During the first half of the nineties I sold commercial printing in Southern California. I was lucky enough to wind up working for a dominant pre-press house that had recently purchased new Ryobi two and four color presses in the 14 X 20″ format. All of this was happening at the same time the short run four color market was just starting to take off. This fortunate confluence of events lead my company to be perfectly placed for the emerging niche in the market that was going to last for ten years.
In the years since then the short run four color market has been further splintered into the runs (typically <1000) that are now pretty much exclusively run on color copiers, the 1-5000 sheet niche which is run on a variety of equipment and the 5000+ sheet niche which is most cost effectively run on larger presses. But it's that middle niche, the 1-5000 run market that I would like to draw your attention to. There is a great answer for this type of work that makes even more sense now than it did in 2002 when it was introduced. That answer is the Ryobi series of DI presses.
The ability to have a ten minute make ready with a small fraction of wasted set up sheets that even highly automated presses create is as powerful a driver of cost effectiveness today as it has always been. The 200 and 300 line screen quality (depending on machine version) will not be surpassed by any machine, no matter what the price. In fact, the quality capabilities of a Ryobi DI machine can be used to lock out competitors in the 1-5000 niche by it’s ability to paint the sheet, run up to 20pt stock or do 200-300 line screen. Like a good middleweight boxer the DI is as powerful as the big guys but still very, very fast.
But what really is compelling about the whole proposition is cost. The graph at the bottom of this post details the cost per sheet of a color copier vs. a DI press. It’s pretty clear cut, the DI isn’t going to compete at the lower runs but there is a cross over point of diminishing returns for the color copiers. Above that sheet count the click charges and other assorted expenses associated with color copiers drive the per sheet cost through the roof. Granted, there are other ways of running the 1-5000 counts on larger presses cost effectively, including gang running, but for the average printer who doesn’t have a half size or larger press to gang run jobs the DI still makes more sense. Even large printers can benefit by having a DI to knock out the middleweight jobs and allowing the large presses to do what they do most cost effectively – longer run jobs.
Also, cost isn’t just a theoretical number in a justification model, you still have to buy the machine. And there is a cost to that purchase. When I sold Ryobis for almost ten years for a dealer in SoCal a new Ryobi DI cost $350,000.00+. Now, there are plenty of excellent used machines that are available for $40,-70K. We have sold them all over the country. And make no mistake – this is a real printing press. Bearer to bearer, four form roller, 15 ink roller, 12,000 lb printing press manufactured in the same manner as all Ryobi offset presses. The former me that sold both printing and printing presses could never have guessed how affordable the Ryobi DI presses would become. A machine that will run hundreds of millions of high quality impressions, operate for years and years after the purchase lease is a memory, can’t be out-printed by any machine and can be purchased for what I used to sell duplicators for? Now that machine is the middleweight champ.