Build It, and They Will Come

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Expres Printing is a 100% digital print shop based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. All the applications, produced by Expres Printing are printed using Xerox technology. The ambition is to become one of the benchmarks for digital print industry in our market.

Romania was one of the countries hardest hit by the global downturn; its strong growth trajectory of more than 7% in the past five years went sharply in the opposite direction, contracting by about 8% in 2009, but in the city centre a corner print shop is a glimpse of where the printing industry in Romania hopes to go when the economy recovers.

Expres Printing  is a 100% digital print shop where all the applications, from business cards to large posters, are printed using  Xerox  technology. Only a year old, Expres Printing knows that its investment in technology isn’t the whole story; more cultivation is required in software, training and workflow. In describing his vision, Expres executive manager, Dacian  Badea, likes this line from the movie Field of Dreams, “Build it, and they will come.”

Going into digital

Expres Printing is owned by a family company, called  Tubman. Tubman has other divisions, including real estate, and they discovered the digital print business from a former tenant in the real estate division. They immediately saw that digital printing could offer to their company a new revenue stream, so they decided to invest. As the head of Tubman Company’s Expres Printing in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Dacian oversees sales, production, delivery and administration of the all-digital printing company. Expres Printing was founded in 2009, and Dacian has spent much of the company’s first year learning the business of digital printing.

“From the first day we worked with Xerox, and Xerox showed us how much can be done with digital printing. The opportunities are really broad. The fact is that digital printing is not well known in Romania as a business solution, and that the most developed products of digital printing (Web to print, e.g.) are not available in Romania. Because we believe these solutions are good for Romanian companies, and can help them increase their own productivity, we have made a plan to pioneer this space”. – says Dacian Badea.

Not just machines

Next up for Expres Printing is the implementation of Xerox’s Freeflow Digital Workflow Collection , which will automate work at the shop, will allow the company to create a web-to-print interface for corporate and individual customers. Today, no one is offering web-to-print in Romania: Dacian aims to be the first. To get there, he’s partnered with Xerox.

“Investing in digital print technology is only part of the equation for the company to grow. We aim to deliver the same level of productivity in sales, work flow, delivery, etc., as is achievable on an iGen4 – and that means very high productivity. To help us reach this goal, we are in the pre-implementing process of FreeFlow Web Services software and we have engaged Xerox to do an audit”. – continues Dacian Badea.

Andrei Sarbu , Graphic Arts Business Development Manager for Xerox Romania, is working closely with Dacian to position Expres for when the economic upturn comes: “Expres Printing is in advance of the market, so it’s at least two years in the front of the competitors. They have the resources to invest and they have an open mind to look for the new opportunities, so they are really well prepared for when the market will recover from the downturn, and I am pretty sure that they will become a very successful company in the printing industry”.

Customers and communication

As Expres builds its own future, it’s working with customers who are doing the same. When telecoms giant Nokia opened a state of the art factory near Cluj in September 2008, making this part of Romania an integral part of its global demand-supply network, the company turned to Expres for digital printing.

Signs of growth – the opening of the Nokia factory, and even the new upscaled shopping mall – show that Expres Printing’s vision is part of a future trend that’s already starting.  Better days will return; Expres Printing will be ready to capitalise on them, and Xerox will be there too.

Expres Printig started to be very active on the Internet. Recently was launched the Facebook and Twitter pages; and they are working with Google AdWords. They are trying to permanently improve our Web presence. Moreover, they are doing direct mailing, and take every opportunity to use the same applications that they recommend to their customers, like TransPromo, marketing 1-to-1, personalisation.

“Our ambition is to become one of the benchmarks for digital print industry in our market. Xerox consulting services helped us a lot in building our business plans, seeing clearly the trends in this digital printing industry, and entering in the helpful Premier Partner network”. – concludes Dacian Badea.