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An interview with Dave Pilcher Sr., Owner and CEO of
Freeport Press Inc.
The Freeport Press was established as a weekly newspaper in
1880 by J.J. Ashenhurst. He was a resident of Martins Ferry,
Ohio and when he decided to start a newspaper he chose
Freeport because of the geographical location, without ever
seeing the town. Freeport Press has been in continuous
operation ever since.
Freeport Press has grown to over 170 employees and over $20
million in sales. Dave Pilcher Sr., Owner and CEO recalls:
"When I purchased the Freeport Press, we had a large
concentration of our sales with one account. We were the
original printing facility for the Harmon Homes Real Estate
Magazines with 40% of our sales with them, and most of the
other jobs were cold-set on newsprint with a ‘pleasing’
glossy cover. We have since shut down and sold those
cold-set presses and now focus our efforts entirely on the
commercial heat-set market."
The year 1997 may be remembered as a turning point in the
company’s direction when Dave Pilcher Sr., a seasoned and
experienced veteran of the printing industry purchased the
press and took it in a new direction, “Quality heat-set
printing at an affordable price. We have completely
replaced the entire product mix with commercial heat-set
work. Our focus has been on producing saddle stitched
products, and to build an efficient workflow to support that
market. We set out and achieved a completely digital
workflow to support all data collection, including the
entire front-end process of planning, estimating,
scheduling, purchasing, order entry and the prepress
workflow. It set off a chain reaction of capital equipment
and software acquisitions.
When Dave purchased the company in 1997 it had one cold-set
press and one heat-set half web producing about $8 million
in sales dollars. Today Freeport Press has grown with 3
building expansions, and features 4 heat-set presses, one of
which has press pasting capabilities with an inline trimming
system. Our bindery features 4 high speed Mueller binding
lines, two with inline ink-jetting. We have offline
ink-jetting capabilities available as well. We also offer
offline tipping and have a 5 into 1 inserting line. Our
sales will be well in excess of $20 million in this coming
year. Our prepress is fully digital featuring the AGFA
Computer-to-plate (CtP) technology using a RAMpage ripping
system front end. We offer both SWAP color calibrated
digital Inkjet proofs as well as online proofs via DaLim - a
fantastic online proofing method. Freeport Press has fiber
optics with two T-1 lines for data and one additional for
telephone communications coming into the facility.
The product mix at Freeport Press includes direct mail
single sheets and multi-page flyers, digest, magazine and
tabloid size catalogs, publications, and other saddle
stitched products. Freeport Press is both a publication and
general commercial printer with unique advantages such as
amazingly fast turns in their fully staffed -24/7 prepress
operation. “We understand that publishers need tight turns
in their publication cycle, and have outstanding on-time
performance as required by our market.”
Freeport Press worked with it’s customers to keep up to date
with the new technological innovations, and actually walked
away from it’s former product mix of about $8 million. All
of the $20 million in sales is new work since we began our
transition to heat-set. “The most dramatic change was
brought about by the completely new digital workflow,” he
says. “CtP has enhanced our quality tremendously, and has
reduced waste and material costs. We had to move our
customers into this new era of printing technology for
improved workflow and to keep their costs low.”
“We strive to continually improve quality and turnaround
times while keeping our costs low, especially since the
paper market has been so volatile. During the last two
years, we have seen paper prices increase by 30% to 40% on
the entire range of stocks and we’ve worked with our
customers to help them maintain their profit margins. It’s
been a difficult time, and yet, we continue to grow.”
Digital Solutions
Many have feared Digital Magazines as being damaging to the
printing industry, however Freeport Press is taking the
progressive view that print and digital can both exist and
create extreme value to advertisers if properly used in
conjunction with one another. Our new digital product,
called ePRO – print repurposed online electronically – has
given the publishers a “digital advantage” over the
competition in their market.
Readers can browse the digital issue with exceptional ease,
and view the magazine in a two page spread format or zoom in
to see amazing detail.
However, the greatest benefit is to the publisher’s
advertiser as readers explore active adLINKS which go
directly to the advertiser’s website. Readers can also
immediately respond to an e-mail or website addresses found
in the publication including those found in classified
advertisements by simply clicking on the address. This is an
explosive development for publishers and advertisers.
If a publication is subscription based, the software can
handle that as well through a secure e-commerce website.
ePRO will also handle the entire process of distributing of
the digital publication via e-mail
Freeport Press is excited with the preliminary results it
has experienced with this ePRO product. Many customers are
taking advantage of an online presence and implementing a
print / digital marketing approach with their advertisers.
“We knew the market was moving in the digital direction for
sometime now, and partnered with an industry leader in
digital publishing market to help us produce the ePRO
product. We knew it was the right choice for our customers,”
Pilcher points out. “Just being online isn’t the enough –
having the right product to market your publication will
determine the success and increased revenue source of a
digital platform.”
After 125+ years in business, Pilcher expects many more
drastic changes in the foreseeable future for Freeport
Press. While their customer base grows there may be “natural
progressions” into areas such as poly-bagging, UV coating
and perfect binding services; the company will grow with the
demands and needs of their customers.
What Freeport Press will be doing is maintaining the pulse
of its client base and staying in tune with their needs. “We
will continue to grow and partner with our clientele which
is exactly how we’ve achieved double digit growth during the
same time frame when 40 printing companies closed in Ohio,”
he says.
“The workflow improvements and equipment investments we’ve
made have all been customer-driven. The way to be truly
successful is through direct and consistent partnership with
customers—not only on a sales/purchasing level, but by
allowing and encouraging direct access to the top. To us it
may seem like just a job, but to our customers it’s their
livelihood. Nothing is more important.”
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