A few years ago, Vermillion was a successful commercial printer looking for ways to expand their business. They wanted to move beyond just offering their clients printing services to a role where they could collaborate with their clients and provide a range of marketing services. By being able to offer their clients a these type of services, Vermillion could move their business away from a model of just taking orders toward a business model where they could proactively suggest marketing solutions to their clients, enabling the type of growth the company wanted.

To help make this transition, Vermillion defined what services they would provide their clients, then set out to find the best technical solutions to support those services. Central to their product offering would be a Web-to-print solution that supported print on demand services.

At first, the company considered going with an ASP to support their Web-to-print solution, but in the end decided against it. Vermillion had a history of technical innovation – they’ve successfully evolved from their original business as a pre-press server, to printer, to digital printing. This history of innovation gave them the confidence to know that they possessed the technical skills needed to implement and manage their own Web-to-print systems. In addition, by hosting their system in-house, Vermillion knew they would be better able to respond to the ever-changing needs and demands of their customers.

This decision led them to Pageflex Storefront technology, a powerful web-to print solution that enables printers to easily develop, implement, and manage attractive Web-to-print document customization and purchasing sites. Vermillion choose Storefront because they felt that it included the range of features and technology that could enable them provide best in Web-based printing services, including:

• The tools to create full-service websites that would provide Vermillion’s customers with fast, easy access to sales and marketing materials
• Offering their clients a way to streamline the production cycles and save money on the cost of marketing collateral
• A way for customers to maintain brand control and corporate identity while providing the flexibility of customization.
• A solution that would enable Vermillion to offer a means to solve all of their client’s marketing challenges.

Armed with an entrepreneurial attitude, a dedication to serving their customers and best in technology, Vermillion has successfully made the transition from printer to marketing services partner. Today, they provide their clients with a serve a range of clients, including an innovative online storefront for a national restaurant franchise.

Nation Franchise Turns to Vermillion to Create Marketing Partnership with a National Franchise
With their Web-to-Print solution successfully running, Vermillion began a business relationship with, a national bakery and café chain with close to 700 franchise stores nationwide. They originally came to Vermillion seeking a way to offer their franchise owners a way to create local advertisements. The success of the advertising work has expanded the role of the marketing portal for the chain of franchises, offering an entire range of marketing materials.

The Advertising Challenge
As part of the first project , Vermillion created a web site where franchise owners could customize advertisements that maintained the corporate standards of the company while also being able to customize the ads with local information, promotions, menu items, etc. In addition to this challenge, they also wanted Vermillion to provide a way for franchise owners to be able to create ads that could be modified by size for all types of publications.

Using Pageflex Storefront, Vermillion developed a Web-based solution that provided the chain with an online store where franchise owners could come and customize corporate-approved ads to use to promote their franchises in local markets. This site contained ads that were standard sized, and also provided a way that franchise owners could also create ads of any size.

Vermillion developed a library of standard sized ads that would fit most publications such as newspapers and magazines. The standard sized ads are made available to all of the franchise owners. They can simply come into the web site, use form-filling to customize their information with local address, special offers, etc., pay with a credit card, and generate and download a PDF.

Vermillion constructed a solution that leveraged their extensive prepress experience combined with the flexibility offered by Storefront to meet their customers’ needs. Users are able to choose the ad they want and provide customization instruction to Vermillion. The company executes the order and provides native or PDF files based on the client’s requirements.

The Expansion of the Marketing Portal
The marketing communications portal how grown extensively since the introduction of the advertisements. The portal now provides a one-stop site that gives franchise owners access to a whole range of pre-setup marketing materials. In all, there are now over 30 different marketing materials that are available to order from the web site. A few of the items are Web-to-print products, such as brochure templates and post cards, the majority of the projects available on the portal are non-print items such as signage, billboards, bus wraps, and Web banners. Franchise owners go to one site to order all their marketing materials, as well as view status of their orders - pending, in process, completed, or shipped.

While some of the items may go to Vermillion to be printed, many will simply be ordered from the web site and fulfilled elsewhere. Vermillion sees the portal not just as a way to generate print orders, but as an extension of their marketing partnership and their role as solving problems for their customers.

Building on Success
Currently, about 20% of the franchise owners are currently using the marketing portal. To further expand the number of people using the site, Vermillion is working with the corporate office of the franchise chain to develop a training strategy that includes webinars and phone support.

The success of the marketing portal has helped to expand the relationship between Vermillion and their customer. Recently, they asked Vermillion to create an additional website for their corporate staff. The site allows the company’s corporate marketing team to order marketing material such as direct mail and collateral.

Application:
Vermillion developed a storefront that is two fold:

1) Internal application which is utilized by the sales force includes a six month marketing plan that consists of a variety of pieces such as variable sales letters, introduction pieces, direct mail postcards and CD distribution with sales letters. Not only does the sales force have the ability to produce marketing pieces on demand Vermillion also inventories CDs and other collateral that is picked and packed when ordered. UNICCO is further able to monitor inventory through the storefront on items that are being held in inventory.

2) External application was created for the distributor network that allows distributors to access high end marketing materials including but not limited to brochures, table tents and door hangers which are further customizable by the individual companies to include contact information or personal messages.