ReproMAX sat down with Bobby Bush, President of Digital Printing Solutions and Extreme Color, located in Marietta, Georgia. We wanted to know how he acquired so much business from the movie industry, how he gets it and how he keeps it. He can’t reveal some of his clients, but the ones he can disclose have been interesting for him and profitable for his company.
Take a look at what he has to say about this business and how he helps them make movies:
How did you get into providing graphic services to the movie business?
Originally, we went through the back door. We found out about movies coming into town, so we checked into the background information about the companies. There was an online list of their union people. So we started calling them to try and get the business.
We began about three years ago and decided to start marketing to try to win the business. We found publications that catered to the people involved in the movies. We ran ads and eventually started to get some business.
This industry relies a lot on word-of-mouth—if you do a good job it gets around, if you don’t, well that gets around too. This is the biggest thing we learned—it’s a close-knit group and they talk to each other.
What do you do for your clients in the movie business?
We started renting equipment to them one or two at a time—wide format color and narrow format, they really prefer the HP Design Jet T2300 multifunction printers because they do everything—print and scan. We rent 8-12 wide format color printers per month to various companies in town. Once we figured out what they tend to use, we had to source these to buy them. We wanted to meet their demand.
Then, we decided to find out what they were outsourcing when it came to graphics and what they needed to print. We found out there’s another company in town they’ve worked with for a long time. It took a lot of effort to capture the printing business and the wraps we do for them. Now we do backdrops, posters, canvas prints, acrylics, wallpaper and lots of unique projects.
What’s the best thing about having clients in the movie business?
It’s fun work! And it’s something we haven’t done before. We have enjoyed building relationships with the people producing these films, which got our feet into more doors, which in turn has blossomed into a great boost for our business. It was shocking to us exactly how much business was available from the film industry and how much was being produced locally. Our customers have spent a significant amount of money on their projects and we are very lucky our efforts have left us in a prime position to capitalize on these projects.
What’s the worst thing about having clients in the movie business?
It’s very demanding. Our clients need very short turn-around times and you can’t charge them premium charges because our competition from the other company in-town doesn’t charge them any premium charges. So these jobs have a thinner profit margin, but we make up for that with volume.
Which movies has your company worked on?
We’ve worked on a few--Black Panther, Fate of the Furious, lots of Marvel movies, Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America Civil War are just a few. Some of them we can’t talk about!
If you had to do it all over again, would you approach the industry differently?
I think we had a good approach. As soon as we saw a need, we started marketing to this group with better ways to perform their printing work. Luckily the other company they had been using was missing deadlines and making mistakes, so we had a great opportunity to build business relationships thanks to our attention to detail and quality control.
Our main approach, once we figured out who to talk with, was to print a sample kit in a box. We included a variety of different substrates and showed them examples of what printing would look like on the substrates. The box keeps our name in front of them and shows that we can print on different types of materials. They can interact with the physical sample to determine which substrate will work best for their application.
How has the movie industry treated you?
Definitely great, it’s been an excellent addition to our portfolio.
For more information about Digital Printing Solutions and Extreme Color, go to their website at www.extremecolor.net or call them at 770-690-3112.