Merritt's New Xerox iGEN3 Makes Full Color Production Printing in Short Run Possible - Overnight!

Hartford CT - September 1, 2004

Ed Perry, President & CEO of Joseph Merritt & Company, always knew there was a problem with offset color printing. His customers constantly complained that to keep unit costs down when they printed brochures, they had to print a lot of them. In fact, often many more than they actually needed.

As a long-time Xerox customer, Perry learned that Xerox was developing a completely digital color printing press that could print ultra-high quality color in very small quantities. That press could also do something that no other printing press in history could do: customize pages of the same job with different copy and graphics.

“That was several months and about $1 million ago,” Perry commented recently as he watched the new production press being tested in his facility in Hartford. To accommodate the new production press, Perry had to create a new production facility with a special floor and high-tech electrical and data wiring. Merritt staffers were sent to Xerox in Rochester, NY for training.

The Xerox DocuColor iGEN3 Digital Production Press is versatile and very fast. Perry says that he will be able to take an order for 50 (or up to 5,000) 24-page, full color brochures at 5 PM and deliver the completed brochures by 9 AM the next morning. “If it’s a sales brochure, we can even put a different customer’s name on the cover of each brochure,” he said.

Perry adds that there are almost no limitations as to what weight or type of stock is used in the IGEN3. The press will print on thick 12 pt calendar stock all the way down to 17# tissue.

As for quality, the IGEN3 reaches an absolute high point in reproducing photographs and graphics. “This is the high quality, short run digital color production press that the industry has been waiting for. It is also what my customers have been asking for over the past 10 years: high quality color printing in small quantities, produced quickly at a very reasonable cost,” Perry added.

While this type of investment would be substantial for any large printer, it was a necessary one for Joseph Merritt & Company. The company began 96 years ago making blueprints and over the years became an important reprographics supplier to architects, engineers and builders in Southern New England. Copying and duplicating came next as customers asked for those services and eventually, Merritt became a major supplier of truck and bus graphics, a field so equipment intensive and technically specialized that few others wanted to compete.

“We’ve been successful for all of those years by listening to our customers and changing to meet their needs,” Ed Perry said. “The Xerox DocuColor iGEN3 Digital Production Press was a big investment in money and training but it meets a very real customer need.”

Joseph Merritt & Company’s Executive Vice President and General Manager Patrick Freer has already begun calling on those that he knows will appreciate the IGEN3’s capabilities. “Ad agencies and design firms will find it very valuable,” he said. “We also know that many large printers in Southern New England will outsource to Merritt just because of our ability to turn out small quantities of customized, high quality color, very quickly.”

Freer added that he is planning a series of open houses to demonstrate what the iGEN3 can do. The press has been installed at the Joseph Merritt & Company facility at 650 Franklin Avenue in Hartford and is one of only four in the Northeast.

Joseph Merritt & Company was founded in Hartford in 1908. Today, the company provides plans and specifications reproduction, litigation support services, on-location printing services, copying and printing, scanning and document management, banners, tradeshow and vehicle graphics. Merritt is headquartered in Hartford and has facilities in Danbury, New Haven, New London and Waterbury, CT as well as Providence, RI, White Plains, NY and Peabody MA.

For more information contact Customer Service at 800-344-4477.

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