Gary Pageau 0:02
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by Jeff Alexander, the president of Lindon, Utah-based, Alexander's was one of the largest printing digital printing companies on the west coast. Hey, Jeff, how are you today?
Jeff Alexander 0:20
I am Great. Thank you very much.
Gary Pageau 0:22
Now, Jeff, tell me a little bit about Alexander's because you're a relatively new entrant into the photo printing market. But your company's been around for a long time.
Jeff Alexander 0:31
We have we we began in 1979 as a retail copy center. So we've always drilled in the coffee segment of the market, which then evolved into the digital. And that and we made that jump into more of a commercial setting in the mid 90s. By bringing on the Xerox docu tax, and started doing a lot of documentation printing at that time for the technology industry, right. And then as we continued into the late 90s, we we got into more color digital color with the the indigo, and have still using that same technology. But of course, it's advanced a lot since then. But starting in about 2000, we began to really explore the technology side of things by developing our own web to print, doing a lot of variable print, and look for variable print opportunities. But it was very young man and and was new to people and hard to really come by in many ways. But we, we developed the web to print. And that was the precursor to a product we use we've used for many years. And it's led to what we're doing today.
Gary Pageau 1:49
So why did you choose to develop your own platforms?
Jeff Alexander 1:53
Well, at that time, there wasn't anything that really fit what we wanted to do. We did buy some software in the beginning, but it was so complicated. Customers couldn't even fit into it. And it was hard to hard to use. And we noticed that in most cases, with printing software, they were being developed by people that weren't in the print industry. So they really didn't fit what we were trying to accomplish. And so we went through two or three different versions before we settled on what, what we've used since then.
Gary Pageau 2:25
So having that long history was really beneficial to developing the platform.
Jeff Alexander 2:32
Yeah, oh, yes. And especially choosing that market and and wanting to get into the digital side of things and stay there. We had a little bit of offset in our background, but not much small offset, small format offset. And so that wasn't hard for us, then just a little bit over 10 years ago, when we decided to totally abandon offset and go straight digital. And we have been, I'm sorry,
Gary Pageau 3:00
the offset whatsoever? No,
Jeff Alexander 3:01
no, we don't. We'll We'll then that if we need it on some of our products, when that's necessary, but we have tried to stay in the variable or personalization area of digital printing. And that's what really, so we've been doing one off printing for 20 years, right?
Gary Pageau 3:25
what was your entree then into the photo personalized space. I mean, just because, you know, an HP Indigo can print color doesn't necessarily mean you're in that the photo printing space. So what I learned is that,
Jeff Alexander 3:41
I think that the first step there, once again, was our web to print because we began to set up web portals for customers, especially in the franchise sector. And so that allowed us to find out ways to personalize for individual settings, and again, doing a lot of the one off work. And then that led to work with a local customer by the name of chatbooks with GSA and photo book, specialty photo book, and we were able to onboard them quickly and effectively with with the technology we have in place. And that helped us realize we could continue into other segments of that photo space. We were already working with customers who had apps or websites where they were taking orders and their product was print. And so this just became a an easy add on to that this market became an easy add on to that.
Gary Pageau 4:41
So are you doing the front end part of it too, or just the order implementation like sucking it in from the
Jeff Alexander 4:47
Yes, just the will hook in with our API will do that work for them for our customers. They they develop their own front end they have their own ordering processes. And then once the work comes to us, then we do all the print any binary functions that need to happen with it, and then the fulfillment shipping.
Gary Pageau 5:12
So your plant there is in Lindon, Utah, tell me a little bit about the plant, like how big it is with some of the equipment you might have there.
Jeff Alexander 5:19
So we, it's a 65,000 square foot production facility, we have a little bit of black and white capability still, because we we do work for some publishing companies. But most of our work as digital color. Right now we have 170, HP, indigo 7900, we have three in HP 12 1000s, and then the new 100k. And so that's the backbone of how we get the printing accomplished for our customers. And then from there, we have a variety of a binary with a lot of perfect binding case binding. And we're just introducing the ability to sow signatures and do a more of a layflat book.
