PULP

January 2009 - Executive Highlights, a publication of First Tennessee Bank features PULP in it's Winter 2008 issue.

Fit to Print: The Blankenbeckler Brothers are Beating the Competition to a Pulp.

By Maryellen Kennedy Duckett

Steve Blankenbeckler grew up in the printing business, but he never intended to make it his career. When Blankenbeckler was 10, his father, Earl, launched B&B Printers Inc. in the basement of the family's Bristol, Tennessee home. So throughout his teen and college years, Steve and his brother Kevin had built-in part-time and summer jobs helping out their dad. When it came time for college, however, Blankenbeckler says he was determined to strike out on his own. He chose Radford University in Virginia, where he majored in accounting and, more importantly, made two discoveries that would change his life. First, Blankenbeckler says, he realized that he found accounting "pretty boring." Second, he discovered the fledgling Apple Macintosh computer. "I was in school in 1984, which is about the time that the Macintosh was invented by Apple. The introduction of the Mac is what really started radically changing the printing industry," says Blankenbeckler, who bought the first Apple computer ever introduced and every subsequent model produced to date. "Until that point, the industry hadn't changed in years. But with the introduction of the Macintosh, I saw the potential for change. I realized that I probably would enjoy printing, if it incorporated new technologies and was less labor-intensive."

Forging a New Printing Frontier

The Blankenbeckler brothers introduced Macintosh computers to the family business in 1984. Over the next six years, computers evolved quickly and so did B&B Printers. By 1990, the company was growing so rapidly that Earl Blankenbeckler decided to sell the business to his sons. With a computer-based printing and marketing business already in place, the brothers were poised to take advantage of the next big advance to revolutionize printing—the widespread commercial and communications use of the Internet, which took hold in the 1990s. "We really had a lot of things fall into place for us," adds Blankenbeckler. "A lot of the printers around here were stuck in the old-school way of doing things. In 1990, there were probably a half-dozen printers in Bristol. Almost every one closed their doors by 1996 because they couldn't adapt to the changes in the industry."

The Next Big Thing

If Apple's desktop publishing revolution was the first big thing to transform the printing world, then Blankenbeckler says that digital storefronts are the next. Pulp's current flagship product is Pulp Drive-Thru, which creates private branded storefronts for clients. By centralizing printing on one portal, companies can protect the integrity of their brand and make it easy for every location to access the same state-of-the-art printing and marketing services. "We manage all the back-end production, making it easy for our customers to order and protect their branding," adds Blankenbeckler. "Companies that have multiple locations can order print through the same site and we design it with the client's logo and look." Pulp also offers Pulp-Planet.com, a public storefront targeted at the real estate market only. "All the marketing materials these people need such as open house flyers and signs, stationery, and post cards are available to customize and print at the storefront," explains Blankenbeckler. "We've set up a variety of templates in a catalog so Realtors can log in, upload photos, enter their own text if they'd like, and then order the pieces they need. They can also upload their own designs to the site." If Pulp-Planet.com proves successful in the company's regional market, which extends from Tennessee's Tri-Cities area southwest to Knoxville and east to Asheville, North Carolina, Blankenbeckler plans to rollout the concept nationwide.

Making Direct Mail Work

Another signature Pulp product that's a favorite with marketing executives is Pulp Personalized, which allows clients to create more effective direct mail marketing using variable data printing. "We use variable data technology to send out personalized direct mail that speaks to an audience of one," adds Blankenbeckler. "When a potential customer gets the mail, it includes a keyword inviting them to visit their own personalized website. While on the site, they answer a few questions, and the results are collected and sent directly to the client selling the product or service." Although this personalized, interactive form of direct mail is more expensive than traditional print mailings, Blankenbeckler says that the payoff is worth the investment. "With these variable data marketing campaigns, we are getting 5 to 10 percent response rates, which is huge for direct mail. Our clients have a dashboard where they can track the response rates and the sales and see the results for themselves." He continues: "Marketing executives love this product because of its response channel and tracking capabilities. With the dashboard, they can measure the ROI (Return on Investment) on every campaign and measure the results for each dollar spent on the campaign. Most folks today are mailing without the ability to track." So while this new approach means his customers are printing less—for example, 10,000 highly targeted promotional pieces as opposed to 50,000 random, static mailings in the past—Blankenbeckler, the printer, couldn't be happier. "All of the things we can accomplish with the new technologies are really exciting," he explains. "No one else in this area is doing what we are doing now."