Direct Mail Partners Expands Color and Personalization Services with

Diversified print and mail operation well positioned to help clients
make offset-to-digital transition and reduce costs

July 21, 2009 – Trumbull, CT – Océ, an international leader in digital document management and delivery, announced today that Direct Mail Partners (DMP) has expanded its color and personalization service offerings with the recent addition of an Océ CS665 Pro full-color digital printer. The acquisition of the new Océ CS665 Pro cutsheet system is the first step in a strategic expansion of Direct Mail Partners digital color production capabilities in response to market demand for smaller targeted runs, personalization and TransPromo communications.
Privately held Direct Mail Partners is headquartered near Dallas, Texas. The diversified print and mail operation offers a variety of services, including data processing, composition, inkjet addressing, presort, laser printing, bindery and fulfillment. Continuous improvement in quality, productivity and service, along with reinvestment in facilities, equipment and resources, has resulted in compounded annual revenue growth of over 50 percent since 2002. Approximately 100 employees serve customers from two locations: a 44,800 square foot facility in Carrollton, Texas and a 15,000 square foot production facility in Austin, Texas. The Austin location provides disaster recovery service, additional capacity and expanded market coverage.

Decision Driven by Quality, Price, Scalability

“We are excited about partnering with Océ as our vendor of choice for digital color printing equipment,” said Direct Mail Partners CEO Kevin M. Burke. “We selected the Océ CS665 Pro digital color printer as our new digital color platform due to its industry-leading color accuracy and consistency combined with the product’s high quality and scalability. The Océ CS665 Pro color consistency is more accurate than the offset printing standard. It lets us handle larger runs, while maintaining the highest level of consistency and accuracy, even across multiple printers.”
“The relatively low cost makes it feasible to purchase multiple printers for failover and capacity increases. While other vendors’ digital printers require larger upfront capital expenditures, with the Océ solution, we can better match our printer capacity to our clients’ requirements without overinvesting in more than we need,” Burke said.

“With Océ’s affordable entry point to digital full color, Direct Mail Partners can offer customers optimal pricing and quality, without the pressure of achieving return on investment for a much more expensive color solution,” said Eric de Goeijen, Vice President of Marketing, Océ North America, Production Printing Systems division. “This is why we designed the Océ CS color platform to offer maximum flexibility and reliable quality.”

As needs grow, companies like DMP can consider the Océ CS Tandem systems, which integrate multiple Océ CS665 Pro print engines with a centralized server, sophisticated color management software, and validated color consistency to deliver high-level color performance in one system. The unique configuration offers benefits that have historically been out of reach with large, single-box cutsheet color systems. Users can manage the resulting Océ CS Tandem solution from a single workstation, intelligently balancing workloads across engines—without sacrificing output quality. As a result, print providers looking to enter the production color market have a real alternative to offset presses and expensive, lower-quality color digital printers.

“With potential volumes exceeding a million impressions per month, we are excited about the scalability of the platform,” Burke said. The flexible growth path of the Océ CS665 Pro system allows DMP to add capacity as they grow. “We can ‘daisy chain’ engines for the best combination of footprint and cost. The print quality between runs and between printers means the printer is scalable, and failover can be accomplished while maintaining print quality within runs.”

The Economics of Color Investment

With Océ CS665 Pro systems, DMP can help customers transition more jobs to cost-saving digital color production for spot color, transactional documents, full-color marketing documents, short-run booklets and other materials. “When customers transition from offset to digital, they save a bundle in waste, storage and inventory,” said Burke. “The cost of mailing a four-million-impression job of 28,000 packets in July will be 25 to 30 percent cheaper than it would cost clients to produce internally. A lot of that comes from better capacity utilization.”
DMP’s first Océ CS665 Pro color system was just installed in the Austin location. Additional systems are planned for the Carrolton facility in the next few months. Said Burke, “We are working to mirror capabilities at both locations to ensure that we have full business recovery backup for our customers.” DMP will save time and money by taking on color work previously outsourced by the Dallas location.

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