A billion labels
Many printing houses continue facing losses in sales volume, but some of them have managed to find niches in which demand is even growing. The story of how to make money in times of uncertainty.
Yevhen Pashkin, CEO and founder of Production commercial firm “Star LTD” LLC and PE “Printing House Star”, from Kherson is modest in sharing the success stories: they simply work in a stable way since 90-s for 28 years, have customers all around Ukraine, complete orders for foreign customers as well. In fact, regular customers and growing orders are what all business owners dream of. Why is this printing house so special?
Products: from flyer to roll
Back in 1992, when Yevhen Pashkin came back from the military service, his father-in-law worked in printing and offered to create a printing house. Initially, they worked in rented premises, gradually becoming overgrown with equipment and increasing production volumes. Then they bought the old building, bought modern printing presses.
There were several printing houses in Kherson, each working according to a certain profile: one of them printed newspapers, another one – packaging, and the third one – labels. “Printing House Star” has ambitiously tried to become a multiproduct company and produce a wide variety of printed products, attracting customers from various fields and other regions.
They were printing and they still print booklets, flyers, business cards. They print the packaging, including printing on cardboard. They put a cross-line of printing flexo-labels on self-adhesive paper and film. “Many people deal with the labels, we just try to keep prices in the normal range. To do this, we usually work on a large volume to make a price lower. It is better to print 2 million labels cheaply than to set an expensive price and not take an order,” says Yevhen Pashkin about his approach.
In addition, they sell paper, cardboard. “We take newsprint, offset paper in large rolls, coils, unwrap them into sheets, cut it into bundles and sell it in bundles that are bought by other printing and advertising agencies.”
Another niche they have mastered is the production of colored paper and colored cardboard for schoolchildren.
World of customers
About 70% of customers of Kherson “Printing House Star” are not local entrepreneurs, but large production and trade companies from Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Kropyvnytskyi.
Among the big customers is Odessa company “Prodtovary”, which orders the printing of labels for canned food, which is then exported to Poland, Israel and other countries. Both boxes and labels are printed for the well-known manufacturer of dumplings “Levada”. They managed to start business with the factory “Lasunka”, for which they make boxes for dumplings.
Colored paper and cardboard are made for the customer – the company “Romax”, known as TM “Riukzachok”.
Sales and service
“At first I was running about looking for customers myself. Then I hired managers, the company was growing and expanding, now the main thing is not to lose these customers,” Yevhen recalls.
“The most difficult thing in the printing business is not just to find, but to keep a customer: it means to satisfy a new customer with quality and price, so that he becomes a regular customer,” says Pashkin. Some customers leave for various reasons: the human factor worked, the manager was no good, the order was not fulfilled in time or someone offered a cheaper price – we try to win back such customers. The concept of “not our customer” is not used here: “You always have to fight for the customer,” the manager tells the staff.
Mostly they find customers through the traditional work of sales managers: calls, offers. Aggregators, marketplaces are not used. They used to go to exhibitions, met there. Now they are trying to work via the Internet, sending commercial offers. For 28 years of work, they have developed their base of regular customers.
Of course, there is a website. They periodically place ads on their own 15 billboards, which are sometimes rented out to others.
Sales automation and CRM have not been implemented – Yevhen Pashkin believes that it makes no sense in his business. Customers order different quantities of labels at different times. At the same time, the statistics are kept manually and they know that customers start ordering colored paper and calendars in January. Labels for canned food are printed from July to October, while the harvest is gathered. And in autumn calendars are issued (printed).
In addition, there is a representative in Odessa, who is looking for orders for the printing house.
Issues of logistics and product delivery with the development of all-Ukrainian delivery services no longer require much effort. In Odessa, where many orders are placed, once a week the partner's car carries the products.
The crisis is a reason for development
Printing houses often lack good staff. It’s more difficult than before to find the same printing worker for a printing press: young people are not in a hurry to get into working professions. Sometimes it is difficult to find a designer. It’s necessary to be engaged in recruiting, to teach youth.
After 2014, the printing house, well known in the southeast, lost customers from Crimea, Donetsk. They had to work hard to reach the neighboring regions.
They felt a drop in production and their customers’ sales. “People used to order flyers for 50,000 copies, now more often they print 1,000-2,000 copies. Customers save on printing, distribute point by point,” says Pashkin.
The service of small offset printing was introduced for printing small circulations. And at the point of accepting orders on the territory of the printing house a stationery store was added.
The crisis of the COVID era created a new niche: during the quarantine they started working with one of Kyiv’s companies that manufactures sanitizers for retail – they printed labels for products, and this printing press worked in almost three shifts. Flexibility is the rule of any business during a crisis.
The plans of the “Printing House Star” are simple: stay afloat. “While we keep the equipment in working order, we are trying to load it with the orders in full,” says the entrepreneur. Despite the difficulties, there are about 50 permanent employees at “Printing House Star”.
Despite the hard times, Yevhen Pashkin is set to success. He is looking for partners in other regions with experience in printing or advertising agency to create offices and expand the market. He promises good prices and high quality. A billion labels for all the years of work have already been accurately printed – there is the experience.
Cooperation with Raiffeisen Bank Aval
Yevhen Pashkin, CEO and founder of Production commercial firm “Star LTD” LLC and PE “Printing House Star”:
“We have been working with your bank for 12 years and are satisfied with the cooperation. We chose a reliable and stable bank, which we can trust. Because we moved here unexpectedly in 2008, when our bank collapsed.
We are satisfied with account maintenance, business card services, convenient overdraft. And we took loans on attractive terms, when we needed to buy a digital printing press for quick printing. We hope that when the economy recovers and there are more customers, we’ll buy new equipment with co-financing.”
