A fusion of
the old and new:
“We’re meeting the needs of our customers,” says John Orrall, vice president, marketing and sales/principal. “In the past, if a customer had a certain need, we might have bought a specialized piece of machinery or attachment. We still do. But now, when customers ask for polo shirts with logos for an event, we can provide that service also and integrate with their total branding needs.” Throughout Winthrop’s 100,000-square-foot building, signs of a forward-looking printing company blend with signs of Winthrop’s long-standing roots as a printer. A painting of John A. Orrall, who founded the company in 1916, oversees the main conference room. Also displayed is his “Day-by-Day” system, an oak box that had been filled with system cards he designed and sold by mail order. It was a precursor to today’s “File o’ Fax and electronic organizers, and is a reminder of how business was done.
Recent investments in state-of-the-art technology include a Heidelberg Stitchmaster ST 350 added to the bindery, along with a Polar ED137 Cutting System. “Our main goal is to make it easy to do business with us,” says Orrall. “Technology has allowed us to do that and to meet customers’ needs faster.” The company produces a wide range of projects on its
sheetfed and heatset half- and full-web presses. One job includes printing
35,000 issues of Panorama, a
Three generations
of ownership “We’ve been lucky to have people who are willing to change,” says Muller. “You have to want to change with the technology of the business or at least be open minded. Over time the company has reduced the number of prepress personnel from 36 to nine.” “We’re proud of the group of loyal and knowledgeable employees that we have who have had so much experience in the business and have adapted to the technology,” says Orrall. “The loyalty of the skilled craftsmen we have is really the success of the business.” Winthrop operates 24 hours a day and is always investigating new technologies that can benefit their employees and their clients. Furthermore, new technology helps Winthrop gain efficiencies, expand its capabilities, and attract new customers. First printer to implement
Agfa’s Graphic Enterprise workflow suite With the intention of speeding projects to market, Winthrop now collaborates with its customers using Winstream, the company’s automated workflow. One customer, Jerome Publications, produces Playbills for the Boston theaters by accessing Winthrop’s portal and following the production steps online, which can include estimates, e-mail notifications, viewing production schedules, submitting files, automatic preflighting, and proofing pages. The system automatically processes the files and posts pages on the portal for Winstream softcopy proofing. The production process continues through printing, binding and shipping the final product.
“Clients who try it love it,” says John Orrall. “Every week more are coming onto it. It’s reduced the cycle time and costs.” “It’s a way of doing business,” adds Muller. “We’re ahead of the curve. It’s a matter of getting the customer to trust and accept the technology that’s going that way sooner than later. PDF seems to be the way of the future. We’re there now.” The company initially expected the return on the investment would be 18 months to two years. However, Scott Bernstein now anticipates that the ROI will be faster because it’s helped bring more customers aboard.
A new division, Winprint Rich Media Solutions, uses Agfa’s :Arcadia third generation digital asset management software. Offering file transformation, centralized asset management and digital fulfillment, clients can organize all of their digital assets (print, photography, audio and video) and manage their files to all media outlets, including print, the Internet, radio and television. Printing horsepower
and expanded finishing capabilities
The addition of mailing to Winthrop’s long offered kitting, assembly, fulfillment and drop shipping services rounds out the company’s turnkey offerings. Expanding into promotional
products One Winthrop customer that was buying print and is now taking advantage of the promotional products is Berklee College of Music. For the first time, the college produced the BeanTown Jazz Festival in which 40,000 people attended in September. Winprint Promotional Group provided the backstage all-access passes, VIP passes, hats, and staff T-shirts. “We were able to help them with their marketing and branding effort,” says Dougherty. “We came through for them in a very short period of time.”
“Our customer base is fairly diverse,” explains Dougherty. “We do a lot of work with bands, such as Guster and Mission of Burma. We have provided thousands of items with their branding including apparel, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, piggy banks, underwear, and pillowcases. When they tour, we’re printing almost on a weekly basis and drop shipping to different venues around the country. So you need to be able to react quickly depending on their needs.” The largest product category that Winprint Promotional sells is apparel, which includes hats, polo shirts, button down dress shirts, windbreakers, and jackets. Other best selling items include USB pens, coffee mugs, travel mugs, and computer accessories like mouse pads.
