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I recently traveled halfway around the world and decided to take a qualitative check on commercial printers as I went. The good news is that I found a lot of printers—especially in Chennai, India. The bad news is that almost none of the places I visited use any production software.
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| V. K. Designs, Chennai, India with V Gopi, Balaji V, and Loganathan R (Canon). |
The most interesting interview I had was with V. Gopi and Balaji V., two brothers who run V. K. Designs. These guys operate a small print shop wedged between King of Barbeque and Dark King Tattoo Studio—don’t let the location fool you, though. The brothers have been in business for 14 years and recently upgraded from a Canon imagePRESS C650 to a Fiery-driven imagePRESS V900. The company made the switch after its five-year contract expired and moved upstream to a higher-powered press to support its growing business.
V. K. Designs started out doing graphic design work and outsourcing its printing. Today, it does nothing but digital printing with over 200 regular clients, most of whom are offset printers that outsource short-run work. Most of V. K. Design’s work involves producing business cards, stickers, letter packs, brochures, invitations, calendars, and diaries, but the company will print anything the new imagePRESS can produce while currently outsourcing finishing, such as lamination.
I wish I could say that the company is a power user of production software, but it is not and I suspect this is commonplace in India. V. K. Design jobs arrive via email or walk-in customers. Most files are CorelDRAW, Illustrator, Photoshop, or PDF formats—although, in the Indian business spirit, it accepts pretty much anything. The only software these guys use, other than various design packages, is Command Workstation on the Fiery server to manage and release print jobs.
I also had the pleasure of meeting with the company’s Canon Pre Sales Specialist, Loganathan R., while I was there. He showed me how V. K. Designs is using Fiery Command Workstation to drive the press along with an example of the quality of the work it produces, which happened to be colorful business cards at the time. Loganathan also surprised me by recognizing Keypoint Intelligence when I handed him my card. He uses Keypoint Intelligence’s ProPrintPerformance platform in almost every sales cycle—often to explain legitimate and unbiased press performance to customers in ways that are far more believable than anything that could be provided by a vendor.
The guys at V. K. Designs are hard workers with a successful digital printing business. The company’s biggest challenges, like many other printers, are local competition and rising costs. I find its transition from design services to digital print services fascinating considering how many US printers are maintaining their digital print volumes by growing design departments. However, business in India is different than in the US, and it is rapidly growing. Years ago, when I first visited India, most signs were hand-painted. Now, massive wide format digitally printed signs (mostly on textiles) are everywhere.
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| Various Chennai Commercial Printers. |
And you can’t drive more than a block in the city without passing a commercial printer. I drove past Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, and SAI commercial printers as well as old Modi Xerox copy shops. A lot of these printers provide offset, wide format, and digital printing and, judging by the all the billboards, a lot of their digital work involves signage and installation. Nothing stands still in India!
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