Thee Classic Printers: uniquely growing in the city of Meenakshi temple

Business factor for Printers III

Continuing the series of those printers’ success stories, who have been performing sophisticatedly, constantly marking new feats since their inception, P&P finds this time a unique printing house ‘Thee Classic Printers’ in Madurai, the city of Meenakshi temple. Established in the year 1986 with a mere investment of Rs 1.5 lakh, Thee Classic Printers group now boasts as a Rs 7.0 crore company, achieving a turnover of Rs 3.0 crore, registering a growth of 20-25 percent annually.

The biggest challenge today comes as customers demanding all their jobs to be completed in just 24 hours. And fortunately, with the help of most efficient pre-press, printing and finishing machines majority by Heidelberg, enable Thee Classic Printers to meet their customers’ expectations comfortably. Spread in an area of 4,000 sq ft with their printing set-up; 1,500 sq ft area for pre-press (Dolphin Print System) and another stand alone area of 5,000 sq ft situated in a village (on first floor level is their binding/finishing setup); the company continues enhancing their business riding on their unique strategies to perform the best.

Before initiating to establish Thee Classic Printers, its founder N Jayakarthikeyan entered into printing professions in 1967 and worked in various presses to be equipped with in-depth knowhow to operate own printing business successfully. Such long experience nourished entrepreneurship skills in Jayakarthikeyan, and this company came into existence to produce every job in a most classic manner.

Emotionally attached to villagers, Jayakarthikeyan conveyed to SK Khurana, editor, P&P that they inducted 20 local people to train them from scratch, enabling to perform different jobs in binding section. Equipped with Stahl folding, WB perfect binding, Autoprint numbering, bar-coding, envelope addressing, apart from case making, casing in machines, etc; their finishing department, with the most neat and clean look, makes all the jobs delivered in equally smart looking format. The range of jobs handled by them include: annual reports, souvenirs, books, brochures, calendars, danglers, garment tags, label, etc.

Barring a few select printing houses having 4-colour offset machines, Madurai city is known for small time printers having at least 40 Ryobi single colour machines, though many of them producing multi-colour jobs. This has been possible with the existence of a pre-press bureau, efficient enough to supply printing plates to all those printers with their CtP technology backup. And this bureau is ‘Dolphin Print System’, a part of Thee Classic Printers group, equipped with Suprasetter A 105 thermal CtP from Heidelberg, and run by qualified print technologists.

Established around three years ago, Dolphin Print System receives most of the jobs coming ‘online’. Doing ‘imposition’ is the part of assignment of Dolphin, for which they have adequate software solutions, providing them faster output of plates. As of today, the production of plates has reached around 100 plates each day. “On an average 90 percent of the jobs, undertaken by Madurai printers are executed by using CtPs and ‘jumble up’ jobs concept bring them very good revenues as the plate costs can be recovered very handsomely,” conveys J Saravanan, the younger son of N Jayakarthikeyan.

Saravanan mentions further that they offer ‘30-minute’ service for producing a 4-colour set of plates on ‘cash and carry concept’. Even to make that 30-minute waiting productive, in an interesting way the company has a facility of displaying the CtP plate making process through a video on LCD in the reception area for all. The setup with the investment of Rs 1.25 crore, their pre-press have comfortably been able to achieve ROI much earlier than planned.

The organisation structure includes a close knit four family members with dedicated team of staff. The strength of Thee Classic Printers is their design studio, having a creative team of women who can handle all sorts of jobs. As per V Shyamela, founder principal – Oxford Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Madurai, who is their old time customer, “The friendly atmosphere in Thee Classic Printers for any of their print buyers is great to come and look their jobs in progression themselves.”

Having different make sheet-fed offset presses, the company’s most recent proud possession in printing machine includes brand new Heidelberg Printmaster 74 4-colour press with CPC installed two years ago. This machine enables them to produce 15 sets of 4-colour short-run jobs every day very conveniently.

So with all the three departments pre-press, press and post press in an acclimate atmosphere, what else could be the future plans? “Coating/UV in the finishing department and planning for one integrated set up on a much larger area of facility, may be out of the municipal limit of Madurai at the earliest is on top of our agenda,” informs Jayakarthikeyan, while concluding.