By Chuck Moozakis
Editor-In-Chief

To a growing number of newspapers, commercial printing is the revenue stream that has helped keep their operations on an even keel.

“For the first 127 years we were just a newspaper,” said Marvin Laut, general manager of The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain. “Now, we have become a commercial printer.”

An $8 million expansion of its facility and the purchase of a new MAN Roland Uniset press, commissioned in 1997, fueled the Pueblo newspaper’s four-year-old transformation.

Marvin Laut, general manager of The Pueblo (Colo.) 
Chieftain, at the paper’s press bay. 
The daily has struck gold with commercial printing.
Photo: Chuck Moozakis

The Chieftain (daily, 50,950; Sunday, 53,986) recently pumped in another $1 million to build 9,000 square feet of additional production space, bringing the plant to 65,000 square feet.

The space houses newsprint — the paper has a 100-day supply — and will eventually support a computer-to-plate deployment once the paper makes the shift, Laut said.

Beyond the new addition, the paper also in the past year purchased post-production equipment to handle customer requests. Among the new purchases: a MAN Roland inline quarter folder, and a stitcher trimmer and commercial stackers from Muller Martini.

Wide variety

The Chieftain’s commercial outreach has snagged a wide variety of customers, which keep the single-wide press humming. Beyond the daily paper, The Chieftain also prints the Colorado Springs Independent, a weekly tabloid; more than 100,000 TV guides for The Gazette in Colorado Springs; Ag Journal; and a mix of other publications.

The downtown printing facility of The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain.
Photo: Chuck Moozakis

Laut said the press is now at 60 percent to 70 percent capacity, but the paper would like to attract some additional commercial accounts that have early-in-the-week deadlines.

For most of the accounts, The Chieftain handles printing and delivery; for the Ag Journal, the daily is also responsible for labeling, stacking and mailing.

While the MAN Roland press is used for larger press runs, the paper also handles smaller commercial work on three sheetfed presses it bought for its sister operation 6th Street Printing, which is also located at the paper’s downtown Pueblo headquarters. The operation can print everything from business cards to brochures and wedding invitations.

“The whole idea is to cover the whole gamut of printing,” Laut said.

Investment paid back

The Chieftain, privately held and locally owned, does not disclose how much money it’s earning from its commercial operations. But Laut said the initial investment is well on its way of getting recouped, and that annual margins are solidly in the double-digit range.

“It’s very profitable,” he said. “Last year, even as ad sales declined our commercial sales grew.”

To accommodate the outside printing, production director Ned Sutton reshuffled press times, making sure that the two daily editions of The Chieftain weren’t affected. Still, “the biggest learning curve we had was flexibility. We had to make sure everyone agreed to firm deadlines,” he said. The paper’s press crews work two shifts a day, with no fewer than four press operators available during each shift.

As part of its transformation, the paper also converted to electronic pagination, using Digital Technology Inc.’s pagination software. All of the publications using The Chieftain now send their files electronically. But the paper can handle mechanical layouts as well, Sutton said.

Casting a net

Casting a big net to snare commercial accounts was also the rationale behind a $30 million investment three years ago by owner Fayetteville Publishing, the owner of the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer, to upgrade its printing facilities.

The upgrade brought the paper (daily, 66,423; Sunday, 73,636) a 200,000-square-foot production plant built around a KBA Colora press, said John Jenkins, production director of Target Printing and Distribution, the commercial printing arm of the Observer.

“We’ve grown 40 percent in the past year,” Jenkins said. “We have a tremendous amount of repeat business.”

Target prints a multitude of commercial jobs, ranging from books and community college course guides to alternative weekly tabloids and television listings.

Since a standing start of near zero three years ago, Target is on track to hit the $10 million revenue mark within the next five years, reflecting the market’s solid growth.

Etched foothold

Target has also etched a solid foothold as a printer of high-volume, single-sheet output. The company is pumping out single-sheet ads — laid out on eight-page forms — at a rate eclipsing 200,000 per hour, Jenkins said. “It’s a growing market, one we never anticipated,” he said.

The primary market: mortgage lenders, car dealerships and home repair contractors.

“The margins are tremendous,” he said.

In addition to the Colora press, Target also equipped itself with a Craftsman gripper/conveyor, a Gammerler rotary trimmer and a stacker. Glue tips and a quarter folder, each installed on the Colora, served as a foundation for the firm’s specialty work, Jenkins said.

At the same time, Fayetteville upgraded its Heidelberg inserters.

To make sure it’s getting the word out about its capabilities, Target recently hired a salesperson. A customer service representative was also added to deal with client concerns. The unit also has a dedicated graphics staff.

Because Target is set up as a unit responsible for its own costs, the company has devised a custom financial reporting application that pinpoints exactly how much a job should be priced.

“Our competition is other newspapers that also want to print commercial,” Jenkins said. “Our strength is that we intimately know how much a job will cost. We spend a tremendous amount of time to do that.”

As with The Chieftain, Fayetteville Publishing is privately and locally owned. That’s an advantage, Jenkins said.

“It’s a local decision and a local focus of where you want to put your bottom line. This has been my passion and management has bought in.

“I designed this press to do a great job for both the newspaper and commercial printing.”

Big investment

North Jersey Media Group has also invested heavily in commercial printing. The publisher, which prints The Record in Hackensack, N.J., and The Herald News, which serves State County, N.J., has recently sharpened its focus to attract clients that complement its newspaper production heritage.

That means clients such as Investor’s Business Daily and USA Today, according to Charlie Whitehead, NJMG’s vice president of manufacturing. But NJMG also prints scores of less widely circulated periodicals and materials.

“We’ve changed the way we have looked at our business,” said Bob Konig, director of sales. “We’re different than 99 percent of our competitors because of our newspaper background.”

NJMG’s infrastructure — the company’s 300,000-square-foot production plant in Rockaway, N.J., houses two Mitsubishi double-wide presses and a MAN Roland Uniset single-wide press — shapes its commercial strategy.

“Our newspaper press is designed to print newspapers,” Konig said. “But we do have a single-wide, so we try to find clients that make sense for the equipment we have.”

Refocus on customers

NJMG readdressed how it should treat commercial work after determining its prior approach wouldn’t work.

“We decided we wouldn’t compete against small shops,” Konig said. “We had customers, but we got away from understanding how that type of product mix would affect us.”

NJMG also buttressed its internal accounting and financial systems to support its focused approach, using software from SAP America Inc. to provide needed data. “We know exactly when we have a slot to fill and target those production windows” appropriately, Konig said.

NJMG is running its presses at 70 percent to 75 percent capacity.

NJMG has also invested heavily to add new pre- and postpress systems. Just recently it added Pape + Partner Media’s workflow system to link its facility to a sister plant in nearby Hackensack. (See Newspapers & Technology, February 2003.) The firm has also upgraded its conveyor and gripping system and purchased an automated guided vehicle system from AGV Products Inc.

It is now looking at adding a 30-head inserter as well as inkjetting and labeling systems to support post-production mailing.