Postcards, a new world

Quebecor Media Inc., whose flyers land on more than half of all Canadian doorsteps each week, is set to launch its own digital flyer printing service to tap web-savvy bargain hunters.

Quebecor has a long and successful history in the nyc printing business but only jump-started its flyer presses again roughly two years ago following the breakup of Quebecor World - at one time the largest printer anywhere on the planet.

Today, Quebecor, parent company to QMI Agency and Sun Media, is back in the flyer game in a big way pumping out colourful pages for distribution in more than 150 publications across seven provinces from two high-tech facilities in Toronto and Mirabel, Que.

Business is booming, said Philippe Guay, vice president, national sales, Quebecor Media Inc.

The company recently added big names to its roster of clients including Golf Town, the Shoe Company and Jean Coutu - the largest drugstore chain in Quebec.

“We’ve been trying to rebuild this business. It’s a lot smaller than it was before,” Guay said, adding Quebecor accounts for less than 3% of the overall Canadian flyer custom printing market.

But where Quebecor really enjoys bragging rights is in distribution.

Through its impressive network of daily and weekly newspapers stretching across the country, Quebecor delivers flyers to 6.7 million of the 13 million doorsteps in Canada every week.

“We are by far the largest flyer distributor in the country,” Guay said.

In fact, declining newspaper circulation and the growing popularity of the web hasn’t cut into Quebecor’s flyer business at all, Guay said.

“The paper flyer is still as, if not more, popular than it was five, six years ago,” he said.

More than 14 billion flyers were delivered to Canadians last year, according to the Flyer Distribution Standards Association (FDSA). Some 85% of Canadians peruse flyers “often” or at least “sometimes”, its studies show.

“It’s part of the routine of a lot of Canadians,” Guay said.

“So far there hasn’t been a real good, solid alternative to paper.”

Some retailers and printing services providers are looking to branch out online however.

“It’s the other phenomenon we’ve been seeing,” Guay said.

From SourceWire

Graphics and Print, the award-winning, Telford-based print manufacturer, have been providing printing services to businesses since 1980 and their design and print regularly helps customers with community based activities. And with Children in Need just a few weeks away, they have just launched their 50/50 offer. Managing Director, Martin Kells explains:

“Customers ask us all the time if we can support them with charity and community based activities and we are only too pleased to support where we can. We know that every year, thousands of businesses need printing services for things like poster printing and flyer printing linked to the great work they do for Children in Need so we thought we would proactively offer our support this year through our 50/50 offer. Put simply, this means that the first 50 businesses who approach us for help with printing services or creative graphic design for anything to do with the BBCs Children in Need appeal, we will provide up to £50 worth of design or print free of charge. Hopefully this helps businesses to save time designing or custom printing their own materials locally, enabling them to spend more time on the fund raising side of things.”

The fact that Graphics and Print has a design studio in-house means that their experienced team of designers has direct access to the print finishing team, ensuring that at every step of the print journey, their experts are working together to deliver a quality end product for all of their clients. This is one of the many reasons why Graphics and Print are award-winning commercial printers.