The Wolf family was elated. Surrounded by friends, staff, loyal clients, suppliers and community figures they celebrated opening a new purpose-built facility with an open-house party that carried on well into the night. It’s hard to believe that three years ago the 53-year-old family printer was fighting for its life.
Early 2011 was supposed to be a joyous time for Tony Wolf & Son. It was 50 years since managing director Ian Wolf’s father Tony had started the business in the shed of his Camden home, but instead of celebrating the milestone the company was in dire straits after losing a client that gave it a third of its business. Wolf had to make hard decisions to keep the firm afloat, cutting hours back to four days a week and eventually shutting down the flagship Roland four-colour offset press and trimming staff from 19 to nine.
“We had to make horrible decisions – you’re playing with people’s livelihoods,” Wolf says. “One person we had was terminally ill and having him here gave him a purpose in life and I knew by putting him off that took it away, but while we kept him as long as we could sadly we just couldn’t afford to keep him and our other offset production staff. There wasn’t enough work and we just couldn’t find any odd jobs for them to do.”
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As tough as this experience was, Wolf says it has helped transform the business into a nimble and sustainable operation better equipped to serve its clients and less likely to suffer the same disaster again. “The rear view mirror is always clearer than the windscreen. We’re making better decisions, not over committing,” he says. “Keep an eye on your break even, keep your costs down as much as you can and don’t over-capitalise. But at the same time we’re not afraid to back ourselves and make large investments if the economics are right.”
Wolf points to his one-year-old Fiji Xerox Color 800 Press digital printer as an example of an investment worth making for the firm’s future. “It cost a fortune, but if you know your market and you don’t hinge everything on a sales rep or one big client – and we know how that hurts – then you can be successful.”
He says the company makes sure no client contributes more than 10 per cent of turnover and every single one of them is valued equally. “A lot of our business came naturally, and you meet the same people on the way down as on the way up so you try to look after those that you’ve got. If we diversify our exposure it is so much better,” he says.
Tony Wolf & Son’s business is now almost entirely digital short run for small and medium businesses in its local area, with no offset larger than A3, and an old Heidelberg cylinder press for diecutting. Wolf says the company embraced digital early while his father still called the shots, starting with a Cannon CLC800 with rip for $40,000 in the mid-1990s, and then a Xerox 1250. “We pretty much embraced the digital age right from the start. As soon as rips were available we got into that. More and more customers started giving us digital jobs and soon it was too good to turn off,” he says.
But completely transitioning to digital wasn’t easy. “Turning off the offset was a bit of a wake-up call – trying to find the right profit margin to work on, how much mark-up to put on outsourced jobs to stay profitable yet competitive, our niche in the market, and the right suppliers happy to do it at the right price,” he says. Now the company can do up to 50-5000 colour brochures in-house, depending on required turnaround, and only uses trade printers for larger runs.
The company’s print power is now led by the Color 800 Press and a Fuji Xerox DocuColor 5000 that, as a testament to the firm’s work ethic, was printing a 7,000 run eight-page application booklet job for an educational institution throughout the new plant opening party to meet a same-day deadline. Other equipment includes a celloglazing machine to give a gloss or matte finish to both sides of business cards, perfect binder, saddle stitcher, collator, diecutter, laminator and a Screen CTP system. The only offset is its twin Heidelberg GTO 52 A3 presses for docket book and NCR printing.
The new Smeaton Grange facility is another example of how things have changed. At 480sqm it is smaller than its 600sqm predecessor, but it is in a better location, owned rather than rented at a $2000 a month saving, but Wolf says the size is perfect for his evolving business. “The old site was too big after we turned off the offset press and it was terrible anyway – right next to a cement yard so there was dust everywhere,” he says.
It also gives Tony Wolf & Son better exposure to the business community and is purpose-built with better air-conditioning and efficiencies, enabling the company to think about expanding to flatbed UV sometime in the next 12 months. “We just have to make sure there’s enough market for it,” Wolf says. The new factory also sports an 1857 Imperial Press in its foyer that was used by the Wimmera Mail-Times until 1976. Tony Wolf & Son bought it from collector and restorer Barry Toombs after his attempt to open a press museum fell through.
