Soar Print is a future-focused family-run business that wants to stay ahead of the pack and are always finding new ways to give their customers what they need.
Soar Printing, an Auckland-based company that was founded back in 1920 as a family business, is considered to be at the forefront of the printing industry in New Zealand. Soar Printing now employs over 70 people and they offer an extensive range of services, from short-run digital printing to long run offset printing and large-format poster prints.
Within their specific industry segments, the Soar divisions are market leaders utilizing the latest technology to deliver the best possible result. They are constantly evaluating and adapting new technologies that will add extra value for their clients. This is especially true with their commitment to environmental issues and the ongoing policy of sourcing the most environmentally friendly processes and products.
“The printing industry has changed radically since we started out but one thing has remained the same: behind every single job is a customer who wants it done right. Soar Print understands this. It is the heart of our culture. It guides our investment in new technologies and it helps us to continually evolve our business. We need to grow with our customers’ businesses and be aware of the trends and opportunities they are facing globally. From the smallest print job to the most complex, we want our customers to have the utmost confidence in our company” Fred Soar, Managing Director Soar Print.
Soar Print mainly focuses on printing for commercial business such as marketing material, business forms, point-of-sale display items and packaging. They can count brand names like Nestlé, Estéé Lauder, ASB Bank, Telecom New Zealand, Air New Zealand and Sky City Casino among their clients.
“We’ve noticed a big change in the printing industry over the past few years” says Fred Soar. Print runs are getting shorter, and printing has been substituted by other means of marketing communications such as social media and online marketing. We at Soar Print try to adapt to these new trends by making sure we can offer reduced setup costs, taking care of shorter runs, and offer more RIP print services”
Anticipating this new trend in the printing industry and entering a new market, Soar Print wanted to offer a WEB2PRINT solution for people who know how to use Adobe products and how to create print-ready PDFs. Soar Print was looking for a way to provide instant quoting and instant preflighting to people and at the same time remove the cost of quoting, preflighting and job creation.
With callas software the first WEB2PRINT model has been setup as an independent store-front, targeting new customers throughout New Zealand.
The ease of setting up preflighting with callas software offers them to further streamline the preflighting process internally. So it is not only an online tool, but also an application used inhouse. And all this can be done with only one pdfToolbox Server.
The geographical distance between Soar Print and callas software did not cause any issues. “The fact that callas software is situated in Europe and we in New Zealand created no problems at all. The model was developed over 6 months. Early problems were quickly lined out and sometimes the time difference made it easier because the problems were solved overnight. It was an interesting way to work.”
PDF2PRINT is a print upload portal built with callas pdfToolbox that allows preflighting and correction. It is an affordable and fast way to do easy print jobs without sacrificing quality. PDF2PRINT uses the newest digital and offset machines for the highest standard. In order to offer amazingly low prices, Soar Print has kept a standard range of products that can be ordered through PDF2PRINT which include business cards, flyers, postcards, brochures and posters.
What happens in the background, when a customer orders through the PDF2PRINT button? The file appears on Soar Printing’s server with the order and the price that was ordered. This file is then automatically transferred into a job ticket in the reminder system. Once this is done, the production can be started. In the background, calculations are running to work out where the break is between digital and offset printing for each product and price accordingly. Depending on those calculations, the order is printed either on an HP Indigo 5500 digital printing press or on a Heidelberg Anicolor press.
The callas software was installed about a year ago and was launched earlier this year. Soar Print started a marketing campaign, which includes online marketing and direct marketing, to attract new businesses. So far, there has been a lot of traffic on the website, a lot of visitors, a lot of sightseeing and orders are coming in.
In the future, Soar Print is looking to expand its web to print products. Their next investment will be more business-to-consumer oriented, offering online design options to enable customers to do both design and order online.
“My web developers and I had a look at a few products but we felt that callas software fitted the bill best”, states Fred Soar. “It’s quite easy to use and it gives us what we want. What really stood out was the ability to set your own preflight parameters to your own work environment and the option to provide error messaging as well as other options for auto fix” he concludes.
We use cookies to track usage and preferences. Read more about it in our cookie policy.