Gary Pageau 6:11
And are you also gotten involved, correct me if I'm wrong, some of the embossing features and some of those right,
Jeff Alexander 6:18
I did leave out a very important point and that we did over five years ago. You know, in some ways, we pioneer a lot of things that we see coming, that might be good. And we got involved with the Mgi technology to do the digital varnish and foil. Okay. And that's been very, very popular, especially with some of the work we do in the invitation space. And we use it on book covers, as well. And
Gary Pageau 6:49
ask you about that, how is that work to migrate some of that technology to some of your more consumer facing customers,
Jeff Alexander 7:00
because it is everything in that space is still one off, it works very well. And if a customer has the ability to add it to their their product offering, then most have found it to be effective. Now, we don't like to do that, of course, when there's not a lot of volume involved, because it does make it really hard to to only do just a strictly one off because we batch our work like anybody else would. Yeah, but it's it does. It's beautiful. And it adds a ton of value to our customers when they are able to have that product.
Gary Pageau 7:38
What do you think is that's one of the things I think has been maybe undersold by the photo personalization spaces, some of those cover treatments and varnishes and foil and to really set it off from this the traditional photo book. Have you seen that grow among your customers as a value added option or are some of them added in and have really not seen much success.
Jeff Alexander 8:04
So the ones that have had the ability to add it and part of the problem with this is just putting it into their order their application, right to allow it to happen, right. But those that have done it have seen an uptick in in people wanting that as an option. And again, it just adds a final touch to that product, which makes it more special to people.
Gary Pageau 8:35
So probably, like I've become aware of you through some of the PR that's come through, you know, as chatbooks being one of your, one of the higher profile customers that that was. So what other segments of the industry besides those kind of subscription photo book market are growing? Have you gotten into, let's say, you know, wedding albums, or other kinds of photo books?
Jeff Alexander 9:00
You know, it's interesting, we haven't gotten into wedding albums yet. But I think maybe one of the reasons is we haven't had a lay flat alternative. And that's why we're experimenting with having sown signatures. So that we do a lot of work in calendars, or in photo sets, other other products like that. So it's not just the book itself, but it can be any and photo cards, I mean, reading cards and things like that, that have become very popular as well. Now,
Gary Pageau 9:34
seasonally, how is that? How have you been able to manage it with your your company? Because obviously the fourth quarter is crazy. Is your does your other business come in at different times of the year? Has that worked out? Well for you?
Jeff Alexander 9:47
Yeah, so we've tried to target some of our customer base to be around. So when we fill up one time of the year, we try to look for other options or two times a year and and we've been able to be pretty be successful with that. But when you choose this space, you know that that fourth quarters just going to be busy. And, and so you, we continue to try to find other opportunities and other times of the year we've been pretty successful with that.
Gary Pageau 10:15
Yeah, well, that's where I think, for example, maybe the wedding album thing will not come into play, right, because that's probably, you know, summer or fall type business as opposed to fourth quarter.
Jeff Alexander 10:25
And we do other wedding products, besides the album's some of the guest books that are used for the invitations. So there's a lot of other variety of wedding products besides the album that we've been able to add to use and that you're right, it has different times a year that makes that really applicable.
Gary Pageau 10:48
Have you gotten into some of the other products that are maybe are looking at like sublimation products, like, you know, mugs or ornaments, or those things are just sticking with inkjet.
Jeff Alexander 10:59
So right now we've stayed with the more of the ink, you know, based off of print based, sure, and haven't gotten much into sublimation, we do have some wide, wide format department, we're able to handle some of the extra things. And that goes back to our days when we were doing to the web to print and we had a lot of need for the wide format. Yeah. And we've looked at sublimation. But right now, it hasn't fit into our production process well enough for us to jump into that really heavily.
