low average job size.
Kopytek sets itself apart from quick print, retail type of operations by offering a large quantity of printing with very quick turnaround. Our new commercial printing facility in St. Louis was designed with workflow and material handling issues in mind, which allows us to turn jobs very quickly and handle large volumes of both printing and mailing projects because there is no backtracking at any point in the process, and all materials & supplies are stored right in the applicable work area.
It is true, that the printing industry has changed since we got into the business over 20 years ago - and we know that it will continue to change. Our commitment is to being at the forefront of those changes, offering better service, more services, and quick turnaround at competitive prices.
