New Jersey Commercial Shop Expands With Envelope Niche

Email may be a mainstay form of communication for some, but even today, for the majority of wedding invitations, Bar and Bat Mitzvah, Sweet Sixteen, and related party invitations, birth announcements and the like, US Postal Service “snail mail” and the printed envelope still rein.

That’s why printing envelopes, and doing so cost-effectively, remains a bread-and-butter activity for 26-year-old, full-service printing and copying center, Word Center Printing in Hamilton, NJ. Owned by Marilyn and Jerry Silverman, this small but busy shop serving Mercer County specializes in producing highly-creative, bright, colorful stationery, invitations, announcements, postcards and related items.

According to Marilyn Silverman, one of her company’s largest customers is a medical practice with 32 offices in New York and New Jersey. Individual practice sites send her orders for stationary envelopes every day, amounting to thousands of window and regular envelopes each month. Each envelope is printed with a two-color logo that has tight press registration requirements in the corner, as well as the address of the individual practice printed below it in black.

Since the Silverman’s did not own a two-color press, they used to send the envelopes out for pre-printing of the logo and then printed the individual address in-house. In order to accommodate the fast turnaround their customer had come to expect, they had to stock inventory for each medical office. Unfortunately, this meant that when the customer closed or moved an office they’d be stuck with the excess.

Finding a solution

But at an exhibition in 2009, they found their solution: the Xanté Ilumina (Booth 201) digital envelope press. They promptly ordered one. When the machine arrived they installed it themselves and haven’t looked back since.

The Xanté Ilumina digital envelope press has not only helped Word Center Printing increase the efficiency and profitability of jobs for existing customers, it has also helped the company expand the kinds of jobs it produces with the machine, thereby increasing their versatility and creative options.

Says Silverman, “This afternoon I printed advertising door hangers on it, using a special 8.5 inch x 11 inch precut sheet that I fed through the multipurpose input tray. I also ran an 11x17” poster through the same tray. On a lot of color copiers this kind of job can jam, but because the Xanté has a straight paper path the stock goes through easily.”

Silverman figures that the Xanté Ilumina digital envelope press paid for itself in six months. It has enabled the company to handle many more jobs in-house than it could before. The Silvermans can use it for full-color letterhead, which they used to send out. And whereas they used to send out a lot of thermography, the glossy sheen of the ink has given them an attractive and less expensive alternative to offer customers, allowing them to pocket more of the profit as well by producing those jobs in-house.

“I use samples from the machine to actively solicit new business at the many networking opportunities I pursue,” says Marilyn Silverman. “The Xanté makes it easier to get new business; I have interesting, high quality samples to show, I can produce them in-house, turn them around quickly and offer reasonable prices.”

And although sales were down about 10% in 2009, many of their competitors were down much more. “As one of our major customers goes to electronic medical records they’re printing a lot less, but we made it up with new business and we have the Xanté press to thank for that,” she concludes.