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