Mike Beddor talks about what this commercial printing company has done to stay on top of a competitive industry.

Japs-Olson Company, a commercial printing and direct mail production company based in St. Louis Park, Minn., sends off anywhere between 3 million and 5 million pieces of mail each day. As postage costs make up 60% to 70% of any client’s direct mail campaign, Japs-Olson Company is combining innovative technology with equipment to reduce overall costs.

“We’re in the middle of a postage increase right now, and that’s something the company, our competitors, and customers can’t do much about, as it’s a government-mandated situation,” said Mike Beddor, CEO. “We’re applying the necessary equipment and technology so we can sort the mail at the lowest possible postage rate for our clients.”

In the family
Japs-Olson Company, founded in 1907 by Barney Japs and G.F. Olson, has been able to remain in the forefront of the industry because of its highly skilled employees and state-of-the-art equipment. The first employee the company hired was Beddor’s grandfather, Frank Beddor, Sr., who worked from the bottom up to become president and eventually partner to Barney Japs and Guss Olson. With the retirement of the founders, Beddor became the sole owner, and it has been in the Beddor family ever since.

Mike Beddor

Frank’s grandson, Mike Beddor, has made Japs-Olson his life’s career, with more than 30 years of service working in production, growing sales, and overseeing corporate growth with a hands-on management style. Beddor oversees a $140 million organization that employs 750 people producing print and direct mail within a 512,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. He is joined by seven other family members and business partners who have a common vision of growing by exceeding client expectations every day.

Japs-Olson works with clients (mostly Fortune 1000 companies) and their marketing partners and advertising agencies, producing the programs they’ve designed and getting them into their customers’ hands. “We print the promotional material, personalize the marketing message, and target the mailing to all the individuals our clients want to reach from one of the largest production plants of its kind,” Beddor said.

Under one roof
The company has placed a big bet on new equipment and enhanced technology over the past two years, with more than $35 million invested to keep the company growing.

In the past year alone, it added a 24-page Goss Sunday Press that will run at twice the speed with half the set-up time of any other web press on the floor.

“We created a postal commingle center to help reduce the overall cost of postage for our clients and get the mail into the hands of their customers through logistics management,” Beddor said. The company also adopted Kodak technology and leaped into on-press personalization to speed up throughput and reduce cycle time for those clients with larger mailings.

“We’ve embraced the concept that as a printing firm, we have to include value-added services with our printing,” Beddor said. “We include the services of personalization and mailing under one roof. By offering a wider package of services from start to finish, we can assist clients in getting their mail work done more efficiently.”

Beddor strongly believes in the philosophy of reinvesting in the company to support Japs-Olson’s value-added capabilities. For example, printing up to six colors is the industry standard for sheet-fed printing. Over the years, Japs-Olson has offered its clients the option of more color, using presses that print eight, 10, or 12 colors. “We reinvest in our equipment to offer more than what our competitors can,” Beddor said.

Leading edge
Japs-Olson invests millions of dollars annually to outfit its plant with the best equipment and technology available, including computer-integrated manufacturing systems across the plant. “We have the ability to monitor production and manage schedules in real time from one centralized center,” Beddor said.

“We can monitor the efficiency of the equipment that is running in ways most of our competitors aren’t able to do,” Beddor said. “We can also monitor downtime and measure waste in a much more tangible sense than in years past.”

The company has also dedicated itself to employee training and education, increasing its budget by 20% this past year. Most of the training and education has been part of Japs-Olson’s lean manufacturing initiatives to identify bottlenecks within its production processes and find faster cycle solutions to meet the demand of clients.

Regarding its lean initiatives, the company has created work standardization processes to make sure tools are available and in the right places to improve cycle times. The company has also worked with employees to identify factors that cause waste. “When a problem is identified by those working in production, the solutions can be embraced and implemented much faster,” Beddor said.

“We have separated ourselves from the competition by being hands-on in management with a willingness to invest in technology to operate as a lean organization,” Beddor concluded.