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Wolf credits the company’s long history to its tradition of concentrating on customer service, which began with his father. “He taught me to always be truthful and ethical. It didn’t matter if it was the smallest job right up to the best customer they always got treated the same,” he says. “We had competitors that came and went because they treated local people with contempt, and the smaller jobs they overpriced because if they didn’t get it they didn’t want it.”
“Yes, sometimes clients will leave you, but if you let them go with a smile they know they’re welcome to come back without feeling guilty. Then if they don’t get the treatment we gave them, they come right back.” He says the same principles of community engagement are used to get new clients, often from word of mouth and networking with local businesses at local government meetings for Camden and Narellan councils. The company also frequently donates to local charities like Kids of Macarthur Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, and charity cancer rides.
The company’s support for the community has drawn praise from its local MP, Member for Macarthur Russell Matheson. He is a former printer himself, working with letterpress, hand platens and the Heidelberg GTO from 1975-85, and helped cut the ribbon on the Wolf’s new plant. “The Wolf family is synonymous with the area and are part of the fabric of the Macarthur community and well loved and respected by all,” he says. “It’s imperative that businesses support their local printers, especially as it’s so tough for them right now.”
Tony Wolf & Son’s clients now include mostly small-medium companies in the greater Campbelltown area – anything from a local magician, mowing and property maintenance business, to larger NGO, medical providers, local high schools and Teacher’s Mutual Bank. Wolf says when he bought Range Graphics in 2007 he retained seven of its nine big customers. He says most work consists of jobs such as business cards, invoice books, magazines, books, flyers and brochures.
Although he is thinking about setting up a web-to-print portal, his focus on face-to-face customer service has Wolf a bit sceptical. “As convenient as web-to-print is, it distances you from your customers,” he says. “If they come to you via web-to-print, my view is they will go just as quickly – to wherever the price is best. You have to try to build in the value and the loyalty. We do work for a franchise firm that has 107 stores Australia-wide and a lot of them are older people, most of whom don’t even want to touch a computer, so we find the personal touch is effective.”
Being environmentally responsible is another point of difference Tony Wolf & Son is pushing, with staff decked out in green uniforms, green liquorice and jellybeans sitting around the plant and the slogan ‘Your printing shouldn’t cost the Earth’. “It’s a whole mentality. When we built the factory we used energy efficient LED lights, our printing materials are green, and the organic toner in the Xerox machines is one of the reasons we chose it,” Wolf says. The company is also planning to acquire FSC certification. “It costs money and time to get these certifications, but it’s worth it.”
He says not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s good for business. “All businesses are conscious about the environment, even though they might not admit it to you, and it plays on their minds when they make decisions, even if they just want to be seen to be doing it,” he says. “We went from 600 amps of power down to 200 – a lot of people were very impressed when we talked about it at chambers and we got three or four good leads out of it.”
Turnover has returned to near pre-2011 levels, but with pressure from imports and online printers, margins are much lower than they were. “If we could charge what we did in say 2009, we’d be blitzing it in terms of turnover, but the market has changed,” Wolf says. “No matter what credentials you have or how good your quality and service is, the cheapest price still wins.”
Wolf blames cheap overseas competition and online printers for creating a price war that makes it harder for Australian printers to make money. “Overseas printers are immediately 10 per cent better off because they’re not paying GST,” he says. “Once you take away the tariffs, the Chinese imports are much cheaper, putting Australians out of jobs, closing companies down or shipping everything offshore, it doesn’t do the country any good. Consumers get lower prices, but how many consumers will you have if they don’t have jobs?”
“I don’t know where the work’s going to come from for people who used to be in manufacturing if we aren’t doing it anymore. We’ve got a country full of natural resources, with more than enough people who can actually produce things and yet only eight per cent of products are manufactured in Australia and the rest are imported – that’s scary.”
Wolf says increasing parity of printing technology also makes it hard for companies to differentiate themselves from each other and overseas competition. “It’s very rare to get bad quality printing these days, typically ink on paper is of a good quality and everyone is on par – that’s why everyone is struggling so much. If there was a market difference between us, or even between here and China, you’d say go there, you’ll get what you pay for, but all the technology is the same and the labour costs overseas are much lower,” he says. However, some clients have had bad experience with overseas printers because they pay up front and if the quality is bad they have no recourse. “They know with us, if there’s a problem we’ll reprint it right away and worry about the price later.”
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