Case Study: How MEDiAHEAD Survived the Print Apocalypse

Post written by Kat McDaniel, Chief Innovator at MEDiAHEAD | Marketing Portal Guru | Variable Data Promoter | Analytics Advocate | Explorer

In 2000 the Printing Industry of America announced that, over the next ten years, 50% of all the printing companies in the United States would disappear.

It was a very sobering thought at the time, to say the least, considering I owned a large, successful commercial printer that employed 65 people.

Our largest client at the time was Grundfos Pump Company.

They were based in the Netherlands but had multiple offices, distributors and thousands of employees in the United States.

They needed a solution to communicate with their customers more efficiently, reduce their printing and warehousing costs and get marketing materials to their sales force faster.

The solution we proposed, a marketing portal, not only made sense from a cost standpoint, but also from a sustainability perspective, which was important to them.

The marketing portal we built merged on-demand with conventional print to minimize waste and provide the sales department, along with distributors, the tools to efficiently distribute marketing materials to their customers.

In addition, our solution allowed them to maintain brand control in all marketing communications and significantly decreased their time to market.

They were able to reduce inventory costs and waste and keep technical information current by streamlining the production process.

Their estimated annual savings were $95,820 the first year!

With the success of this solution, MEDiAHEAD continued to evolve.

We bought software and digital presses, retrained our workforce and drastically increased our fulfillment and distribution capabilities.

Ironically, print is only a small part of what we do now.

Even better, today some of the most recognizable companies in Kansas City use our solution to save time, money and brand standards!