Founded by Robert J. Guardia, Printing Products started out in New York City as a one-man shop in 1964. Still under the leadership of Guardia, the company now stands as one of the most prominent full-service print/bindery shops serving commercial printers and brokers in the New York metro region.
In the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the firm's 50,000 sq. ft. Jersey City, NJ facility produces folders, brochures, pamphlets, inserts, pads, etc. in quantities ranging from 1,000 pieces to a half million or more. The current equipment list includes both sheetfed and web presses for one- and two-color reproduction, 10 folding machines and two saddle stitchers supported by comprehensive pre-press capabilities.
Robert Guardia, president, standing between folder operator Tanja Sanchez (left) and bindery supervisor Jason Sellers, looks to the Vijuk–G&K folder for more market growth.
Committing to miniature folding
Guardia began exploring the potential of the growing market for miniature folding services in 1998. "This was a big step for us," acknowledges Guardia. "Doing miniature folding work can be a time-consuming and complicated process. From the beginning, we knew how important it was going to be to have the right equipment." It called for machines capable of efficiently handling the high-volume production and the varied types of stock—from light pharmaceutical paper to much heavier stock— necessary to satisfy pharmaceutical manufacturers and others businesses that typically need miniature folding.
"For years, I had known that Vijuk had the best miniature folders on the market," says Guardia, which explains his reasoning in looking exclusively at the SVA machines available through Vijuk. By the middle of 1999, the firm had purchased a pair of Vijuk–SVA Series miniature folders—one new unit and a used machine that was about 15 years old. In the fall of 2000, Printing Products purchased another new SVA folder to further enhance production capacity and meet customer demand that Guardia says continues to increase rapidly.
Now solidly in the miniature folding market, Guardia reports that it's common for Printing Products to get orders for inserts in quantities of a half million pieces, and in fact, they have already taken on jobs twice that size. Up to this point, most of the inserts have been of a promotional nature as opposed to technical product information. However, Guardia is confident that, as his company strengthens its relationships with printers supplying pharmaceutical producers, the work will become much more varied. He described a recent pharmaceutical sales flyer for physicians that folded down small enough to fit under the clip of a ball-point pen.
Reliance on dependability of the folder
"Knowing the high-volume requirements of miniature-folding customers, we count on these machines to deliver extremely high rates of production," says Jackie Guardia, Production Manager. Careful to point out that folder cycle speeds depend in large part on the type of paper stock being run, she says that it is common for the machines to be running at speeds of between 8,000 and 12,000 pieces per hour.
Though the Vijuk– SVA machines are capable of folding down to sizes as small as 1/2", Robert Guardia says that most inserts coming into the shop call for folds of either 1" x 3" or 2" x 2". However, in one case, he cited a job that called for one million 4" x 4" inserts folded down to 1" x 1". "The Vijuk machines gave us a great rate per hour... and we had no problem meeting the customer's delivery date."
Easy makeready for complicated jobs
Familiar with a wide variety of folding equipment, Guardia is particularly impressed with makeready features on the Vijuk–SVA units, such as the spring- loaded rollers."Setting up a folding job— especially a miniature fold—is never easy, but these machines go a long way towards simplifying the process." He admits to being surprised by the fact that the miniature folders are in some respects easier to set up than many of the machines they use for larger, less complex folding.
Another feature cited by Guardia is the stacker attachment, which allows operators to efficiently bundle inserts in customer-specified quantities of 5, 10, 25, etc. without disrupting the folder's high cycling speeds.
"This has opened up a whole new market for us," concludes Jackie Guardia. "In addition to increasing our business, the folders are helping us reinforce our position as a one-stop source for printing and bindery services.
–––––––––––––––––
Written by Jim Plunkett, freelance writer.
Published in the April 2001 PRINT & GRAPHICS and PRINTING VIEWS magazines. Posted on this site with the permission of Cygnus Publications, Timonium, MD. (A similar article, Meeting a Demand, Growing a Market, was published in the February 2001 Graphic Arts Monthly.)