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Michigan printer finds success with multiplatform marketing services. By Howard Riell irst Impression Print & Marketing in Howell, MI, is staying adaptable and agile in a changing business landscape—and it is paying off handsomely. Owner Don Cortez was already an industry veteran when he and his wife Sandy purchased the company in 1989. "I had been in the print industry since I was right out of high school. I had come up through the ranks that way." F First Impression is first and foremost a commercial print shop, says Cortez. "We do full color work, black-and-white, and digital copies, and more." In 2007, he changed the company's name from First Impression Printing & Graphics when it started—like so many other shops around the country—to lean more toward the marketing end of the business. The Right Person for the Job The company took another major step forward this year by hiring a director of business development, Bob Kuzawinski. His mission: to reach out to high-end, larger corporations, which Cortez describes as "Fortune 500-type companies." The move is already paying dividends. First Impression recently printed these emergency services flipcharts for each of the businesses in the local Tanger Outlet Mall. 22 QUICK PRINTING / September 2013 "We just signed a contract—and it First Impression Print & just shows how much the industry Marketing in Howell, MI, stays has changed—with a major com- ahead of the competition by riding the leading edge of pany," Cortez says. First Impression communication trends. will be doing everything it needs in order to appear at a trade show in Las Vegas next March. "We absolutely would not have gotten them without him," he says of Kuzawinski. "Our industry has changed so much that it is one piece of business, from a marketing standpoint, that lots of printers are looking at. The spin-off of handling that activity is that we have done probably $10,000 worth of print work already for them. We're building a set, handling transportation, hotels—we're doing everything for them." The company has a staff of 10: two each in the customer service, design, and production departments, three in sales, and a bookkeeper. Agile Media Social media in the graphic arts, as with many other industries, is moving to the fore. Today, it accounts for about 10 percent of First Impression's sales. "We do a lot of social media training now," Cortez explains. "We've been asked to speak several times on that at chambers and associations." Indeed, social media will eventually become an even more significant part of the mix, he predicts. "And not necessarily social media itself. Whether it be training, implementation, or services offered to clients, I think we'll be in different channels within that environment and space." First Impression is showing small businesses new ways to connect with customers through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (the pinboard-style photo sharing website). The company is offering a new social media training suite to provide the basics and best practices for using social media platforms in business. The first training module focuses on learning the business basics for each platform, helping with creating content and measuring success. Future training sessions will center exclusively on one social media platform such as Pinterest or LinkedIn. w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m