Direct Mail Solutions, located in Richmond, VA, was founded in a garage 20 years ago. This 24/7 operation employs nearly 400 people and has both a production facility and a presort shop where mail produced in-house is commingled with third-party mail and prepared in accordance with USPS requirements.
As the business has grown, Direct Mail Solutions is in the process of migrating from roll-fed toner-based printing to rollfed production inkjet, according to Randy Toney, Operations Manager, who has been with the company for 18 years. “We had eight toner lines,” he says, “and now we are down to four, having added two Screen Truepress Jet520EX inkjet presses in 2017.”
Toney states that the primary drivers for moving to production inkjet were to increase cost savings and reduce the amount of floor space required for production. Each Screen Truepress line features Standard Hunkeler unwinders and rewinders. “We were interested in looking at Hunkeler because we knew they were one of the leaders in the industry,” Toney explains. “We had seen their products at many shows, and finally made the leap when we acquired the Screen presses. We were running out of floor space, and it didn’t make sense to add more toner devices with the inkjet technology now available.”
In making the decision, the team at Direct Mail Solutions visited Standard’s showroom in the Boston area. “This visit was a great help in the decision-making process,” Toney says. “I have never been exposed to any other vendors that handle the sales process the way Standard does. We were onsite with them and had their undivided attention for the entire time we were there, enabling us to have an in-depth first-hand look at everything they had to offer. Many vendors miss that aspect during the sales process. It made us feel comfortable with the investment that they were able to spend that amount of time and explain exactly what we were getting.”