In 2004, Alon Weiner and Ram Tamir made a major shift in their offset printing business. Seeing opportunity and seizing it, the ownership pair embarked on building a large-format printing business basically from scratch.
Since that time, their company – Post Up Stand – has burgeoned into a shop that employs 41 and runs 14 different printers, ranging from two Canon iPF8000S printers from LexJet to a number of solvent printers and the two latest additions, a direct-to-fabric dye-sublimation printer and a two-step dye-sublimation system.
Co-owner Alon Weiner says the company’s growth can be attributed to three things: Aggressive online and national in-flight magazine marketing and advertising, constant investing in printer technology and an emphasis on customer service.
Of course, everyone says they practice top-notch customer service, but Post Up Stand has a department dedicated to it, led by someone they hired recently to manage that team, Tina Schulte, who has more than 15 years of experience managing customer service teams. The added emphasis on having a direct customer service team has helped develop that all important referral marketing component.
“Hiring a customer service manager made for a tremendous change in our view of the whole customer service process; it helps us further train our customer service staff and help customers immediately,” explains Weiner. “There’s always a person answering the phone; never a machine. And, we always survey customers after they receive a product from us to make sure they’re happy, and if they aren’t, we make sure to fix it right away.”
Moreover, Weiner explains that the foundation of the company’s customer service philosophy is built around the fact that a good many of their clients call when they need something right away. As everyone in the wide format inkjet business knows, graphics are often last-minute items, and even the word “rush” doesn’t quite hit the mark to describe the turnaround time on those projects.
“Because many of our customers don’t think about it until the last minute, they’re under a lot of pressure, so we’ve built our customer service department with that understanding in order to make the process as easy and quick as possible,” says Weiner. “Also, many of our customers are ordering our product for the first time, or only every few years. They don’t know exactly what they need for their project, so our customer service people are trained to help them find the right product.”
Weiner says that Post Up Stand’s customer service department is similar to what he finds at LexJet. He says that “reliable” and “consistent” are the two words that come to mind to describe LexJet’s products and customer service. “We learn a lot from LexJet because when we have questions we always get answers about the best products for our printers. We get very good direction and help from LexJet,” says Weiner.
In 2012 Weiner says the company will continue its growth curve by adding more equipment and finding more avenues for its expertise. Post Up Stand is well known for its indoor graphics expertise, from exhibit displays to retail graphics, but seeks to grow in the outdoor arena. With a battery of solvent printers, a bevy of outdoor solvent material choices from LexJet and its printing track record, this area of Post Up Stand should grow substantially.
Post Up Stand was recently featured at the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s website as a local example of a company with national reach (95 percent of Post Up Stand’s work is shipped all over the country) thriving during tough economic times.
Click here to read the article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and go to www.postupstand.com for more information about the company.