“It started off as an immediate success,” John Orrall said. “Mike has since hired additional staff to support growth in that area, and we’re looking to hire additional sales people. A recent order for 200 custom sharpie pens just turned into a re-order for 25,000 pens.”
About the author: Nancy
A. Hitchcock writes about the printing and graphic communications industry.
She served for many years as a senior editor at Electronic Publishing
magazine. She can be reached at |
Last
year Winthrop Graphic Solutions, a 90-year-old printing company located
just outside downtown Boston, launched Winprint Promotional Group as
one of its latest endeavors to expand its capabilities.
To
reflect the company’s evolution and fresh image, Winthrop Printing
recently changed its name to Winthrop Graphic Solutions to encompass
its range of printing, binding, finishing, and mailing services combined
with rich media and promotional products. Winthrop was the first in
the country to implement Agfa’s Graphic Enterprise, a collaborative
software solution that connects the printer directly to its customers.
Winthrop
also prints the Playbills, or the program guides, for all the theaters
in town, which require tight turnarounds. “We could have five
different shows in town on any given week in addition to shows such
as Blue Man Group and Shear Madness that are going on constantly,”
explains General Manager Kurt Muller. “When the curtain goes up,
people have to have programs in their hands. Our workflow is built for
speed.”
Today,
for the 100 employees, the average length of service is 16 years. Peter
Tenierello, who is in charge of die cutting, has worked at the company
for 37 years, and Al Poste, who operates the Agfa Xcalibur plate setter,
has worked there for 45 years. “Years ago so much was manual and
so much slower,” says Poste. “Now I can do in a day what
we did in a week, and it’s cleaner, and easier.”
Winthrop was the first printer in the country to implement Agfa’s
Graphic Enterprise, which is streamlining the production workflow and
linking the workflow with its customers. This solution integrates Agfa’s
products, including the :ApogeeX 3.5 digital workflow, :Arcadia, Agfa’s
third generation digital asset management solution, and :Delano, a web-based
project management system. 
Muller
explains another project: “An insurance underwriter from Chicago
called on Monday and wanted two full-color glossy magazines for a convention
in Boston on two successive days,” he says. “Utilizing the
power of soft proofing, he knew he didn’t have to be here to see
hard copy. As long as you have Internet access and a browser you can
be collaborating, saving time and money.”
Winthrop
also offers AGFA’s :Sublima Advanced Screening Technology that
improves print quality by producing near continuous-tone reproduction.
As a combination of AM screening (conventional) and FM Screening (stochastic),
the process yields a line screen of 240 lines per inch as the company’s
default standard.
The
die cutting department, headed by Peter Tenierello, houses more than
700 dies. Having this capability in-house allows the company to control
quality and production schedules. The department has won several first
place awards for die cutting from the Boston Litho/Craftsman Club’s
annual Gallery of Superb Printing.
“Our
loyal customers are open to the additional services that we’re
offering and plan to offer,” explains Orrall. “When we work
with marketing departments at different companies, many times the same
people handle several different types of printing and products. For
the promotional products, it’s been a very fragmented business
— everyone seems to know someone who can get some hats made. We’re
taking it to a new level of service to add value. We’ll combine
a promotional item with a printed piece, design custom packaging, kit
it, fulfill it, maintain inventory for a client, and set up a web-based
company store.”
For
Vicor, another customer, Winthrop has been printing collateral material,
such as catalogs and brochures, for many years. When the company wanted
to create polo shirts with their logo to promote a particular division,
Vicor started with less than 50 shirts and that order has since grown
to hundreds of shirts. 
“The
showroom in South Boston has really been a plus for us where customers
can see the products up close and get ideas,” says Dougherty.
“Promotional products are fairly sample-driven where you really
need to see the product. When customers come in here for press checks,
they can visit our showroom and see the products, which helps drive
sales. It works out very well that way.”
As
Winthrop continues to “open doors to the future of the graphic
enterprise,” as its new slogan touts, it can’t help but
be influenced by its past. John states: “My uncle used to say
[in 1964] ‘we offer quality, price, and service, choose two’—
the idea being that if you want the best quality and the best price,
it’s going to take some time. If you wanted the best price and
you needed it tomorrow, the quality could be compromised. Right now
the quality and the service are a given to be in the game, and things
have become more price sensitive. By investing in the newest technologies,
owning the real estate and most of the equipment, and having little
debt in this capital-intensive business, we’ve been able to remain
very competitive.”
.
