My wife and I had to make a decision, did we want to slowly phase out of the offset business and retire early, or did we want to get into a different niche. Our niche for the last 20 years in Shasta County has been that we can print and mail the same piece, full scale bulk mailing services in-house. We know bulk mailing. We've been able to print newsletters and mail them. The customer brings me the final copy, we typeset it, send him a proof, he signs off on it, and the next thing he knows he's getting his copy in the mail.
Customers love that turn-key service.
That's been our niche, but with the internet and websites, newsletters are becoming almost a thing of the past in US mail, particularly with postage increases. So, recognizing that niche is fading away, we had to find a new niche and we decided it would be short-run color. It's been determined all over the United States that color is what sells. Sanders fully believes that within a year a competitor will bring a Heidelberg digital press into the Redding market, but stands fast to his calculation that he'll not be beat on short-run color prices.