Regal® Folder/Gluer System Helps Florida Printer Boost Business Through “One-Stop Shopping”

A resourceful, diversified, high-end Ft. Lauderdale printer has shrewdly expanded its customer services and rapidly grown its business, thanks to an extremely successful “one-stop shopping” sales approach.

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Blue Ocean Press, Inc., founded in 1984 as a small commercial printer, now specializes in the designing, printing, direct mailing, warehousing, and fulfilling of graphic arts products used by customers in a host of business sectors in the eastern United States. Blue Ocean Press is enjoying increasingly good business with very satisfied customers in the travel, automotive, manufacturing, and graphic arts industries, as well as with medical and institutional audiences. Blue Ocean products range from brochures, pamphlets, diverse types of promotional literature, pocket folders, stationary, envelopes and annual reports, to prescription pads, embroidered clothing and baseball caps, to imprinted golf balls and beverage mugs.

“We started expanding our services from those of a conventional printer in response to requests from our customers,” recalled Tom Mounce, owner and president of Blue Ocean Press. “They told us they were dissatisfied with the product quality and unreliable delivery times of some of their suppliers. Naturally, these recurring problems caused our suppliers considerable anxiety, and sometimes financial loss. They asked us to take on these services, demonstrating their confidence in our flexibility, firm focus on quality performance, and delivery times they could count on.

“Since customer satisfaction is top priority with us, we altered our operation, learned new types of business, and took on such related activities as direct mailing, warehousing and fulfillment,” continued Mounce. “Our customers quickly indicated they were pleased with these services, which resulted in lucrative new business for us. We realized that our considerable expansion was an effective form of ‘one-stop shopping’ – many of our customers’ needs could now be met by just dealing with us alone.’

While Blue Ocean Press was expanding its line of services for its customers, this resourceful company also began taking certain activities away from its suppliers and performing them in-house. One of these activities was its die-cutting operation.

“We wanted to better control the quality of our products, foster more precise on-time delivery, and reduce costs, so we installed a well-known folding and gluing system to handle our die-cutting under our own roof,” said Mounce. “Unfortunately, this system proved to be a dismal failure. It constantly stopped running, had to be frequently adjusted, and regularly slowed our production schedules. In a move that has proven to be as good as installing the previous system was bad, we replaced this equipment with the high-performance Regal folder/gluer system. The Regal system has proven to be extremely efficient, has greatly enhanced our production capabilities, and shortened turn-around times. It’s an important component in our program to expand our business with current customers and add new ones by providing superior products and on-time delivery. The Regal system has definitely helped us sharpen our competitive edge in the marketplace.”

Designed and engineered by B&R Moll, Inc., of Ivyland, PA, the Regal system includes a primary folding and gluing unit, and a secondary unit called VERSA-FOLD® that glues and forms pockets and is capable of changing product directions. The system is equipped with such features as one fold plate, a Tipper plate offering exceptional versatility, built in sheet spacer and batch counter, and DC controls. The Regal system has been customized for use by Blue Ocean Press to also feature a refold component, a transfer tape, and an affixing unit which glues cards onto either brochures or pocket folders in-line.

While Blue Ocean Press was expanding its production capabilities by adding the Regal system, this energetic company also was making great strides with its new direct mail, warehousing and fulfillment services. Customer needs in these areas are varied, time-sensitive and require close coordination between several operations of the company.

“Some of our customers want us to design and print their material, then direct mail all of it to their target audiences without the complication and expense of a middle man,” explained Mounce. “Other customers ask for designing, printing and direct mailing specific quantities of certain pieces to their audiences, then warehousing the rest for a designated time. Later we direct mail the remaining quantities to the targeted recipients on a staggered basis, usually monthly.”

Direct mailing is also a key component in the fulfillment sector of Blue Ocean Press’ business, which is also producing excellent results. The company first buys promotional items – such as polo shirts, beverage mugs, baseball caps and golf balls – that have been designated by their customers. Next, the company embroiders or imprints on these items whatever graphics their customers have specified. Finally, Blue Ocean staffers direct mail these advertising specialties to the targeted recipients, which could include both companies and individuals.

A specialized new interest for Blue Ocean Press is its rapidly developing business with customers in the pediatric medicine profession. Blue Ocean services for this group include the design and printing of prescription pads and different types of brochures; purchasing lab coats and embroidering them with the names, titles, and professional affiliations of physicians and technicians; and imprinting indicia on medical screening kits. Blue Ocean Press recently established a dedicated web site to enable medical professionals to conveniently order these customized items on-line.

What’s the corporate philosophy that has driven Blue Ocean Press to become so increasingly successful?

“From the beginning we’ve always had an aggressive focus on achieving complete customer satisfaction through superior quality and next day production and delivery,” maintained Tom Mounce. “Later we realized that to expand our business dramatically we had to continue this emphasis but also become more versatile, and introduce new services that would make the lives of our customers less complicated and less stressful. Dealing just with us saves our customers time and money by taking a significant number of days out of their production equations. It also gives them a piece of mind they didn’t have before, given the unreliability of their former suppliers.

“At the same time our ‘one-stop shopping’ marketing approach has helped us expand our business by being more useful to our customers, while creating a series of excellent opportunities for us to secure lucrative new business,” concluded Mounce.” This is definitely a win-win situation for everybody…. except our competitors, of course!”

REGAL and VERSA-FOLD are registered trademarks of B&R Moll, Inc., Moll International, Inc., and Moll Equipment LTD.