Print Summit 2019: How to break the vicious cycle of over-demanding customer

According to Arora, a printer faces certain challenges that stop him or her from making a good business out of the printing.

Firstly, the delay in money received from the clients. Arora stated, “Even after producing a high quality jobs on an urgent basis, and delivering it in record time, client will delay the payment for the job done. Since your profit is around only around 5% and rest is your raw material cost, you tend to delay the payment to the supplier.”

Throughout his talk, Arora focus was on increasing the profit and not the turnover. He cited, printer who is running his press 24/7 and making a turnover of Rs 100 crore has a profit margin of as little as 5%. Arora’s mantra for success is having a minimum turnover but maximise the profit.

In order to focus on increasing the profit, Arora took a risk of rejecting around 350 jobs.  This decision gave him ample time to focus and strategies for the business. As there were no jobs and the operators were also empty-handed, Arora decided to catapult his business by focusing on value-addition rather than struggling under ever-demanding job requirements from regular clients at a very low rate.

 “It’s better to have a turnover of Rs 1 crore with 80-90% profit than being a 100-crore company with hardly 3-5% profit,” Arora added.

According to Arora, another reason for print industry is unable to flourish is lack of rules and regulations among the industry and governing bodies. “For example, sales of pharma industry are on a rise and investment is steady, whereas in printing, investment is ever increasing and we have to struggle for sales. One major reason for this is, pharma industry is defined. Rules and regulations are set in place compared to printing industry, where we lack unity and there is no clarity on any procedures. We need to define our printing industry and bring it to the notice of the governing bodies,” he said.

Arora concluded his speech by urging printers to stop the credit system and focus on the preventative maintenance of the machines and self.