What the Heidelberg and Unisource Partnership Means for Printers

PI: What message do you want to get across to printers as to what value proposition this new distribution agreement provides them?

DRAGONE: I would say the greatest advantage is the ease of doing business. A customer can wrap up almost everything they need with one phone call or one online order. That presents a tremendous value proposition, coupled with the fact that they can count on getting next-day service.

DUNN: The other side of it is in situations where printers are having a problem. For example, a customer may be having what he perceives is a lithographic problem, so he's trying everything. He's changing paper, changing inks, he's trying all kinds of things. With our new Systemservice, we can detect faults in a press, including the motor heating up in the inker. The printer may think he's got a litho problem, but he doesn't. He's got a bearing problem. But because it's tying up that roller, it manifests itself like a litho problem. That allows us to get that customer stabilized more quickly.

As a result, he's going to have better utilization of his paper, less waste and more press uptime. If he is legitimately having a litho problem, between our pressmen and Unisource’s paper specialists, there is no other variable in the equation. As long as we can approach it that way, we can get the guy up and running. Traditionally, the easy way out in the consumables business is to say, "Well, I haven't changed the formula, so it's got to be your paper." This keeps that from happening.

PI: Finally, have there been any stumbling blocks in your partnership so far?

DRAGONE: The only argument we've had in our relationship is that Heidelberg wanted its logo bigger than the Unisource logo on the side of our red delivery trucks.