Gary Pageau 11:40
So, go moving forward into 2021. What do you see are some of the opportunities for the industry as a whole?
Jeff Alexander 11:50
Are you talking the photo or are you know, print as a whole?
Gary Pageau 11:55
both actually.
Jeff Alexander 11:58
So we continue to see a lot of benefit in in this industry, as long as you're geared up and ready to do the one off projects or something that's very custom. Right. The print industry continues to struggle a little bit when it's just the long run commercial production stuff, right. And so that's why we're continuing to look at opportunities that will allow us to be even better than we are today at doing custom one off. And, and a lot of that is continuing to develop our production processes as much as anything. And so it's not just looking for new products, it's continuing to improve how we produce the product that will make the bigger difference for our customer.
Gary Pageau 12:48
Seems to me, like part of the Alexander's direction is to be almost a self contained or self driven entity in a sense, you know, you develop your own software, you are continuing to refine your processes.
Jeff Alexander 13:06
Yeah, that's exactly right. We've we believed in technology. Again, this has been over 20 years that we've had people here, developing technology for us. We saw that pretty quickly. And that goes back to when we had Xerox DocuTechs, and we knew we had to, we had to get files to those machines. And even Xerox wasn't ready to do that very well, in the very beginning. So even back then I had people dealing with technology trying to help us get the files to those machines. And so that continued into as we got, as digital really developed. Right, as a, as a segment of the industry. And so since then, we have just always been heavily invested in in technology, and we will I don't see a time when you won't, right, because that's what is driving product now.
Gary Pageau 14:04
Well, it seems to me, like you know, I talked to a lot of folks who are in the kind of specialty graphics or printing space and I've never met anyone yet who just takes anything off the shelf and goes with it seems like everyone has as, as a way they need to do things in their production facility, which is it's kind of interesting.
Jeff Alexander 14:24
Well, and and we looked for a long, you know, going into the production side of things, we looked for a long time for something that can handle that for us, man it you know, four or five years ago, we just realized we have we had been able to find anything to work. So we had to figure out a way to streamline our production so we don't lose track of product. Right. And so that's why we just dove headfirst and and developed our own and since then others have come along and and we've looked at switching over but we're so far down the road now. It just wouldn't make sense.
Gary Pageau 14:57
Yeah. I imagine from a from a staph DNA standpoint, right? You sort of have an idea that, hey, we can do this ourselves, right? I kind of go for it attitude.
Jeff Alexander 15:09
Well, we're always looking for for commercial software that we can use. But if we can't find what's needed, then yes, we'll, we'll try and figure it out. And I think a lot of people do that. Now. They've just gotten to that point.
Gary Pageau 15:27
It seems to me like, like, it's interesting, because like in the photo lab world, there used to be like chemical mixing Tech's text, and people like that, who would, you know, take care of those process and those people gone away? But instead of having a fewer amount of staff, now they've got programmers in it? Well,
Jeff Alexander 15:45
yeah. That's funny, isn't it? You know, our first we were in the photo space, I guess for a while because producing for our customers did that our first wide format machine was a nurse lambda. Okay. And so we we knew about photo back then, and did a great product. But that industry's changed too. Oh, yeah.
Gary Pageau 16:09
Well, that's what is happened is, you know, the photo printing speed, because it used to be a separate technical process, right? You had the photographic process, which required chemistry and paper and ways of handling materials. And then in the printing press, you had the printing world, you had a different set of technologies, technology's then needed to be in play and and as those technology platforms have given way to digital, you know, those worlds intersecting?
Jeff Alexander 16:40
That's right. Everything's evolving as well.
Gary Pageau 16:46
Thank you, Jeff,for your time, best wishes and great to hear more about Alexander's and looking forward to seeing more in the future.
Jeff Alexander 16:54
Thank you, Gary. Sure. Appreciate it. It's been great to spend some time with you.
