Business of Books—Finishing

Jeff McRitchie of Oregon is director of marketing and an original developer for MyBinding.com, and an expert on most binding technologies. He writes extensively on topics related to document and presentation binding, personal and commercial lamination, shredding and paper handling.

McRitchie has written and published almost 400 articles related to binding technologies and said he “loves to address issues and problems that are not discussed anywhere in print.” In fact, most of McRitchie’s articles are prompted by actual questions from customers who are looking to solve a problem or better understand what solution will best fit their needs.

Armed with this background, Doug Harbach posed some questions to McRitchie to gain practical insight that can assist you in determining if expanding into some type of bindery service is a good idea for your shop, and if so, some sensible ideas to keep in mind.

DH: When would it make sense for a commercial print shop to consider adding a bindery department rather than utilize a bindery shop?

JM: For most commercial print shops, the ability to bind documents in house makes a great deal of sense. For a minimal upfront investment, it is possible to offer print customers the option to have their documents both printed and bound. Your ability to do the bindery work in house allows you to provide fast, convenient service to your customers without sacrificing valuable margins to an outsourced shop.

With that being said, it does not make sense for most print shops or commercial printers to become full-service binderies. Instead, it is always a good idea to start out by selecting one, two or three common binding styles to offer your customers. This will provide the ability to serve the majority of your clients without requiring a huge investment in binding equipment or supplies.

As you get requests for other binding styles or applications, you can either partner with a local bindery or choose to expand your in house binding capabilities.

You will most likely find that an outside bindery will make sense for specialty binding applications and for extremely large volume runs. Small to medium sized jobs bound with common binding styles will provide the most profitability with the least amount of capital investment.

DH: What type of bindery and associated equipment are the most popular additions to a commercial shop? Which equipment should any shop not do without? Which would be a waste of money? What level of expertise/training is required?

JM: For commercial print shops, choosing the right equipment is extremely important. If a print shop purchases equipment that is not durable enough or is too labor intensive, then the binding process may be too manual to be cost effective from a labor standpoint.

A small to medium sized print shop that is looking to start doing binding should really consider an electric binding punch and at least one piece of finishing equipment (a comb opener, coil inserter or wire closer). The electric binding punch should be modular so that the die set can be replaced and additional binding capabilities added in the future. A modular punch from Rhin-O-Tuff, Akiles or GBC would probably be a good option.

Alternatively, a small to medium print shop may decide that it would rather offer the higher end look associated with a thermal binding system such as Unibind or Fastback. The look and feel of documents bound with these systems is far more professional. However, the cost of supplies is higher and documents bound with these styles are not as commonly requested as comb binding, coil binding or wire binding.