PUBLICATION CENTER

Peeq Media’s success is tied to the value it provides its clientele beyond its almost limitless capabilities.

Sales are a value proposition. Granted, price plays an important role, but it slides up and down the scale of importance depending on product application and volume. In the end, a successful sale and one that builds a long-term relationship is about value, and no one understands this better than Peeq Media.

Peeq Value

Based in New York City with plants in Long Island City, N.Y., and Las Vegas, Peeq is a success story because of the multi-dimensional value it brings to each client. The value Peeq provides is not relegated to its diverse range of services, which range from sheet-fed digital-on-demand to large-format printing. Rather, Peeq’s value, and the company’s ability to maintain long-term relationships, is in asset management.

Not content to merely re-touch an image or print a project, Peeq takes responsibility for overall graphics asset management. What this does for the client is to take a burdensome task off their plate, saving them time, money, and headaches. Called Peeq IT, the stated goal of this asset/data management suite tools offered by Peeq are designed to remove each client’s “points of pain.”

Peeq Media’s CEO Jeff Sinaw explains: “It’s actually much more than asset management; it’s workflow, administration, and reporting on what is spent to the moment. We do a lot of reporting through our system that our clients would like to do, but their IT departments are very busy and focused on product-based management and the distribution of their product. The distribution of collateral materials and signage is really an afterthought. So we’ve become the IT branch of large companies where it has to do with collateral material and the large files associated with that material.”

Peeq IT, combined with the company’s various printing and fulfillment capabilities, gives Peeq Media a decided advantage in the market.

Basically, Peeq takes the value-added proposition to the next level, which benefits the client with convenience and cost savings.

For Peeq Media, it provides a captive audience of clients that are less likely to look elsewhere for print services. Additionally, Peeq offers commercial photography services, giving each client a potential capture-to-print solution.

“We take care of what we’re supposed to for whom we’re supposed to, and that makes us all look good. The synergistic process of that helps both ourselves and our clients take care of their constituency, whether it’s the public, a creative person, a product manager, or anyone else who’s a stakeholder in the process; it’s all the same. We enable our direct clients to maintain an excellent relationship with their clientele, whoever they may be,” says Sinaw. “We really strive to keep clients long term and not pinch the pennies out of every job. We have to be profitable, but we must consider what the client needs, their ultimate goal, and their constituency. The real thing is to put out a quality product and let the client be able to sleep at night trusting what we do.”

Peeq Technology

By doing this, Peeq Media does not become a commodity printer but a value-added partner in the entire process. Peeq Media also strives to keep its clients apprised of the latest developments in advertising media, such as lenticulars and dynamic digital signage. Peeq Media researches and implements new technology based on the economic and true advertising viability of the technology.

With dynamic digital signage, for instance, Sinaw says, “To us static sign makers it’s kind of scary, because dynamic digital signage for in-store displays is definitely happening. So we’re doing an analysis as to what our clients spend in static signs each year. Based on that analysis we’re showing them a model where they can switch out some of their static signage, but only some of it, because you don’t want blinking lights all over the place.”

Peeq Media is finding appropriate venues and applications for new technology, as opposed to forcing square pegs into round holes, so to speak, simply because the technology is available. “We’re developing ways to deliver it, manipulate it and teach our clients how to use it. It’s growing as the price of the hardware goes down and can be used where it’s a reasonable and responsible medium for in-store and out of home advertising,” says Sinaw.

It’s the same approach Peeq Media has always taken to technology, and with great success. With large format, Peeq Media has never been afraid to adopt new technology and adopt it quickly as it did with Durst’s Lambda Digital Laser Imagers when they first appeared on the market. However, Peeq Media carefully studies its workflow, current capabilities, the needs of its client base, and the relative maturity of any new technology before jumping in headlong.

“Our philosophy is not to be so far ahead of the market that when you’re teaching the language of the business you don’t need an algebra teacher to teach third-grade math; they won’t understand it and it’s not fulfilling for either side,” explains Sinaw. “We were one of the first in the country to go into the Durst because we realized people wanted to produce their work in digital format and because the inkjets weren’t fast enough, economical enough or tough enough.”

Peeq Printing

A tough, consistent printer is important to Peeq Media because it runs its plants in Long Island City and Las Vegas 24/7. Peeq Media purchased the Las Vegas facility from Blue Ocean Worldwide about nine months ago to better service clients west of the Mississippi and Rockies.

“It serves the purpose of the new buzzwords of our industry: carbon footprint. In reality, the best way to get your carbon footprint lower is to ship from a closer location. With the Las Vegas facility we’re able to service our national accounts and save money on shipping because it’s often more expensive to ship than to print,” says Sinaw.

Peeq Media maintains 90,000 square feet of production space in Long Island City, 7,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan, and 25,000 square feet in the Las Vegas plant. Large-format work represents about 30 percent of Peeq Media’s business, with most of that work going toward in-store and out-of-home print campaigns produced on the company’s fleet of VUTEk and HP-Scitex printers. Peeq Media’s application abilities run the gamut, from floor graphics and wallscapes to bus wraps and producing the graphics for the New York Mets’ new home at Citi Field.

The origins of Peeq Media’s phenomenal growth are found in Sinaw’s simple philosophy that he employed when he first bought the business in 1981 and turned about $300,000 in annual sales into $3 million the following year: “I was a sales rep and I knew how to go out and sell, but I was a production person first, so I knew my product,” explains Sinaw.