Print Shop Rescue

If you haven’t seen it, Bar Rescue on the Spike channel provides a great business lesson for print shop owners. All the rescued bars are hemorrhaging huge amounts of cash and are within months of failure because the owners did one thing…they forgot to provide value and satisfaction to their customers.

Value and satisfaction are ever-changing qualities. They change because customers change, products change, technologies change, expectations change…lots of things change. To be successful, businesses must change. Bars and print shops must change in order to continue delivering the value and satisfaction customers demand

In Bar Rescue, you’ll see that regardless how cheap the liquor may be (value), few customers want to frequent a bar that smells like a urinal and is full of jerks and morons (satisfaction)…especially if those jerks and morons are running the bar. We aren’t suggesting print shop owners might be jerks or morons or smell like a… no, we would say anything like that.

We suggest, however, print shop owners assess whether they are providing value and satisfaction to their customers. If the business bank account isn’t full, that might be a sign it’s time for self-assessment. Many small and quick printers are struggling these days…and in need of a “print shop” rescue.

National and online competitors (e.g. Staples, Vistaprint and UPS Stores) have redefined the print market by substantially raising the bar for value and satisfaction. Prices for print jobs look like paper being sold by the pound. Tons of free templates, 24/7 online ordering, convenient store locations and printing-while-you-wait provide extremely satisfying experiences that are hard for small and quick printers to replicate.

Just as in Bar Rescue, print shop owners need to look at their customers and competitors and decide how to provide value and satisfaction to customers better than the competition. This frequently means having a slightly different focus to avoid head-to-head competition that would be costly or impossible to win. Customers have varying views and expectations of value and satisfaction…one likes beers and burgers while another likes martini’s and gourmet stuff. Some print customers want cheap, cheap printing while others want advice, ideas and solutions.

In the fantasy Print Shop Rescue, the star of the program yells at the print shop owner to start offering valuable, print-related products and services that the competitors don’t offer. The print

shop owner ends up being pounded verbally into a compliant, quivering mass. At this point, the star brings in all the professionals to train the print shop owner and the staff how to have a winning business.

We’re professionals and we don't yell (most of the time)…Print Shop Marketing & EZ-VDP services