Raising Your Profile

The shop profiles we publish in Screen Printing give us a chance to explore the companies that are intimately involved in the industries we cover and present the magazine’s audience with real take-away value in the form of unique products and processes, powerful business philosophies, and more.

The shop profiles we publish in Screen Printing give us a chance to explore the companies that are intimately involved in the industries we cover and present the magazine’s audience with real take-away value in the form of unique products and processes, powerful business philosophies, and more.

These profiles, at their core, are quite personal. After all, the owner of a company has to swing the business’s doors wide open. Luckily for many of these companies, the visit is often virtual and takes place via an in-depth phone interview. Otherwise, they’d have to make their screenrooms spotless, keep the inks in their buckets, wash down their presses, and have their staffs fitted for tuxedos and evening gowns in order to present a professional image. Having the event catered also is a nice touch. But seriously, letting a complete stranger in to learn about what the shop does and how it operates is a big deal.

Sharing deep-seated ideas about how to run a business and explaining why certain decisions are made can be a tough proposition for some. And revealing hidden gems of experience and so-called craft secrets may sound like something only the bravest of printers would consider. After all, some guy out there is bound to think he can do it better, faster, or cheaper. Still, those who magnanimously grant Screen Printing access to their operations directly contribute—whether they know it or not—to the betterment of the screen-printing industry as a whole. Maybe there is a way to do a job better, faster, or cheaper, and if playing Whac-A-Mole with what you read in a shop profile compels you to innovate in order to find that better way of doing things, then Screen Printing has done its job.

I can tell that you’re chomping at the bit, wondering how you can convince Screen Printing to profile your shop in the magazine’s pages. You want access to a marketing tool as powerful any for your business, and we can’t blame you for that. It’s simpler than you think.

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Our profiles tend to focus on shops that excel in their field, do something out of the ordinary, or take on extremely demanding applications—an example of such a company appears in the profile on page 30 of the June 2009 edition of Screen Printing. We’re certainly not stuck on those requirements, so feel free to come up with your own reasons why your company deserves the spotlight. While you’re at it, prepare yourself to at least answer the basics in these general areas of interest:

• Your company’s origins and growth
• Areas of specialty
• Services and capabilities (including unique offerings)
• Equipment used (specific makes and models used in prepress, production, and finishing)
• Overall business philosophy

We also invite the shops we profile to submit high-resolution images that showcase their businesses and the products they make. It’s a great chance to really demonstrate what’s possible in screen printing and inspire others to ratchet up their quality so that our industry maintains the solid reputation it has earned over the decades.

Screen Printing is happy to shine the spotlight on an inspired company, but we’re not mind readers. That means we need to hear from you! Some of our profiles come from word-of-mouth recommendations; others come from our own research into the markets screen printers serve. But the easiest way to get on our radar screen is to put yourself there.

Ben P. Rosenfield
Managing Editor