Texas In-plant Relocates, Rebrands, Goes Grand Format

After operating for years as a typical in-plant serving only its school, Kilgore College Print Services has rebranded as RangerPRINT and opened its doors to both the college and the public. As a result, the Kilgore, Texas-based shop has expanded into a new facility that boasts grand-format printing and two Xerox Iridesse digital presses.

“The idea of this new shop was to not only support the college but be a full-blown public-facing shop,” explains Payton Davis, manager of RangerPRINT Services. “So, I came on board when they were making the transition between the two shops.”

The new facility is located in what used to be an elementary school cafeteria, a step up from its previous location in an old wing of the college that has since been torn down. The shop refreshed its equipment, adding two Xerox Iridesse presses, two black-and-white Ricoh Pro 8320s, a Duplo DC-618 creaser/cutter, and wide-format equipment.

What makes Davis most excited is that RangerPRINT can now offer grand-format printing. Though the three-employee shop had a Canon Arizona flatbed printer and a 64" HP Latex 800 W printer, it recently added an EFI Pro 32r+ roll-to-roll LED UV printer with a 10.5ˈ print width. It has already been used to print a banner for the college’s fitness center. The in-plant also has a Colex Sharpcut SX1732C flatbed cutter.

What inspired the need for the new shop, Davis says, was the desire to “beautify” the campus using banners and signs, an idea that came from the college’s chief financial officer, Terry Hanson.

“It was kind of his idea to do this and get it going, and it all came out of … printing wide-format so that we could give the campus a refresh, because it’s an older school and we want to make it look more appealing to potential students,” Davis says. “We’ve kind of ramped everything up, even our digital machines. We’re running the Xerox Iridesse, and we’re trying to push those specialty toners and show that we can print gold, silver, and white. We want customers to know we can make their marketing materials stand out.”

John Pippen (left) and Payton Davis stand with the new grand-format EFI Pro 32r+ roll-to-roll LED UV printer recently installed at Kilgore College RangerPRINT.

Davis says the in-plant’s next move is to market its services, as well as perfect and utilize its new EFI MarketDirect StoreFront Web-to-print system.

“We’re now kind of at the point where we’re just trying to bring on more and more customers and more work to fill all of these machines up, because this shop was designed to be a full-blown production … running all the time,” Davis says.

For now, word of mouth has been working, Davis says, and his team also passes out flyers around campus to get the word out. He hopes to eventually start sending people out to sell the shop’s services and go after larger print jobs and repeat customers.

“Thanks to the space we now have, we’re going in a lot of different directions,” he says. “We’re offering things we never have before like wide-format and booklet making. So, it’s kind of been fun to see what we’re going to get into.”