By Melissa Donovan
Photo-quality applications are a growing trend, aided by the ease of use consumers find in uploading their own images to websites and creating products such as photobooks, custom calendars, and holiday cards to mugs, mousepads, and smartphone covers.
Digital print and the automated finishing that complements this technology play large roles in development. Ironically, while new applications find success, tried-and-true applications also benefit. Take for example yearbooks.
Similar to a photobook, yearbooks are traditionally created by physically cutting and pasting individual photos and graphics onto a page, scanning the pages, and then printing them. While this process still occurs in schools nationwide, more organizations turn to digital printing and desktop publishing solutions.
From Portraits to Yearbooks
Campos Creative School Portraits, based in Albuquerque, NM, is a school portrait photographer first, and a printer second. Jeff Campos, owner, Campos Creative, founded the business in 1990. In the beginning, he was solely involved in photography and somewhat dabbled in yearbook creation. However, at the time many yearbooks followed the cut-and-paste formula, a process that generated a profit of about a dollar on each book.
Then digital happened. Campos purchased a processing machine from Noritsu for school portraits. When volume got large enough he invested in a Xerox Corporation 5000 to specifically print yearbooks. The quality was high enough, but the next challenge became how to bind them.
At the time, Campos was using Duplo USA Corporation duplicators for other print projects. He reached out to his sales representative and asked about binding solutions and was introduced to the Duplo DB-550. Soon this became the company’s first binder.
Subsequently, Campos noticed how competitors’ yearbooks laid flat and wanted his to do the same. In response, he looked into square binders and stitchers and decided on the Duplo DBM-500 booklet maker in 2007. The Duplo DBM-500 features saddle stitch and folding, side stitching, corner stitching, and inserting. Per Duplo’s website, it handles a maximum processing of speed of 5,000 sheets per hour.
The device’s productivity is especially helpful during Campos’ busy season, which occurs during an 11 week period at the end of the school year—mid-March to mid-May. More than 25,000 books are created for schools mainly in the Albuquerque area, but also customers in AZ.
While Campos enjoys his Summers off, other opportunities for print work come up throughout the year. For example, he creates around 15,000 parent/student handbooks for local schools that require printing and binding. Sports booklets with team and personal portraits for local baseball and basketball leagues are another application.
A Credit to Digital
Campos credits the growth of his company to digital. He says that in the digital age, companies like his are almost forced to not only take school portraits but offer yearbooks as well. The two are married together and if digital didn’t happen, he couldn’t profit from the yearbooks.
“Digital gives us total control from packaging to delivery. When yearbook season comes there is no outsourcing necessary. It eliminates the challenges like doing all the jobs myself and acting as a one-man show,” he explains.
With the added work, Campos employs anywhere from ten to 15 staff members during yearbook season.
While the Xerox 5000 has been a mainstay in the shop, he recently partnered with a local business and used a Xerox iGen 150 digital press to print this year’s set of yearbooks. Campos only prints in color, the price point difference is so small, he says that he almost always encourages color over B&W.
The inside or index of the high school yearbooks use a 100 lb. stock, coated on both sides, whereas the soft cover books used in middle and elementary schools rely on 80 lb. stock, coated on both sides. They also print the covers of the soft yearbooks on 10 pt. stock, which is coated on one side. Most of this is high-end paper that Campos looks for at the start of the school year and buys in bulk.
In the future, Campos is considering purchasing two Hewlett-Packard (HP) Indigo 5500 printers. While the print quality is there for yearbooks, the hesitation is whether it would also be beneficial to print the school portraits on the devices as well. Currently, the Noritsu processing device is still being used for the portraits.
“The HP Indigos would only be used three months of the year to print yearbooks and if we can print school portraits on them as well, that would give us a lot of leverage,” admits Campos.
The company’s workspace is currently 3,100 square feet, and would fit the purchase, however several modifications to the layout of the space and the timing of when the lease expires is spurring Campos to consider purchasing a new building. The new location would be roughly 4,000 to 6,000 square feet and provide a good amount of warehouse space to store yearbooks during the busy season.
Campos’ company wouldn’t be the only one utilizing the HP Indigos. His brothers also own school portrait companies and Campos prints their yearbooks. In addition, Campos is looking to work with other photographers in an entirely new way.
“We would take our knowledge of school portraits and yearbooks and create a nationwide business in the next five years,” he foresees.
Ideally, in a school setting, the contact for a yearbook or portrait photographer is either the PTA or the principal. What Campos would like to do is reach out to these people and provide them with a personal virtual storefront. Once in the system, the administrator can use existing student portraits and place them in award certificates.
Essentially, Campos is taking an asset they already have and using it in multiple ways. For example, if an award ceremony was coming up and the school wanted to honor the student with the best attendance for the year, they could log into their storefront, look up a template for that specific award, and then upload the student’s school portrait. The result would be a personalized certificate, that once finalized would be sent to Campos’ facility and printed on an HP Indigo.
Digital provides both the quality and ability to cost effectively print in runs as few as one.
Take Risks
It is ideas like this that keep Campos Creative in business. Where a lot of companies are “dropping like flies” he knew early on that he had to adapt. “It’s good to think outside the box, take risks, and learn from the failures,” shares Campos.
The addition of the yearbook service and subsequently photo-based handbooks for smaller segments throughout the year provides Campos and his staff with the option to expand its expertise into a new realm of possibility. dps
Jul2015, DPS Magazine
