Expanding their horizon
How the J Press 750HS is helping Kyle and Ty Blankenship reimagine WholeSalePocketfolders.com from the business their dad started.
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Founded in 1983, CanDo Printing started with an AB Dick duplicator and three people with very little experience or investment capital. The original plan was to be a wholesale trade printer with the goal of eventually becoming what founder Frank Blankenship called the “perfect company.”
In 1984, the Phoenix, Arizona, printer started using a 4-color process on a single, outdated press, eventually launching WholesalePocketFolders.com, a one-stop shop for custom folder needs in 2008. Over the past 16-plus years, WholeSalePocketfolders.com has registered more than 26,000 customers, averaging 40 new accounts per month (at the end of 2023).
Today, with two thriving print companies, Frank’s sons, Kyle (owner and Production Manager, CanDo Printing, WholeSalePocketfolders.com) and Ty (owner and GM at CanDo Printing LLC) continue to provide the lowest advertised wholesale printing prices in Arizona and across the U.S.
The Challenge
In the high stakes, fast moving world of trade shows and trade show collaterals, a place where CanDo Printing and its sister company, WholesalePocketFolders.com do a lot of business, Kyle and Ty Blankenship say everything has to be perfect.
Too often, both sides of their businesses have encountered customers who don’t want a full run of the press. For example, the days of 1,000 pocket folders for a trade show had dissipated and more customers are looking for 100-200 folders. Quick. Easy. Inexpensive.
“We’ve had customers want to buy anything from 1,000 folders to 10,” Kyle says. “And they want a quick turnaround. Sometimes, they even wanted to change the design.”
Kyle and Ty knew they needed a solution. “For a long time, everything was about long runs,” Ty says. “Where customers may have wanted $30,000 to $50,000 jobs, those scenarios were disappearing. Now, they may just want 250,000 pocket folders spread out over an entire year.”
The Solution
As the situation played out, Kyle and Ty knew they needed to make a decision, particularly toward short-run capabilities. Long-time fans of Fujifilm’s J Press digital series, they made a call. Since taking the reins from their father in 2009, the brothers shifted the company’s focus to producing pocket folders, embracing technological advancements like direct-to-plate and later transitioned to the digital landscape.
The investment in the J Press 750HS helped revolutionize WholeSalePocketfolders.com’s production process by not only enhancing the quality of output, but also streamlining operations, resulting in quicker turnaround times and increased flexibility. “The J Press was our first choice because of its overall quality,” Kyle says. “The first sheet off the press is sellable. And the flexibility allows us to switch seamlessly between jobs without any downtime. Unlike before, where jobs could stretch into multiple days, we now can achieve same- day turnaround with ease. The ability to run different jobs consecutively enables us to complete multiple runs in less than an hour.”
The Blankenships also were impressed with how easy it was to move folders from the offset press to the J Press. “It’s saved quite a bit of money because there’s no difference to the J Press running CMYK versus running a spot color,” Ty says. “On our offset press, we had to clean up a unit, put a plate in there, bring it up to color, run the job, then do another wash-up. That’s a lot of extra downtime just to do a PMS color. That takes a day or two to get here if you’re not mixing it.”
“The flexibility allows us to switch seamlessly between jobs without any downtime. Unlike before, where jobs would often stretch into multiple days, we can now achieve same-day turnaround with ease.” – Kyle Blankenship, Owner/Production Manager
The Results
Along with more efficient and cost effective turnaround times, the Blankenships noticed another major plus in the J Press’ corner. When they originally were evaluating the J Press, they had estimated somewhere around 50% to 60% of all of its work being able to move from their offsets. But, when they installed the J Press, it ended up being closer to 80%.
“It freed up our large offset press to go for some of the bigger jobs that we were avoiding because we didn’t want to keep it busy with smaller jobs,” Kyle says. “The big jobs are what the offsets are designed to do, whereas the J Press eats up the small work. We love to feed it as much as we can.”
The J Press also freed Kyle and Ty up to explore other expansions to its equipment portfolio. With their decision in tow, they have extended the family legacy, making WholeSalePocketFolders.com a go-to destination for high-quality printing solutions. “We didn’t have the time to do that before the J Press,” Kyle says. “It solved a few problems for us. Along with the quality being top-notch, it was very difficult to compete out there with just an offset press. It was important for us to think about where we wanted to be in the future, and the J Press helped with that.”